A Million LittlePieces

Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Anchor books, 2003.

James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces is difficult reading. I slogged through it—angrily and filled with resentment. Maybe, it is because I was addicted to cocaine for a long time that the book made me uneasy. Maybe, because so many have built their sobriety around the Twelve Steps and know that they work if you work them. His arrogance, his refusal to do something that has proven to be the only way for so many, proved to be annoying. Maybe, because so much of it simply didn’t ring true.

One of the primary principles of sobriety is honesty and he lied. One of the most common statements in the text was, “the truth is all that matters.” Well, apparently not so for to James Frey personally. That people in the Recovery community had latched onto this book is amazing.

I read the text slowly and deliberately—trying to place it into the context of my own abusive past. I discovered that, had I not known of his deception I would have come away from his work questioning his honesty, his program. The Rehab didn’t throw him out for his relationship with Lilly? Even though they are caught together outside of their Units likely after a curfew? The staff drove him to a crack house—allowed him to go in alone—and then brought him and Lilly back to the facility; she went to the medical unit and he just carried on, no questions, no search of his person, no urine analysis? I’ve been in rehab. None of this is believable. It simply does not work that way.

I found it difficult to believe that his mother—who had an older child—didn’t recognize the sound of pain in her child’s cry. Maybe because I have children of my own. I know what pain sounds like in a stranger’s child’s cry. Although Frey goes to great lengths to say that he isn’t blaming anyone for his addiction problem—his “Fury” is aimed at his parents throughout the book. I don’t feel he is being honest with his reader—and perhaps not with himself.

The text, because of its fantastic claims begs for fact checking to be done. Too much did not ring true. Yes, there were comments that reflected the thoughts of an addict entering recovery peppered throughout the text. “I feel heavy and slow but beneath there are the beginnings of something fast and needy and scared and shaky and fragile and anxious and angry and desperate” (59). I could have written that in the beginning of my recovery—in my withdrawal, although I likely would have added commas. I have, in the course of my recovery, been all of those things—sometimes in the same instant.

It is believable that James Frey is an addict. It is believable that he at some level knows that. But he has as yet not taken that first step and admitted his powerlessness: one cannot conquer addiction. One works through it— one does not challenge it. It is it interesting that the people in his book who do work the Twelve Steps fail—die—and that James survives. It is interesting that throughout the text Frey wants to skip the first eleven steps but works that twelfth step with everyone—although he admits he does not know what will work for him. And everyone listens to him; James Frey has written a book about what he believes to be recovery. But recovery is about honesty, working a program and having a clear workable plan.

James Frey may not be using today, but he is not in a program of recovery. And without that program he will slip. Without honesty one can easily begin to justify and rationalize behaviors and make fiction of a memoir. James Frey needs to get honest—or his addictions will overtake him. His book was his first step down that path of rationalization. From distorted reality it is a short walk to a crack house. Perhaps, one day, he will make amends to the reading public.