Yuku free message boards

NancyOttawa wrote:

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The only reason people care is because he was first marketed as a totally true story. The story was absolutely amazing and at times excruciating what this man went through to get clean. Oprah even had him on her show and he answered all the questions like it was truth. Then the truth really came out, that lot's of it was made up. People don't like to be made fools of, especially Oprah, and this man made a shitload of money off this book when people thought it was truth. He basically lied to everyone.

"According to Frey, A Million Little Pieces was never meant to be read as a memoir. His original intention was to publish it as a semi-autobiographical novel, not unlike the works of his heroes, such as beatnik writer Jack Kerouac. But A Million Little Pieces was rejected eighteen different times when it was pitched as a novel - and this despite having a top-notch literary agent. When his agent started to mention that much of the book was true, coming from Frey's own life, publishers suddenly got much more interested: novels were dead, but memoirs were hot.

As a memoir, one of the biggest players in the publishing industry, Nan Talese, suddenly took an interest in Frey's book. She thought it would turn out to be a bestseller (as a memoir), and so she published it as such, giving the hitherto basically unsuccessful writer a $50,000 advance."