OTHER WORK

« back
The Washington Post Book World: High and Dry
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES By James Frey

A couple of months ago, in an interview with the New York Observer, James Frey sucker-punched Dave Eggers. Calling Eggers's 2000 memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius a "mediocre" effort, Frey jawed off about becoming the "best writer" of his generation.

Frey was employing a time-honored tactic in the art of self-promotion: In announcing his intention to slay an enemy who is unaware there's even a fight, he was defining himself and his own debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, in contrast to a better-known and more skilled adversary.

Frey's preening insecurity won't serve him well. Heartbreaking Work was imaginative, richly textured, self-aware, humorous, moving and honest. A Million Little Pieces, a 380-page, present-tense, stream-of-consciousness drug memoir, is, on the whole, pretentious, self-important and indulgent. Which isn't to say it's a horrible book or that Frey is a bad writer -- parts of his tale are gripping, and more than once I teared up. But if he wants to be compared to Eggers, I'm game. He doesn't stack up well.

A Million Little Pieces starts with Frey, just off a two-week crack binge, passed out in the back of an airplane. "My four front teeth are gone, I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyes are swollen nearly shut," he writes; when a stewardess asks him what he'll do if no one's waiting for him, he replies, "It's happened before, I'll find my way." That kind of braggadocio must come easier when your wealthy parents, who are portrayed as careerist simps, are waiting on the gangway, ready to buy you some cigarettes and a couple of bottles of wine before ushering you off to a (fully paid for) rehab.

Once in rehab -- Minnesota's Hazelden, although it's not named in the book -- Frey picks fights with other patients, the staff, even himself (in one gruesome scene he rips out one of his toenails). During group sessions, he sits in the back and plays cards; when other, recovered addicts come in to tell their stories, he practically bubbles over with contempt. One counselor is a "grown-up version of a kid who spent his childhood sitting behind a computer hiding from bullies," and a sober rock star is a "Fraud" who should apologize for wasting people's time. "I would cut off his precious hair, scar his precious lips, and take all his goddamn gold records and shove them straight up his ass," Frey writes, except "I am tired and I am spent." Spent, undoubtedly, from battling his Kurtzian demons: "I am alone. . . . Alone in my heart and alone in my mind. Alone everywhere, all the time, for as long as I can remember . . . alone in a room full of people. Alone when I wake, alone through each awful day, alone when I finally meet the blackness. I am alone in my horror. Alone in my horror."

This isolation was not breached in rehab -- at least not in the traditional way. Frey rails against Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 steps. Strangely, he views A.A., a movement that puts a huge emphasis on personal responsibility, as an easy way out. He explains to his counselor why he feels the need to follow his own path (er, sorry, Path): "I just won't let myself be a victim. . . . I call it being responsible. I call it acceptance of my own problems and my own weaknesses with honor and dignity. I call it getting better." O.K., he'll let himself be a little bit of a victim -- the reader does learn about the childhood traumas, the crippling ear infections, the perennially absent father.

This lack of self-awareness pervades the book, which covers only the time Frey spent in Hazelden. Most of the time, it's just annoying -- how could someone so smart be so clueless? But at least once, it's tragic. Failing to find solace in a therapeutic program, he predictably flouts the standard rehab rule prohibiting romantic relationships within the program and takes up with Lilly, a crackhead hooker, letting her view him as a savior. When their relationship is discovered, Lilly takes off to score some rock; when, upon release from rehab, Frey needs to spend a couple of months in jail, Lilly hangs herself. The reader discovers that gruesome piece of news only in a cinematic "where are they now" section tacked on to the end of the book. It's worth noting that A Million Little Pieces is, according to publicity material, already the subject of negotiations with movie studios.

Frey has the potential to be a gifted writer -- there are small moments of beauty and clarity here, if you can get beyond the tendentious capitalizations (people who sell drugs are Dealers; a hug with his parents means they are now a Family) and tedious repetitions (an ex-girlfriend is described over and over and over again as "tall and thin and long and blond like the thickest silk her eyes blue eyes Arctic eyes"). But it's hard for me, a recovering heroin addict who has never availed himself of the 12 steps, not to wonder whether Frey would be well-served by dropping his defenses and investigating a recovery program more rigorous than the Oprah-esque Taoism he has embraced.

Great writing can come from anger, sure. But it also comes from self-awareness and vulnerability and acceptance and change. Now that Frey has kicked down the door, let's hope he learns how to speak without shouting.