Discussion 2/05: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Conversation to begin 2/23.
Some items for your consideration: Are the people in Frey's world believable, or characterizations of believable people? Is James Frey a unique voice among the memoir-genre authors? Why/Why not? Who writes a more/less riveting tale of "I'm So Fucked-Up!"
I am just over halfway done with this book. I am flying through it, so I should be posting in a couple days. I had to finish Cloud Atlas first. That's the price you pay when you want to discuss both books. Damn you for picking two books in the same month that I wanted to read!
So I joined this site for this book club alone, that's how important it is to me, now listen up.
Man, this book was...intense. How else can it be described? I went into it a little skeptical and got incredibly hooked at the oral surgery part. That's where Frey's voice became incredibly effective. Sure, he says FUCK FUCK FUCK a lot in that chapter, but it was written as though it was happening to me right then and there, not just someone telling me what happened to them.
I thought this was going to be about a guy who hits bottom, but he gets better and his life isn't nearly as bad, and now he's happy and rainbows and unicorns fly everywhere...
so it sort of was but the the other characters made it different. Yeah, he's getting better, he's doing fine, but the people who we have cared about and are loving are still falling apart. These are the people who helped him, and without them he'd be dead, and they fail the way everyone has told him he's going to fail.
They were incredibly believable characters, though I think they were achetyped up a bit. I mean, Leonard was obviously a bad guy in real life, but for Frey's tale he was a father, and he was nothing but supportive and good. Lilly was also just beautiful, but she carried so many scars that I think we only got to see Frey's view of the perfect Lilly, and not Lilly herself. Still, that's what makes them so real, they're not the people you see everyday, they're the people that he sees, only through his eyes.
The only other "I'm so fucked up tale" I can even think of is "Living at the Edge of the World: How I Survived the Tunnels of Grand Central Station" by Tina S. It's written by a girl who was madly addicted to crack as a teen. Her story seems like it is exactly what happened to Frey, only seven years earlier. It's also a lot calmer and smoother, but still brilliant. I don't know if I can compare the two, they're both incredibly touching, but I like Frey's style much better.
That's all for now, I'll write more when I have something to respond to.
[IMG]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/fan/workshop/topdogs/apprentice_rico_wonderboy.gif[/IMG]
GAH!
I'm finishing off the last fifty pages (I was racing to get it finished by the deadline, but then workload kicked my ass).
Anyway - just wanted to chip in that I'll be joining in tomorrow, so there will be more people to chat about the book!
I haven't read what you wrote Rico, but I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say about the book.
I'm liking it.
This book really struck a chord with me. I never really get affected emotionally by a book, but this one was different. There were parts that made me tear up.
I have a lot in common with Frey. Not to the extent that he let it go, but I've been to the places he's been. I've seen people just like the people he was with. I've seen people just like him. I thank God that I never let myself get to the degree that he did.
I also didn't believe in the 12 steps. I fought with my counselor and told her that they just would not work for me. I knew it was all in my head and it was a battle that I had to fight for myself.
The 12 steps are mostly based on a belief in God or a higher being or something. He said that that was not going to work for him. He couldn't believe in a God. Well if you really pay attention, he was. He was believing in himself and the Tao. Which is on way that you are at least believing in something. So he was doing exactly what he said he wasn't doing.
The worst part of the book for me, emotionally, is when he has to go and track Lilly down and finds her giving that old man head. I do not even know how he could have walked into that place, seen what he did, and not picked up that bag and lit up. It must have been one of the hardest things to do.
The only thing that I didn't like about this book was how tiring and repetitive it got. I hated how he repeated whole phrases over and over with only one word changes hear and there. It just got kind of old. It worked in some parts, but he over did it.
I am calling up my old counselor and giving her this book. I never realized how much she really helped me and this book helped me open my eyes.
