Short version of long post: take your relativism to the moon. Like Martha Stewart, James Frey did it for the money. To let him off the hook because we should be paying attention to worse misdeeds won't fly. Nothing will fly until he admits he did it to get your money, that this is his relation to both truth and art. Truth and art don't get better until we confront that unequivocally. The language of therapy that he and Oprah invoke with equally relentless ease is a perfect description of what such language is for: an alibi for profit. If we're worried that we're going to run out of fury and need to allocate with care, we're not angry enough.
[short addenda for struggling readers: this note isn't in the logical form of premises and conclusions though it's interesting if you need that to engage. To experience e.g. the Frey case as an exception in the realm of language abuse rather than a rule is to play along. We fight out of optimism. ]
Posted by jane at February 4, 2006 09:35 AM | TrackBack