A Million Little Pieces of Crap

So I finally read A Million Little Pieces by James “Oprah’s Bitch” Frey. Maybe it’s just hindsight, maybe it’s just David Cross’s influence, but I think I THINK this book is not just a load of crap, but is OBVIOUSLY a load of crap. Now, it wasn’t a BAD book at all. The style was was very interesting, a literary reflection of being in “James’s head.” But the things he supposedly endured without anyone noticing or caring was what made me think it was crap. If I had read the book without knowing it was an attempt at nonfiction, I would have thought the loose pieces were just lazy writing.

For example, through much of the first of the book, his front 4 teeth are shattered and he has a hole in his cheek and his bottom lip; yet he continues to eat food and speak clearly to people in full, unhindered sentences, without any expressions of pain or effort, and those he speaks to always understand him. They generally don’t act shocked or even remotely affected by his appearance (or at least he doesn’t notice or point out that they do). Now, maybe he was just so drunk or high that it didn’t bother him. And maybe the people he were with were used to seeing and hearing people in his situation. Or maybe it’s just lazy-ass writing.

Another thing he writes about a lot is puking. Everywhere, all the time. He pukes, feels better, moves on. No one cleans anything up and no one ever cares about his pukey, bloody shirts, his breath, or the pools of vomit and blood he leaves behind. I think ONCE he brushes his teeth and maybe twice he changes shirts. And considering just how much he pukes, that’s not much.

And I could actually be wrong about the relationship between orthodontic work, anesthesia, and drug rehab, but seriously… a dentist (or was he actually an orthodontist? I doubt it.) performs mucho oral surgery on James and can’t give him any anesthesia or painkillers because he’s in rehab? After he already had 40+ stitches sewn into his face without any painkillers. The oral surgery involved sanding down four teeth, two of which had live, throbby nerves sticking out, and the other two were dying. One cavity was drilled out and filled, two teeth were capped, and the front two were root canaled and bridged and all that jazz. And he only had two tennis balls to squeeze to cope with the pain.

I guess I don’t see why at least knocking out a druggie for oral surgery would interfere with his rehab, but what do I know? I guess what really gave this part away is that during this major oral surgery, the dentist asks him if he should go on. And instead of just nodding or crying, James speaks a several-word sentence. I can’t remember what now. Doesn’t matter. I’m sure that this is one of the parts that he claims is actually true. In fact, the things I mentioned may have been the real parts and the rest of it was a crock. *shrug*

Now, to address the fact that this is still categorized as nonfiction in most places: mostly I don’t care. When books like the completely insane rantings of the Swiftboat jerks can still be categorized as nonfiction, then I generally don’t have a lot of faith in the “nonfiction” label.