I thought the characters seemed very real. Don't skip ahead to it if you're not there yet, but the last page of the book tells what happened to everybody afterward and it's really heartbreaking. It's just so sad how most of them turned out. And it's not just like they all died, but the ones that have died have all died in such brutal ways.
i'm just about finished. i get the sense that frey may be exaggerating certain characters and or stories for dramatic effect (i found the anesthesia-less root canal/dental work stuff a little far fetched). i really dig his irregular writing style and love how he ignores all the so called standard writing rules and injects his own choppy style. also, the scenes where he's trying to come clean and tell his parents of his past really struck a cord and broke my heart.
i'll give more thoughts when i finish it later this week.
[QUOTE=PGoutis01]
The only thing that I didn't like about this book was how tiring and repetitive it got. I hated how he repeated whole phrases over and over with only one word changes hear and there. It just got kind of old. It worked in some parts, but he over did it..[/QUOTE]
I'm surprised you didn't like this. I thought this was an awesome and effective way of showing the intensities of certain moments. He repeated everything three times usually, and for me, I got the impression that it was always three times worse than he could say. Like if you get hit in the head, you don't just say "Ow!" you say it over and over again.
I think it also showed the power of his addictions in some parts, again, intensifying things. His short, blunt remarks had an effect like Selby in Requiem.
Without doing that, he couldn't do it when describing Lilly and the Clear blue water. Just look at the style of these repeated sentences.
When it bad, it's short and sharp. When it's good, it's soft and drawn out.
I don't think he over did it, and he managed to taper off quite a bit towards the end, probably because he was more in control, and things were calming down for him finally.
[IMG]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/fan/workshop/topdogs/apprentice_rico_wonderboy.gif[/IMG]
[QUOTE=rico wonderboy]I'm surprised you didn't like this. I thought this was an awesome and effective way of showing the intensities of certain moments. He repeated everything three times usually, and for me, I got the impression that it was always three times worse than he could say. Like if you get hit in the head, you don't just say "Ow!" you say it over and over again.
I think it also showed the power of his addictions in some parts, again, intensifying things. His short, blunt remarks had an effect like Selby in Requiem.
Without doing that, he couldn't do it when describing Lilly and the Clear blue water. Just look at the style of these repeated sentences.
When it bad, it's short and sharp. When it's good, it's soft and drawn out.
I don't think he over did it, and he managed to taper off quite a bit towards the end, probably because he was more in control, and things were calming down for him finally.[/QUOTE]
I noticed the structure and I thought it was a cool technique. There were just some spots in the book that I thought it was over done.
When I say that it was the only thing I didn't like about the book, it doesn't mean that I hated that aspect. It just means I had to say something bad about it after praising it so much. 
It was my least favorite thing about the book.
Ok, so I finally finished this book.
Like you RICO, I was initially very sceptical about it. Part of me expected some level of glorification of addiction, perhaps a "woe is me, look how fucked up I am" account that secretly wanted to romanticise the drama of being an addict and being a fuck up.
What I found was a tremendously powerful book that was both brutally, directly honest and strangely uplifting without copping out.
As a confessional, as a memoir of the brutal reality of addiction - it had to be HONEST. If it didn't come across as honest, if it didn't ring true to the reader (and, I suspect, for Frey himself. This book must have been therapeutic for him to write, and reading what happened to some of the characters at the end, I'm sure he needed it) - then it would have read like the drivel I mentioned above.
I found his technique perfect for the story. The simplicity of the language made it feel genuine, as though it was a story he urgently HAD to tell.
I love the Tao stuff, and I think that it influenced his writing style. It is pared down to the point where there is no punctuation, no useless words, no "language smokescreens" - he barely even attributes what was said to the character that said it.
The story had to be told honestly and simply - like the crystal clear language of the Tao.
And that carries on to the overall feeling of the book as well. Honesty. Honesty. Honesty.
In many ways his style allowed me to forgive what in many other books I wouldn't have tolerated. The romantic passages about Arctic Eyes and falling in love with Lilly were just the right side of overblown mush. The scene where he rescues Lilly could have come across as bravado bullshit.
But by the time I had meet Lilly and the rescue occurs, I already felt in safe hands with Frey as a narrator. It didn't seem like the descriptions were purely for dramatic reasons. As a combination of his addictive personality and his direct way of expressing himself it felt, again, honest.
