Meds and Greens
2 days ago
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Another movida I don't understand
So... now Oprah has decided that supporting something that has been exposed as not wholely truthful was a bad idea. And even worse, it turns out she had knowledge about at least parts of it not being wholely truthful very soon after she picked the book and quite a bit before the Smoking Gun had completed its research.
Wow... now the NY Times is writing editorials about how great it is that Oprah is demanding the truth in the same edition they basically say that she knew and did nothing about it until millions of her viewers complained about her call to Larry King Live.
Is there anyone around who believes in integrity? Have we lost all notion of integrity?
I don't care one way or the other if he lied. I have not read his book, and so I don't feel betrayed. I believe he should tell the truth now about the thought process that, in his mind, justified why he could embellish and outright lie and call it a memoir. I think he should face the commercialization of this own addiction and how he conceived of the idea of how to capitalize on this ordeal. Surely whether you are living on skid row or surviving through your regular life as an addicted individual, it is an ordeal. Or if he just knew that a memoir would be more compelling than fiction, then he should just admit that. It was for the money; it was for the ability to get this story into the hands of more folks. The book had an impact on many people, and the question remains, would it have been as impacting if the readers knew it was fiction? Many readers have claimed the opposite, but they are answering in hindsight.
My indignation this morning comes from the notion that Oprah gets to pretend that she was not involved in the process of the commercialization of the addict's ordeal. Why does she get to say, I am duped, have tears in her eyes as she "demands the truth" -- several months later -- and we all pretend like she didn't know. She found out, ignored it because she didn't want her title as queen of the book club tarnished. She didn't want to have to confront the notion that she needs to be careful what she chooses as she knows it will sell a million copies. She doesn't want to talk about the dollars involved in this book club. What the hell? Does she not recognize that she goes on TV every day as the millionaire who everyone gets to live vicariously through? She doesn't hide her wealth or the privileges it accords her when she is telling her viewers about her latest romp.
I just don't get the pretend integrity of this situation ... or how a newspaper like the NY Times could get it so wrong in the editorial when the article outing Oprah's lack of integrity on this issue is on another or its pages.
Help me understand.
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So you know I think Oprah is fascinating...that's a given. I do think that all this talk about her being duped and her being 'enraged' about is a bit, well, histrionic. I think that, from the NYT op-eds I saw that it is a little strange that Oprah has been made the arbiter of all things literary. She has encouraged lots of people to start reading. How that makes her responsible for the misrepresentations of this Frey guy and Random House(!) I'm not sure...
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, I think Oprah Winfrey is a very samrt woman. I don't, based on her Book Club discussions, think she is a Critical Reader. Not to be snobby, but Oprah's comments mostly focus on her emotional response to a text...which is certainly valid. But she has never given me the impression that she is someone who is trained or concerned about matters of literary form. And, for the record...as a grad school drop-out...I think that's a perfectly fine way to read books. But for example, her cry "why not just call it a novel!?!" as if that would fix everything...is revelatory. Being fictional is only one, albeit important element of a novel. And we'd have to have an altogether different conversation about whether being fabricated meant being fictional. Whatever...
Anyhow...In my world, Oprah runs Harpo and hosts a talk show. she reads books while she's travelling between her fancy homes and along with her producers chooses a few to feature on her show. Publishers have turned this into a cottage industry and no doubt send galleys and manuscripts to her produceres hoping to influence her choice.
That does not make her a babe in the woods. She says she asked them if the craptastic stuff Frey wrote in his book was true. She says they said it was. Nan Talese! sat there and confessed that they don't fact-check the books they blurb as "shockingly true!" That the only litmus test is whether the person who gave it to her liked it and whether the person she gives it to agrees. That's bullshit. Nan Talese gave the impression that the legal department and the editorial department at Random House have abandoned any ruse of literary pursuit...
