Frey Pays. Part Two.

When I drafted the original Frey Pays posting, Hockeyman disagreed vehemently. The point, he argued, was that Frey and Random House defrauded consumers, who then deserved a refund.

I kept trying to bring the arguement round to the book itself, to the inherent risk in reading something unknown, but H-man is inexorably logical. The issue wasn't literature. Frey had lied about his product. That the product was a book was secondary.

My righteous belief shaken, I held off on publishing what I'd written. Hockeyman is right, which means so are all the folks who went to court.

Then I saw this post on Critical Mass. Hmm......

So, on the one hand, the people who thought they were getting a memoir and sued are scoring the moral point. They are also exercising their rights as consumers to get what they paid for.

People like me, who have followed the entire mess the way people once watched Shakespearean farces, can only toss up our hands. There will be another James Frey. There will be lots more druggie memoirs (which lately seem to be trending toward the horrible experiences of teenagers,) because our societal hunger for sensationalism is insatiable. So, a caveat emptor to the people who will buy these books: you can consume only so much junk food before you get sick.

Authors, Literature, Books