Justice for James?

According to the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Oprah has taken time out of her busy grilled chicken schilling & eating schedule to privately apologize to James Frey. Supposedly, James has been invited back to the show to discuss the fallout, but their schedules haven’t worked out for him to return.

I’m not incredibly pro-James Frey. However, I sympathize with his situation & why he felt he had to lie so that a fictional book became a memoir. What it comes down to is that she felt it was a decent book and that he was a good writer. The notion that A Million Little Pieces was a memoir added to the reading experience. Basically, if the reader thought that it was a great book, finding out that it was not in fact a memoir should not have detracted the reader from still thinking that it was a good book. It’s just one aspect of the book that wasn’t entirely truthful. The same could be said about autobiographies. You can read an awesome autobiographical book but at the end of the book, you, as the reader would have to admit that the person (or in some cases, the editor) putting their life on paper is going to subtract or enhance certain details.

On the other hand, I’m highly anti-Oprah. I feel that as much effort that Oprah put into publicly lambasting & shaming James Frey, she should feel the same obligation to apologize to him publicly. Scheduling conflicts be damned. For that reason, I have a question mark in the title of this post.

James Frey may have received an apology from Oprah, however, it’s too little, too late. And, until he receives an apology that’s on the same level (publicity-wise) as the public condemnation that she put him through, then there will always be a question as to whether or not he’s received an adequate apology.