truth vs. fiction: the concoted 'true criminal" story of Frey's book

This is the latest news
Oprah Winfrey Says Frey `Betrayed' Readers of His Best-Seller

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey told author James Frey today that he ``betrayed millions of readers'' by embellishing parts of his best-selling memoir ``A Million Little Pieces.''

``It is difficult for me to talk to you because I really feel duped,'' Winfrey said during Frey's appearance on ``The Oprah Winfrey Show.''


The controversy started when the Web site http://www.thesmokinggun.com reported that the author exaggerated his run-ins with police and the time he spent in jail. Frey has acknowledged that he embellished incidents, but has defended the overall accuracy of his memoir.

The article can be read in full here
it's a story, perhaps also slightly contrived, how a attempt to verify a small part of Frey's book turned into a full-scale investigation that has revealed the true extent of his lies and distortions.

We had simply planned to track down one of his many mug shots and add it to our site's large collection.
I say "contrived" coz it sounds cliche too - I don't believe that they began their investigation with no intention to tarnish his book - and the proof lies in the fact that even more Frey's facts came under the cloud of suspicion, others had pointed out how badly the book was written.
The John Dolan, toiling in obscurity at the Moscow's only alternative English-language newspaper the Exile wrote
This is the worst thing I've ever read.

A Million Little Pieces is the dregs of a degraded genre, the rehab memoir. Rehab stories provide a way for pampered trust-fund brats like Frey to claim victim status.

He proceeds to not all the drenched cliches and implausible stories the book is so full of and finally he asks rhetorically:

And this self-aggrandizing, simple-minded, poorly observed, repetitious, maudlin drivel passes for avant-garde literature in America?

Now we know the answer - it was all made up and that's why it sounds so cliched.