Other posts have mentioned the excruciating, vivid scene at the dentist (and later, pulling the toenail off). To me, I found this FAR more uncomfortable that the horror-comedy of Chuck's short story Guts. I wonder what you folks think.
*SPOILER*
Although we know that this is based on fact, it doesn't quite register until the very end what the reality of the fate of some of these characters might be. Reading that Lilly had hung herself - the REAL Lilly - it made me tear up more that I have for a long time. It plainly and brutally drives home what they repeat all the time at the clinic – only 15% of people will stay clean. The rest won't make it.
This book made me want to fucking live.
Anyway - I literally just finished it half an hour ago and wanted to give a few reactions. I'll most likely have more to add.
Good choice for the Book Club Moe - I really liked this book.
I thought the repitition was really effective. I think that part of the point of its use was to accentuate his life and his addictitive personality. It seems like most of his life had been repetition. Get up, get drunk, get high, black out. Repeat. Using that mindset in the text helps take the reader into his mind a little bit and give them an idea of how someone could end up like this.
great discussion so far, guys...keep it going!! i just need to interrupt for a second to let you know that we're having some issues with these book club sub-forums. if you post something, and it doesn't show up right away, have no fear, it's just gone into a waiting room of sorts and will appear shortly. thanks for being patient as we work through this 
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Other posts have mentioned the excruciating, vivid scene at the dentist (and later, pulling the toenail off). To me, I found this FAR more uncomfortable that the horror-comedy of Chuck's short story Guts. I wonder what you folks think.[/QUOTE]
I have actually no problem with dentists. They're not a fear of mine, as they are for some. I actually enjoy going.
That said, this part had me cringing, and grabbing at stuff. I think the worst/best part, is how he mentions he wants to hold onto the Babar book. It just shows how weak and scared and utterly human he is. It brings him back to Earth, making him real, rather than a character (it better, it's true).
I'm making my fiancee read it, and she finished that part yesterday. She said she had been incredibly nervous and edgy for about three hours after reading it.
I agree, this part is far worse than Guts, and I think it's because everyone can relate to how it feels to drink something just a little too cold, and your teeth just go nuts, but imagine this? Damn. Don't get me wrong, Guts is still pretty horrible and gross, but Frey's trip to the dentist just hurts.
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[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]I love the Tao stuff, and I think that it influenced his writing style.
The story had to be told honestly and simply - like the crystal clear language of the Tao.This is what I was refering too when I said that he did find a higher being. He didn't realize it, but he was letting the Tao become that for him - even though he was fighting the whole twelve step thing.
[QUOTE]PGOUTIS: This is what I was refering too when I said that he did find a higher being. He didn't realize it, but he was letting the Tao become that for him - even though he was fighting the whole twelve step thing.[/QUOTE]
I totally agree. Sorry I didn't refer to your earlier comment in my post before, I was just dashing out an initial reaction, so I didn't mention many previous posts.
But yes, it is pretty ironic that despite all of his anti-religion and 12 step rants that he finds his own variant that he ends up believing in more strongly than most other addicts believed in the 12 steps.
Like I said earlier, there are some aspects of this book that if they had been handled with even slightly less brutal honesty, they would have come across as crap. This is one of them. In some way it seems that we are meant to admire this rebel addict who makes his own rules and finds his own way to beat the disease - like the James Dean of the clinic. It could come across as an ego-trip.
It's interesting, because I think that Frey's belief in the Tao and its philosophy is actually embodied in his entire writing style.
[QUOTE]PGOUTIS: I sort of ruined this part of the book for me. I was flipping through it when I first bought it and I read that. I didn't exactly know what I did until I started reading the book. Everytime Lilly was in a scene, I thought in my head "How sad that it doesn't matter and she is going to kill herself." It just poisoned each character for me knowing their fate.[/QUOTE]
Oh man! You definitely deserve a thwack on the hand with a ruler for that!