So what is a memoir. Nan Talese very cagily defined it as what the author recalls...So it might as well be fiction. So there's very little she gives damn about fact checking. And as one of those Critical Readers, I don't care either. But...and here's the rub, the problem comes when Random House decided to market this as TRUTH...I keep thinking about the film Birth of a Nation and how it was endorsed by Woodrow Wilson as truth written in thunder or some crap. Random House either didn't know or didn't care about lying to Oprah Winfrey. I think that only reveals their 1) stupidity-- who takes that chance, the likelihood they'll see one of their imprints of the Book Club again is probably nil...if Oprah went off like that on air, you know she ripped Nan Talese a new one in private 2) their avarice...what does it mean for a major media conglomerate not to have fact-checkers? a shit job that even tabloids pretend to utilize. It means that we can be fooled. Is the purpose of literature to enlighten? Can it do that is it's false? I think it can.
The blur here is between literature and journalism. Which for some reason in this case at least, memoir is supposed to represent some marriage. I don't expect literature to have journalistic integrity. As a literary reader, I don't mind being lied to...which is why Nan Talese sounds crazy...she really doesn't care if it's true, she's looking for versimilitude---truthiness, if you will...But someone, probably marketing...where no one reads...put truth in the mix here where it didn't belong. So now someone has to take responsibility for it. That's the problem. in the scramble to get Oprah's attention someone hastily and ill-advisedly told Oprah that everything in Frey's book is True. That lie is wrong. Which is different than the lies in the book.
The lies in the book are Frey's. And he seems caught between a rock and a hard place. If he was part of the plan to 'dupe' Oprah or if he just went along with it, I don't know. It was certainly a lazy thing to do. Far more complicated it would have been to discuss his work of invention with ingetrity. But maybe Oprah did not create space for that conversation because she is not that kind of reader. She probably wanted to know if it was true. And whoever responded lied. For me, Frey's book is still what it is. It is not now 'bad' because of this. But I am a different kind of reader.
So here's the problem. The majority of people are not Critical readers. The majority of people read something because they have to or because someone else told them to...they do not see reading as an intrinisically valuable thing to do. There are lotsof different kinds of writers and as many different kinds of works. But since people have a rather narrow palette, they don't have a complex appreciation for that. And now many of them are taking their cues from Oprah. God Bless Her.
My issue with Oprah is that she is trying to present herself as if she were unaware that she had become a defacto cog in the publishing industry. She has. I have seen her perpetrate acts of violence on fiction--I wince when I remember Book Club discussions of Morrison and Faulkner. But she is not America's English Teacher. In the future, I expect her to stop taking herself so damn seriously and/or learn a little more about the industry she's unwittingly associated herself with so that at the very least she can ask better questions.
I never let my college students engage in conversations about whether works were true. Cause as a Critical reader that's not a relevant question when you're discussing form and execution. That's like a grade school book report. "I liked this book. It made me cry and it was true." And that's what Oprah's been doing. if she's going to continue to recommend books she'll either have to become more savvy or expect to be duped again.
Check out this article
ReplyDeletehttp://apnews.excite.com/article/20060129/D8FE3M801.html
this is what I was talking about...
I read that...I thought it was a pretty cynical interpretation of Oprah's motives. I don't think she was 'protecting her brand' or spinning. I think she was motivated by the criticism of her personal judgement. I heard what she said on Larry King--second-hand-- and from the stand point of Frey-as-literature I think what she said is right. Whatever Frey fabricated doesn't eradicate the real response readers had. The fact they were moved or motivated or inspired...that had to do with his skill as writer not his factuality. Oprah was responding to people who criticizing her to criticize Frey as a journalist of his own life. I don't know as much about memoir as form as I understand about the novel (which isn't much either) so I don't know how much license is allowed in that form--I guess Nan Talese would give plenty. That's why I was bothered by Oprah's hissy fit. She fell back onto an uncomplicated reading of Frey's work. Frey's book, not to rehash, can be powerful and effective without being true or factual. I don't know whose decision it was that those categories were linked and why Frey went along. I feel a little sorry for the guy. I think he's taking a fall with all those a-holes...Blair and Judith Miller at the New York Times and he doesn't deserve it. A reporters job is to write the facts with debatable levesl of analysis or interpretation. Since a memoir is entirely subjective, I could imagine it would be very difficult to right without some assault on truth. A purely objective narrative of one's own life would probably 1) be not so interesting to read 2) be wholly dishonest to write.
ReplyDelete