The truth about memoirs

It used to be so simple. There was fiction and there was nonfiction. Then, with the publication of Mary Karr's memoir "The Liars' Club" and Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" in the mid-1990s, nonfiction burst at the seams. So began the parsing, the long division of nonfiction into memoir, creative nonfiction and personal essay. Nonfiction, tethered to reality, bore the burden of proof. Fiction, footloose, unaccountable, all but withered away. In the age of reality TV, publishers wanted memoirs, not novels. Now, with the controversy over James Frey and his memoir of addiction and rehabilitation, "A Million Little Pieces," the issue has exploded with the fervor of revolution, especially when it comes to what seems a whole new category, often called the recovery memoir, that publishers don't seem to know how to vet or sell.

"The New York Times bestseller list only has four categories," says a highly amused Tom Wolfe from his home in New York. "There ought to be a fifth category for autobiography. Or perhaps we should call it handicapped nonfiction." Wolfe's half-century of writing journalism, nonfiction and fiction has helped to define but also blur these categories. "This hearkens back to something George Orwell said, that autobiography is the most outrageous form of fiction."

More than 3 1/2 million copies of "A Million Little Pieces" have been sold since the book was published in 2003, many after Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club last fall. Yet since last Friday, when the Smoking Gun.com posted "The Man Who Conned Oprah" -- alleging factual errors in Frey's depiction of his criminal record and his role in the deaths of two teenage girls -- almost every fact in the memoir has become suspect, sparking conversation and controversy. Journalists, novelists and memoirists agree that there is no such thing as objective reality. So what do these categories -- fiction, nonfiction, memoir -- mean? Where do we draw the line between them? Is the fact, that smallest particle of literature, in danger of becoming irrelevant?

"If it were my choice," Frey said in April 2003, " 'A Million Little Pieces' would be listed as literature. It doesn't really matter though. What matters is how many people read it and how it affects them." He did not, however, want his book to be publicized as a "recovery memoir." But ironically, such a label may be what saves the book in the face of accusations of inaccuracy. "Although some of the facts have been questioned," said Winfrey in a dramatic call to TV host Larry King at the end of his televised interview with Frey on Wednesday night, "the underlying message of redemption still resonates for me." The facts, Winfrey implied, are pretty much irrelevant. What matters is something Frey and others are calling "emotional truth."