Damn, that must have really made those scenes with Lilly bittersweet. I know it's trite and stuff, but that was something for them both to hold on to - some hope for the future and I found myself wanting it to work out.
And all those scenes with the other patients at the clinic - the weird thing is, we kind of know that after they leave most of them won't make it - but it didn't really hit home to me until the end. Knowing their fates before hand - Jeez, it must have made it an even sadder read.
[QUOTE]MOE: Are the people in Frey's world believable, or characterizations of believable people?[/QUOTE]
Just wanted to answer an original question by Moe.
It reminded me in some ways of a discussion in another section of this site about CHOKE and how believable Denny is as a character. Someone said that because it is written in the first person, the best sense you can get of other characters is from their impression of them - actions filtered through the narrator's voice. So often they are exactly that : characterisations of believable people.
As RICO mentioned earlier, Leonard was sugar coated slightly, as he was obviously a bad sumbitch in real life. But that's the whole point really. To Frey, Leonard is his rock and kind of saviour - so his crimes and behaviour out in the real world didn't matter to him, so we don't need to know about it.
The exchanges between people were usually pretty, well, eloquent. Leonard's "speeches", Frey's own arguments with the counsellors etc - they all felt honest, but they weren't naturalistic. People all had their own individual characteristics (like Matty's swearing) but in the end it felt that each character, each exchange, was all basically from the point of view of how it impacted on Frey's journey to become clean.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp] The exchanges between people were usually pretty, well, eloquent. .[/QUOTE]
You're right. Some of the lines seem a little too good sometimes. It must have been tough for Frey to remember everything, especially towards the beginning and while a thousand things were happening in his head. He must have taken what were the essences of conversations, you know? Boiled down what people said and then figured out how to put in on a page. But I think part of the way this works in the book is a whole is that everything is so sparse and feels boiled down, so the dialogue doesn't stick out as being so, especially since it's not set off by quotes or anything.
[QUOTE=tomstrong83]You're right. Some of the lines seem a little too good sometimes. It must have been tough for Frey to remember everything, especially towards the beginning and while a thousand things were happening in his head. He must have taken what were the essences of conversations, you know? Boiled down what people said and then figured out how to put in on a page. But I think part of the way this works in the book is a whole is that everything is so sparse and feels boiled down, so the dialogue doesn't stick out as being so, especially since it's not set off by quotes or anything.[/QUOTE]
You know, I always wonder about memoirs - particularly this kind of immediate, quite short time-scale type of narrative:
Did Frey take any notes at all when he was in the clinic as preparation for this book, or simply for his own journal etc, or was it all from memory?
(A little like A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. I wasn't sure at which points Eggers was writing his account. Was it all one big memory-dump over the course of a few months, or did it serve as his journal and project over the course of a few years.)
If AMLP was all from memory then that explains still further the dialogue and scenarios which at times feel more like impressions and interpretations, rather than realistic exchanges. Like when you tell a story about your childhood, or something that happened a long time ago - things kind of become generalised to some extent.
If it he was taking notes, then I would have liked him to have mentioned this in the book. He is open with everything else, so I would like to know that the book I'm reading was actually being penned while he was going through what he described. Obviously, this may not have been the case, but it would have made it even more immediate and strangely realistic.
Or, do you think that perhaps that would have taken away from the basic story and complicated things too much. A little bit post-modern?
Anyway - just wondered what anyone thought....
frey has said in interviews that the journal he kept during his stay functioned as a basic outline/guide in the writing of the book.
[QUOTE=Balthazar]frey has said in interviews that the journal he kept during his stay functioned as a basic outline/guide in the writing of the book.[/QUOTE]
Cheers for the info Balthazar.
It's strange, but this kind of bothers me. I know it's of no real dramatic use, but that means that at some stages Frey must have, for example, retreated to his room to write a few notes in his journal. I don't remember him writing anything, apart from the history of his wrong-doings.
I would say that writing things down is another form of making sense of the world that surrounds you. There is also an element of therapy to it. Therefore, if Frey was writing while in the clinic, I would like to have known about it. It seems like a small, but important part of his development in there.
