A Million Little Thin Lines

While I believe I've posted my last words on the James Frey/Million Little Pieces saga, it has opened up an interesting debate. I actually never knew that there was any kind of distinction between a memoir and an autobiography.

That debate has exposed rifts throughout the publishing industry this week, not least one between a prominent author - Gay Talese - and the similarly prominent publisher of Mr. Frey's book, Nan A. Talese. The two, of course, are husband and wife.

Mr. Talese, a renowned author of nonfiction books and a former reporter for The New York Times, said in an interview yesterday that he believed it was unacceptable for an author or a publisher to present as nonfiction a work that contained any composite or fictional characters or events, or that otherwise blurred the lines between truth and fiction.

'Nonfiction takes no liberty with the facts, and it should not,' Mr. Talese said. 'I think all writers should be held accountable. The trouble with book publishers is that they don't have the staff or they don't want to have the staff to ensure the veracity of a writer. You could argue that they had better, or they're going to have more stories like this one. My wife is going to hate me for this, but that is what I believe.'

His wife, Ms. Talese, whose Nan A. Talese imprint at the Doubleday unit of Random House published Mr. Frey's book, disagreed, saying memoir cannot be held to the same standard as history or biography.

'Nonfiction is not a single monolithic category as defined by the best-seller list,' she said yesterday when asked to comment on her husband's remarks. 'Memoir is personal recollection. It is not absolute fact. It's how one remembers what happened. That is different from history and criticism and biography, and they cannot be measured by the same yardstick.'

'I adore Gay, but this is a debate that we've been having for 40 years,' Ms. Talese said.

I guess it would stand to reason that a "memoir" would be a book based on one's memory regarding one's life. Lord knows I've heard "embellishments" of events that I witnessed with someone and wonder if we saw the same thing. I also remember when Tatum O'Neil was on Oprah discussing her "memoir" and her father wrote a letter saying that her recollection of her childhood and relationship with him was quite divergent from his. Even within families, different children often recall experiences with what almost seems like different sets of parents. While Frey did admit to changing some names to "protect the innocent," he also took creative license with a few of the events. The question will be if that is acceptable for a book to still be called a memoir. The great epic, Roots, is even described as faction. I think it is all in setting expectations for the reader. Now that I know that there are a million little thin lines in non-fiction genres, I can sleep at night.