IT’S FICTION FOR REAL

Two years after the infamous Oprah Winfrey show, James Frey wants to make amends

He wrote a book but it got him in trouble. A million little pieces. It was the name of the book. It was also how hard he got hit. He had to sit there on the couch. The television celebrity book club woman let him have it. He squirmed on the couch. The world blamed him. Then he was gone.

He tried again.The million little pieces guy was called James Frey. He got another chance. He stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. No more lies and melodrama.

He wrote a big book about a city, Los Angeles. He invented a lot of random but smart characters. For every pause in the story, he would throw in an urban fact.

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Sample this: The LA has a museum devoted to the banana.

He wrote about people wholoved and hated LA. But he never got sloppy. He just wrote as if he cared about them desperately. Bright Shiny Morning. A new chapter, real or illusory, that’s what his latest book Bright Shiny Morning, was all about. His publisher called it a dazzling tour de force. That wasn’t so far off the mark. Even if his publisher could have queried more about the banana museum.

Bright Shiny Morning was mobile and alert to layout, tempo. Some characters got long litanies of brisk, sharp dialogue. Others got dense, descriptive prose.

The language got sleek and arch when the book described two superstars, Amberton and Casey. A man and a woman, married to each other, best friends both gay no secrets.Prop children. Money, houses, cars, personal assistants nannies yoga teacher everything perfect. Still Amberton wanted more, got a crush on an ex-football player. What if the book always made poor people humble spoiled profligate ones?

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Like Esperanza, Mexican-American, working as a maid for an old white lady so mean she threw her morning cup of coffee if Esperanza didn’t make it right. But the old lady turned out to have a son. He liked Esperanza, treated her like a human being. There were easy ways a cynical, sentimental crybaby like A million little pieces guy could have told Esperanza’s part of the story. Crisis, violence, redemption, whatever: that’s what he knew about and passed off as nonfiction. But the Bright Shiny Morning guy did it differently. This novelist wanted something else for Esperanza: he wanted tofall in love with her with startling sincerity. And it worked.
That’s how James Frey saved himself.
-Janet Masllin (NYT)