James Frey's Blog, page 6
June 13, 2025
WSJ: Sizzling misdeeds
Best known for the memoir ‘A Million Little Pieces’ and the ensuing controversy, James Frey now has a sizzling beach read about the misdeeds of the rich
The spring meeting of Frey’s book club was held at a friend’s mansion near the New York-Connecticut border.© Ryan Lowry for WSJ. MagazineJames Frey’s book group was meeting to discuss the new novel by the notorious author James Frey.
Though he has written six books, Frey is best known for “A Million Little Pieces,” the 2003 bestseller about his drug-and-alcohol addiction. That title, marketed as a memoir, turned Frey into a pariah when it was revealed he falsified or exaggerated parts of his story. Oprah scolded him on TV. His agent dumped him.
Now he’s releasing a sizzling gossipfest about the misdeeds of the rich called “Next to Heaven,” which revolves around an elite swingers party in a town based on New Canaan, Conn., the moneyed enclave where the author lives. Against that backdrop, the book can seem like reality disguised as fiction, as opposed to the fiction disguised as reality that led to his literary scandal two decades ago.
“If I write a book that is published as nonfiction, everybody tears it apart trying to figure out what in it is not true,” the author, 55, said. “If I write a book that’s fiction, everybody tears it apart trying to figure out what is true.”
June 12, 2025
The New York Times (then and now)
Twenty years after “A Million Little Pieces” became a national scandal, James Frey is ready for a new audience.
By Sam Dolnick
James Frey on his custom-made XL Eames chair, at his home in New Canaan, Conn. Credit…Erik Tanner for The New York TimesJames Frey was, for a time, one of the most famous nonfiction writers in America. And then someone checked the facts.
In 2005, Oprah Winfrey selected his memoir “A Million Little Pieces” for her book club, only to learn soon after that he had fabricated parts of his story about drug addiction and his time in rehab. She shamed Frey on national TV for betraying the American public, and his publisher offered refunds. He was branded a villain, a fraud — and became perhaps the first canceled man this century.
“Did I lie? Yup,” he told me. “Did I also write a book that tore people to shreds? Yeah.”
Today, lies are told with gusto, while facts are distorted and erased at the speed of tapping thumbs. Just scroll on X for a bit, and the Frey affair might look like a horse and buggy that was ticketed for trotting too fast.
As Frey sees it, the public has gotten increasingly comfortable with falsehoods, without getting fully comfortable with him. He finds it all a bit absurd. “I just sit in my castle and giggle,” he said.
June 10, 2025
The New York Times (now and then)
Twenty years after “A Million Little Pieces” became a national scandal, James Frey is ready for a new audience.
By Sam Dolnick
James Frey on his custom-made XL Eames chair, at his home in New Canaan, Conn. Credit…Erik Tanner for The New York TimesJames Frey was, for a time, one of the most famous nonfiction writers in America. And then someone checked the facts.
In 2005, Oprah Winfrey selected his memoir “A Million Little Pieces” for her book club, only to learn soon after that he had fabricated parts of his story about drug addiction and his time in rehab. She shamed Frey on national TV for betraying the American public, and his publisher offered refunds. He was branded a villain, a fraud — and became perhaps the first canceled man this century.
“Did I lie? Yup,” he told me. “Did I also write a book that tore people to shreds? Yeah.”
Today, lies are told with gusto, while facts are distorted and erased at the speed of tapping thumbs. Just scroll on X for a bit, and the Frey affair might look like a horse and buggy that was ticketed for trotting too fast.
As Frey sees it, the public has gotten increasingly comfortable with falsehoods, without getting fully comfortable with him. He finds it all a bit absurd. “I just sit in my castle and giggle,” he said.
VANITY FAIR: James Frey now and then.
Nearly 20 years post-Oprah debacle, the Million Little Piecesauthor talks to VF about his response to criticism, using ChatGPT, and his money-drenched sex-romp murder mystery, Next to Heaven.
BY KEZIAH WEIR
The author James Frey, now and then. ILLUSTRATION BY ORIANA FENWICK.If James Frey’s road has been a rocky one, at least the bumps were diamonds. In the two decades since he got an Oprah dressing down when it turned out he’d fabricated parts of his mega-best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, he founded and sold a booky content farm, dabbled as CEO of an esports company, and collaborated with Lena Waithe on the Queen & Slim story. Also in those years: the rise of autofiction, the death of truth, and a newly unslakable thirst for IP skewering (while sort of celebrating) the ultrarich.
