A Million Little Pieces

In our discussion on Wednesday, we talked about the line between fact and fiction that constantly gets blurred. We looked at the difinitions of fiction and non-fiction to realize that the definitions we thought were sound are actually much more murky. I thought of the best-seller The Da Vinci Code and I think one of the reasons that it is so popular is because it is formulated on, possibly, being true. The story is obviously fiction, but issues it raises and link to factual people and events, creates that drama that readers like. Somebody pointed out that many fictional movies promote themselves as "based on true events" to create that aura of honesty.

Frey's book is much different because it comes from the other side--non-fiction with elements of fiction in it. He doesn't get that leeway because he established his book as fact. I believe that Frey's mistake was adminantly saying his book was all true. If he prefeced the book by saying "I couldn't remember all the conversations I had word for word, but the spirit of the dialogue is there," I think we would be more forgiving. It is Frey's own mistake for not being honest in the first place.

The problem now is how much of the fact was stretched, contorted or simply made up. Because Frey said it was all true, instead of smartly preparing the reader by saying it's based on my recollections which can't be verified, we now question all of its facts. It's not possible to seperate what is fact from the fiction when we could have given Frey leeway if he prepared us.