Frey adds mea culpa to memoir

UNDER fire from Oprah Winfrey as well as his publisher, and cut loose by his agent, author James Frey has written a lengthy “note to the reader” that Random House will include in subsequent editions of “A Million Little Pieces” explaining how and why his memoir veered away from the facts of his experience in a drug and alcohol treatment center.

In the note, Frey details numerous embellishments and alterations of the truth, including a description of a three-month stint in jail, which he said was actually only several hours. Frey said his “mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience.” The James Frey described in the book is “tougher and more daring and more aggressive than in reality I was, or I am,” he said.

The controversy over Frey’s account of his addiction and rehabilitation began with revelations on the Smoking Gun website and accelerated to a televised tongue-lashing by Winfrey.

In his defense, however, Frey suggests in his note to readers that the memoir form “allows the writer to work from memory instead of from a strict journalistic or historical standard.” In his case, he writes, “[i]t is a subjective truth, altered by the mind of a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. Ultimately, it’s a story and one that I could not have written without having lived the life I’ve lived.”

Also mired in controversy, Doubleday posted Frey’s note Wednesday on www.randomhouse.com and announced that Anchor Books would publish 100,000 paperback copies and Doubleday would publish 3,500 hardback copies of a new edition of “A Million Little Pieces” that will include Frey’s note along with a publisher’s note, in which Doubleday, an imprint of Random House, apologizes for “any unintentional confusion” surrounding the memoir.

Adding to Frey’s troubles, his agent of four years, Brillstein-Grey Entertainment’s Kassie Evashevski, said she was dropping him.