Enter: Next to Heaven (Authors Equity), Frey’s first new book in six years, a Connecticut sex romp–cum–murder mystery with what he calls “big nods” to Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, and Tom Wolfe. Accordingly, its characters would feel at home in the White Lotus extended universe: a cash-poor WASP art dealer, an aggro hedge funder, a Bitcoin-trading drug dealer who idolizes Eric Trump and Kanye West. That their physical descriptions read like a central-casting call sheet (the women: “tall, thin” or “thin, petite,” with “deep blue eyes” or “bright hazel eyes” or “big brown eyes like mudpies”) doesn’t really matter—and by the introduction of a “tall, buff, black-haired blue-eyed steaming hunk of Connecticut beefcake,” they ascend to something like camp.
The book, to which Frey sold TV rights before the actual manuscript, takes place in fictional New Bethlehem, which bears a striking resemblance to his current home of New Canaan. It has caused something of a stir among members of his social set. At a party, he says, one unwitting attendee whispered to his girlfriend (a countess and equine therapist) that they’d heard the novel was “all real.” He swears the characters aren’t based on actual people—although, of their art collections, “I’ve been in enough houses of hedge fund billionaires to know what they tend to buy.” (For other details he turned to ChatGPT, searching for “the most expensive scotch in the world, or most expensive silverware in the world.”)
Everybody wants a hug and a Pulitzer.
In 2006 Winfrey called out the author when she learned that his memoir, which she chose for Oprah’s Book Club, was partly fabricated
James Frey and Oprah Winfrey. Credit : Steve Granitz/WireImage; Stewart Cook/Getty for Warner Bros.James Frey is speaking out about his infamous publishing controversy.
In an interview with The New York Times published on June 8, the author looked back on the publication of his 2003 book A Million Little Pieces. Originally marketed as a memoir, the book detailed the author’s experience with drug and alcohol addiction, as well as his subsequent rehabilitation. Oprah Winfrey chose the memoir for her book club in 2005, and it soon became a bestseller.
June 9, 2025
June 8, 2025
Cancelling Winston
By JADA BAS
George Orwell’s estate has been accused of censorship after a ‘trigger warning’ was added to his classic novel Nineteen Eighty Four.
The preface of the the 75th anniversary edition suggests Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith is ‘problematic’ and that readers may find his views on women ‘despicable’.
The introductory essay was written by US novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez and critics claim it risks undermining the revolutionary novel’s warning against state control of thought.
Orwell’s dystopian hyperbolic future is set under an authoritarian regime, where citizens are punished by the ‘Thought Police’ for subversive thoughts.
It follows Winston Smith and a minor bureaucrat who secretly rebels against the regime with Julia, a fellow party member.
June 7, 2025
Astrocytes
from The Washington Post via MSN
Little-known cells might be key to human brain’s massive memoryby Erin Blakemore
Little-known cells might be key to human brain’s massive memory © Arthur Chien/Science SourceA new model of memory — and a little-heralded type of brain cell — might explain why the human brain has such a huge storage capacity, researchers reported in the journal PNAS in May.
The study looks at astrocytes, star-shaped cells that interact with neurons in the brain.
The brain contains billions of astrocytes, and scientists have long known they play a part in cleaning up molecules within brain synapses, the junctions where neurons come together.
More recent research, though, suggests that astrocytes do more.
The new model suggests the astrocytes could also be used for computation, coordinating with neurons and connecting synapses in networks.
June 6, 2025
ESQUIRE Best Books of Summer – NEXT TO HEAVEN
Recommendations from the people who knows books best: independent-bookstore owners.
Next To Heaven, by James Frey… will be the novel on every beach towel this summer, all summer, everywhere. Because sex and murder, yes. And because Frey could always tell a great story.
Now 17% Off
$29 $24 AT AMAZON
$27 AT BOOKSHOP
$29 AT WALMART
Credit: Authors Equity
June 5, 2025
ispace moonbase
ispace will make its second attempt at an uncrewed moon landing Thursday.
A private space exploration company based in Japan, ispace, wants to see people living on the moon by 2040. They have plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits.
But first, they need to land a probe on the Moon’s surface successfully. In April 2023, their first attempt fell short of that goal after they lost communication with their first lander during the mission’s final moments.
On Thursday at 3:17 p.m. ET, ispace will make its second attempt at an uncrewed moon landing with its lunar lander called Resilience.
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