James Frey wrote his new book in 57 days. He doesn't want Oprah to read it
While Frey admits to lying, he maintains that 'about 85 per cent' of the memoir was true. However, when discussing the controversy, he remains coolly detached, explaining that his perspective has shifted.
'If you look at a page one of A Million Little Pieces, it's clearly manipulated information, right?' says Frey. 'I long said I've changed everybody's name, I changed identifying characteristics, but the problem was I blew up the rules of publishing.'
Frey points to the recent rise of autofiction, a genre that blends elements of autobiography and fiction, as proof that the punishment didn't fit the crime. 'My book didn't fit into their classification system, so they got mad. Say what you want about A Million Little Pieces, it's still read, it's still purchased, and it's still an iconic part of culture.'
Frey, 55, is not one for life lessons, but if the encounter with Winfrey taught him one thing? 'Writing is not about making a f–king talk show host happy,' he says.
Instead, these days, he prefers to entertain himself with his work, which was the driving inspiration behind his latest novel, Next To Heaven, published by Authors Equity.
The plot centres on a group of uber-wealthy friends, living in the fictional gated community of New Bethlehem in Connecticut (based on the real town of New Canaan, where Frey has lived since 2013), whose collective boredom inspires them to host a swingers party. Their perfect lives are turned upside down when one of the guests turns up dead, kicking off a classic small-town, big mystery, whodunit.
In Next To Heaven, everyone is beautiful, rich and awful. Hedge fund traders, bitcoin bros and trophy wives, sleeping with each other one day, gossiping about each other the next. The book slots neatly into the 'eat-the-rich' genre that has dominated popular culture; TV series such as Succession, The White Lotus, and more recently, Your Friends & Neighbours have fuelled our fascination with the 1 per cent. Unsurprisingly, he's already sold the TV rights.
'I enjoy those series as a consumer, but I wanted to take people further behind the curtain, show them that money is the most potent drug on the planet; it wreaks the most havoc and does the most damage,' he says.
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'I live in a highly insulated, heavily protected bubble filled with some of the wealthiest people in the world,' adds Frey, who describes himself as the poorest motherf---er in the area. 'A town of 19,000 people with somewhere between 20 and 40 billionaires. And when you can have and do anything you want, you look for bigger thrills.'
Given his reputation, he's quick to clarify the characters are not based on New Canaan's billionaire set; instead, they just 'showed up'. 'There are always two or three books dancing around in my head, and when one of them starts to assert itself, the characters just show up.'
This is a side-effect of his curious creative process, driven by what Frey labels 'the fury', an intense and self-destructive streak that he manages through a combination of therapy, medication and meditation.
'When I'm not writing, I have all these systems in place to manage it, but when I start writing, it all has to stop. I stop taking my daily antidepressants, I stop meditating, I usually walk every morning and night, I stop that too. Then I can tap into this reservoir of emotions and unleash myself.'
He says he spent up to 16 hours a day at his desk, and the book was completed in just 57 days. 'I only write one draft of a book, and I don't use outlines,' he says. 'Contractually, I have what we jokingly call the 'You get what you get, and you don't get upset' clause, which means the publisher has to accept what I give them,' he says.
You get what you get, and you don't get upset might also describe Frey's response to the book's critical reception. Reviews have been mixed. The New Yorker praised his prose as 'endearingly excitable,' but ultimately concluded, 'James Frey's new cancelled-guy sex novel is as bad as it sounds.' Meanwhile, Kirkus Reviews raved about his return, saying, 'Frey's literary affectations don't get in the way of a good time'.
Either way, Frey positions himself as genuinely unmoved.
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Publisher Penguin Michael Joseph told The Bookseller it "undertook all the necessary pre-publication due diligence" and that "prior to the Observer enquiry, we had not received any concerns about the book's content". Number 9 Films and Shadowplay Features told the UK's Sky News their film was a "faithful adaptation" of a book. In the book, Winn claims she and her husband lost their home in North Wales after making a bad investment in a friend's business, leaving them liable for debts when it folded. The Observer report claims they lost the house after Winn defrauded her employer of about £64,000, then borrowed £100,000 (with 18 per cent interest) from a distant relative, secured against their house, to repay the money. The couple's house was reportedly repossessed after they were sued to recover the money owed. While in the book they wrote they had nowhere to go, the Observer reports that the couple "owned land in France on which they had previously stayed". 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