that guy. he is soooo ballsy for putting people on as much as he did with his first book, the memoir A Million Little Pieces. shamed for embarrassing his new pal Oprah when The Smoking Gun broke the story that major plot points were in fact fiction, he sort of disappeared for a while. i happened to be visiting his site fairly often around then, and read his version of the debacle before it broke to mainstream press. he did not react well, and he did not know TSG had such a strong case. how embarrassing. in the statement he made on his site, he did not stand up and say, "sorry, i used bad judgement. is it any surprise?" or something. instead he acted defensively and swore, "The Smoking Gun just wants to take me down." YIKES. bad move. then the next time i check his site, it's down with no explanation, and has been ever since. Until now.
while i wish he'd been a man about his scam, i love his books. i even saw him read from AMLP in a bookstore in the ferry building. that was a weird experience. he wasn't a very good reader, he droned, and he seemed paranoid. anyway, it doesn't really matter what's real or not real in his books. they feel incredibly, painfully real. fortunately when i read AMLP and his second book, My Friend Leonard, the sequel, i didn't know or guess even that there was a possibility some of it was made up. My Friend Leonard was especially effective. i cried buckets over two scenes in the book. like, i kept crying after i put it down. for a while. that's pretty powerful writing.
there is one problem with him. while i can accept that he lied about his stories, and even that he lied to his fans before he knew he was found out, i have a hard time with the fact that when he claimed he was a torturned soul wrongly rotting in jail...he was actually a fraternity brother.
it comes as no surprise at all at all that his new book Bright Shiny Morning, due June 1st, is labeled "Fiction."
i just hope it's as good as the first two. who cares where it came from.
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