[stylist] A Million Little Pieces is not a memoir

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Yes, and this is a perfect example for what I'm saying. Frey is often
brought up, and what people don't understand is that this book, A
Million Little Pieces, and books like it, are not well-received among
the community of CNF writers who are creating material about real life.
And another detail very few people are aware of is that Frey initially
shopped his book around as a novel, but a publisher convinced him him to
advertise it as memoir since, at the time, memoirs of the confessional
nature were extremely popular. So Frey himself never initially intended
it to be marketed as nonfiction of any kind. He wrote a fictionalized
account of his own life, and later decided he could sell it as a memoir.

Frey, and writers/editors/publishers like him, not only have no clue
what a memoir is, or any piece of creative nonfiction, but they are not
accepted writers among creative nonfiction authors.

I studied CNF for four years at university, and had the amazing
opportunity to learn from some really great contemporary practitioners
of CNF, and Frey is brought up often as an example of how, though
creative nonfiction pieces use literary techniques, material such as A
Million Little Pieces is not how one approaches the genre. The
"creative" writing techniques are not employed to craft made-up
information about ones life, but are tools used to frame around
real-life experiences, relaying real, true information with creative
means; not the other way around, which is what fiction is.

Frey's book is not an example of how a memoirist can lie and make-up
material, it's an example of how people "think" they understand what a
memoir is, but they don't. After the news released that Frey's book was
a complete embellishment of his life, publishers, bookstores and Frey
himself, stopped marketing it as a memoir because it is not.

And to address a comment from another post, if I seem "defensive" and
adamant about my stance on this topic, it's because my degree is in
creative nonfiction, and not only do I write this genre, I have had the
opportunity to meet other creative nonfiction writers including Scot
Russell Sanders who did a reading on my campus once. His piece, Buckeye,
is one of the most famous contemporary personal essays studied in most
writing programs. I think almost every class I had, we studied this
essay. Personally, I'm not a huge Sanders fan, but he is a very talented
writer, and I had the opportunity to hear him read along with meeting
him, smile.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2012 09:52:20 -0700
From: "Jacqueline Williams" <jackieleepoet at cox.net>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] Creative nonfiction is not made-up material
Message-ID: <B09ED40FE72E445E805CC8917ACFE540 at JackiLeePoet>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Lynda,
This is a wonderful metaphor.
I am so stimulated by two excellent writers with differing points of
view.
I am trying to think of the name of the man who wrote a best-selling
memoir
that was selected by Oprah Winfrey as her book selection. When she found
it
was based on lies, she shamed him publicly. As far as I know, he is
still
writing and making money at it. I do not know if there were legal
ramifications to his writing, only that Oprah was furious.
Jackie