Jan. 3, 2009
I wonder if Oprah's thinking about reusing the caption she put on the January cover of O -- "How did I let this happen again?" -- for a story about how she let herself be duped once more by a mendacious memoirist. A couple years ago it was James Frey, whose drug-o-logue, "A Million Little Pieces," was made an Oprah Book Club selection before Oprah learned the hard way that drug addicts tell lies. To her credit Oprah made a heartfelt apology for her role in misrepresenting the less-than-truthy tale, and then went on to publicly kick James Frey's ass. Nonetheless Frey somehow swung himself a deal for three more books, including one about a bunch of people in Los Angeles, which was published this past year. I remember the guy who reviewed it for the LA Times calling it one of the worst things he's ever read. I don't know if the other two books'll be any good, but even if they are, I doubt there'll be any reunion show for Frey.
The point, though, is that it happened to her again. This time it was a retired TV repairman living in Miami who fooled Oprah. Some years ago Herman Rosenblat, now in his late 70s, wrote a touching Holocaust memoir that ended up being reprinted in one of the "Chicken Soup" collections. Oprah found it, flipped for it, and termed it "the single greatest love story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air." But the tale of how a teenage Herman, imprisoned in a concentration camp, was kept alive by a nine-year-old "angel" unfortunately turned out to be a hoax. Rosenblat has been quoted as saying he just wanted to bring hope to people with his writing. And on the subject of the Holocaust, there really aren't a lot of feel-good's with happy endings.
I wonder if there isn't a roomful of fact-checkers on the Oprah show, all with smudgy glasses and perfect four-point-o's, going over every word of every book Oprah flips for. You'd think that after the Frey fiasco, she wouldn't dare pop her cork for any book without its veracity being checked, double-checked and triple-checked. But I suspect Oprah is a reader who wants to believe in the goodness of all books, and therefore in the goodness of their authors. I think she loves literature so much she loses her heart first and asks questions later. She may have gotten perfect (or near perfect?) grades and she may have even had glasses, but Oprah wouldn't have liked it in the Facts department. I did some fact-checking in my day, and I'm pretty sure she's not the type. She's more passion than skepticism. Details probably don't jump out at her as bogus, especially after she's become enamoured of everything around them. And that's fine. So what if every few years she makes a Smart Woman/Bad Choice move with a book? I'd like to believe a fling with a dishonest book is a whole lot easier on the emotions than a fling with a dishonest man.