Is it because he thinks that it might show that he was taking notes because he thought "yeh - this might make a great story" and didn't want it to come across this way?
Or, am I just bothered by something utterly unimportant and should just move on and stop being a pillock
(I have a sneaking suspicion that the latter might be true)
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]It's strange, but this kind of bothers me. I know it's of no real dramatic use, but that means that at some stages Frey must have, for example, retreated to his room to write a few notes in his journal. I don't remember him writing anything, apart from the history of his wrong-doings.
I would say that writing things down is another form of making sense of the world that surrounds you. There is also an element of therapy to it. Therefore, if Frey was writing while in the clinic, I would like to have known about it. It seems like a small, but important part of his development in there.[/QUOTE]
You know, I kind of agree with that. It takes something away from the story. Writing this helped him, and he never mentions that. Also, it's not quite like he went back in his mind and re-experienced everything that happened, but he just went over his notes.
But on the other hand, I'm not sure how much I would have liked the story if he keeps taking breaks to say, "And then I went to my room to write this down so I would have it for later," or "Lilly came to see me at the clearing and I took notes."
Maybe just some mention of it somewhere would have been okay.
[IMG]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/fan/workshop/topdogs/apprentice_rico_wonderboy.gif[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Balthazar]i'm just about finished. i get the sense that frey may be exaggerating certain characters and or stories for dramatic effect (i found the anesthesia-less root canal/dental work stuff a little far fetched). i really dig his irregular writing style and love how he ignores all the so called standard writing rules and injects his own choppy style. also, the scenes where he's trying to come clean and tell his parents of his past really struck a cord and broke my heart.
i'll give more thoughts when i finish it later this week.[/QUOTE]
Out of interest - did you have any other thoughts after finishing?
Be good to hear...
[QUOTE=Balthazar]frey has said in interviews that the journal he kept during his stay functioned as a basic outline/guide in the writing of the book.[/QUOTE]
hey, post that link to the interviews you were listening to, wouldja?
This is a little unrelated to the text, but I thought the cover photo was amazing. I ended up staring it for 20 minutes one night- Sober! Here's a link for the photographer, Fredrik Broden.
[url]http://www.reneerhyner.com/index1.html[/url]
[QUOTE=moe.ron]hey, post that link to the interviews you were listening to, wouldja?[/QUOTE]
[URL=http://www.randomhouse.com/nanatalese/millionlittlepieces/]yes ma'am[/URL] ...then click "listen to a reading." he talks about some particulars before the reading.
[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Out of interest - did you have any other thoughts after finishing?
Be good to hear...[/QUOTE]
well, ok, first off, i really liked this book. engaging characters and sub-plots. the writing was perfect for this type of genre, and really added a lot to the experience. however, a few things that i'd be interested to hear from you guys about. he never really went into why he started behaving this way at such a young age. i know he portrayed himself as not a victim of circumstance; didn't blame his parents, genetics, or even untreated ear aches as a child. but i felt there was something else there. also, what brought on all this anger he felt? the "fury" as he called. i guess it's possible he left these things out because they didn't belong and would've thrown the whole story for a loop. i just felt like he could've gave us a little something.
[QUOTE=Balthazar] he never really went into why he started behaving this way at such a young age. i know he portrayed himself as not a victim of circumstance; didn't blame his parents, genetics, or even untreated ear aches as a child. but i felt there was something else there. also, what brought on all this anger he felt? the "fury" as he called. i guess it's possible he left these things out because they didn't belong and would've thrown the whole story for a loop. i just felt like he could've gave us a little something.[/QUOTE]
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure I agree that he didn't give enough for us to understand how he ended up where he was. In fact, I think that the absence of an obvious trigger (like sexual abuse, domestic violence etc) just added to the notion that sometimes it happens to the most unlikely people.
What makes an addict an addict? Why were the Judge (James?) and the family man addicts when there was no reason on the surface that they should be?
