Oprah turns on lying author
2006-01-27 07:48
New York - In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, James Frey, accusing him on live television of lying about A Million Little Pieces and letting down the many fans of his memoir of addiction and recovery.
"I feel duped," she said on Thursday. "But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers."
Frey, who found himself booed in the same Chicago studio where he had been embraced not long ago, acknowledged that he had lied.
A sometimes angry, sometimes tearful Winfrey asked Frey why he "felt the need to lie". Audience members often groaned and gasped at Frey's halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters had been "altered" but that the essence of his memoir was real.
Thursday's broadcast marked an abrupt reversal from the cozy chat on Larry King Live, when Winfrey phoned in to support Frey and label fabrications as "much ado about nothing".
"I left the impression that the truth is not important," Winfrey said of her phone call to King, saying that "e-mail after e-mail" from supporters of the book had cast a "cloud" over her judgment.
On a segment that also featured the book's publisher, Nan A Talese of Doubleday, Frey was questioned about various parts of his book, from the jail sentence he never served to undergoing dental surgery without Novocain, a story he no longer clearly recalls.
Winfrey, whose apparent indifference to the memoir's accuracy led to intense criticism, subjected Frey to a virtual page-by-page interrogation.
Endorsement revoked
No longer, as she told King, was she saying that emotional truth mattered more than the facts. "Mr Bravado Tough Guy," she mockingly called the author whose book she had enshrined and whose reputation she had recently saved.
Talese and Doubleday were not spared. Winfrey noted that her staff had been alerted to possible discrepancies in Frey's book, only to be assured by the publisher.
She lectured Talese on her responsibilities: "I'm trusting you, the publisher, to categorise this book whether as fiction or autobiographical or memoir."
Talese, an industry veteran, told Winfrey that editors who saw the book raised no questions and that A Million Pieces received a legal vetting.
She acknowledged that the book had not been fact-checked, something many publishers say they have little time to do.
Winfrey did not unleash publishing's version of the death penalty: revoking her endorsement, a devastating and unprecedented action.
Only once before has she turned, relatively mildly, on a book club pick: In 2001, she withdrew her invitation for Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections to appear on her show after the novelist expressed ambivalence over her endorsement.
Three years ago, Frey stepped up as publishing's latest and baddest bad boy, and Winfrey's selection made his book a million seller and Frey a hero to many who believed his story was theirs.
- AP