Yet, even though Frey refused to point to one specific reason, it felt like there was a lot of info swimming around in there that combined to send him off the rails. The earache thing, even though he downplayed it, seemed significant. Moving home. Genetics. In a way, it all didn't matter until he started experimenting with alcohol and drugs - then they took hold of him and that was it - he's an addict.
But like you say, there wasn't anything that made you think "so that's why he gets the fury", but for me that made it more realistic, and not a cop-out. If he had said "there was this one time when dad whipped me" or whatever, I might have felt it was more of an easy explanation that the fact that sometimes this shit just happens. Look at the people around him - they are baffled by it all. They can't understand why someone who should have been so "normal" turned out so skewed.
I finished reading this finally over the weekend having free time to relax and enjoy the last 150 pages on sunday to read. I really just fell into this book when I first started reading it. The first few chapters just reeled me in and I found myself liking this clump of what is left of a man. I find myself relating to Frey at times, unrelenting anger around parents (The Fury), inability to look himself in the eye, something I rarely do anymore.
Anyhow, I like the quick exchange of feeding a substance with something else. The need for repetative(sp) responses to his daily life. The need for black coffee, always hot like the showers he would take. The constant smoking of cigarettes, the unsatiable hunger for food which he would just overwhelm himself with at times.
Characters in the story, I never had a problem in believing them real. They came out well. The introduction of Hank is the first memorable character that struck me when reading this. The simple conversation between the two in the mini van, the offering of the old jacket, these things flowed very well and you can feel the bond between the two like the one shared between him and Leonard. But at times I have trouble with dealing with characters, mainly with Ken. Can't pin point out what exactly threw me off with Ken, but I just never felt like I was listening to a real person when he was around in the story.
I really liked this story and well after reading everyone's comments onto this I can't think of much of anything to add that hasn't been said except now I need to catch up with Eleanor Rigby and Blackbox so I can participate in the middle of those.
[QUOTE=UbikRex]
I really liked this story and well after reading everyone's comments onto this I can't think of much of anything to add that hasn't been said except now I need to catch up with Eleanor Rigby and Blackbox so I can participate in the middle of those.[/QUOTE]
I agree with pretty much everything in your post.
But do get reading Rigby and Black Box, participation seems to be slowing a little - be great to hear your thoughts....
Hey all....
I just heard an interview with James Frey on BBC Radio here in the UK and thought I'd quickly mention it. I realise this is like turning up at barbecue ten hours late and trying to cook a steak on the dead ashes....but hey, let's eat!
First of all - his accent was (I think) pronounced and fairly Southern sounding. He also had a deep voice and chose his words with care, speaking in a low, laid back kind of way. Even before I realised it was James Frey that was talking (I switched on to the channel just after he began) I noticed a barely perceptible element of danger in his voice. It was definitetly the confident drawl of a man who had lived some - and had seen stuff your naive asses could never comprehend.
As Edith Wharton might say: He had stared the Gorgon in the face and lived.
Anyway - he was talking about his new book. I hadn't heard anything about this, but apparently it's called Leonard's Story and is a continuation of sorts from AMLP.
As Leonard was obviously one of the charcters that seemed to resonate most with people here, myself included, I thought this was kind of intriguing. I also suspect that, having read the "where are they now" section at the end of his first book, we kind of know where his story is headed!
Perhaps, Moe, this would be a good choice for the next set of OCBC selections?
The reviewers loved it. It was quite entertaining to hear plummy Brits talking about "energetic narrative pace" and whatnot, but sounding just a little nervous about being around the guy who has written and confessed to beating up a priest!
I'm looking forward to it....
Hey Riddlegimp - thanks for the update.
So, the reviewers were talking about his new book My Friend Leonard? The release here in the States is tentatively scheduled for June 16. [URL=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573223158/qid=1116274284/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-1565625-5443235?v=glance&s=books]Here's[/URL] the link to amazon with a picture of the cover and the usual illiterate write-up from Publishers Weekly.
I too am really looking forward to it.
wow kids, this conversation really took off!! c'mon, nobody read it?? no opinions to the questions i've posed above?