JACK OLSEN SPEAKS: oprah, james frey, and fictional nonfiction

The dizzying fall of James Frey and his fictional memoir, A Million Little Pieces, ended Thursday when it hit the pavement with a splat! as Oprah Winfrey dressed the author down on the air before millions of her loyal fans.

Press and television, as the New York Times Max Frankel has observed, “are in a heroic battle to preserve the meaning of fact and the sanctity of quotation marks. Reporters have been losing their jobs for committing fiction, a crime that is no crime at all in too many other media.”

Whether the exposure of the self-aggrandizing liar Frey and the public embarrassment of Oprah will make any difference to the publishing world and the reading public is yet to be revealed.

But the subject of fictional non-fiction is not a new one and reminded us of one of the favorite rants of our late friend, Bainbridge Island author Jack Olsen, who died a few years ago.

Jack would have laughed and laughed at Frey, and the pickle he got Oprah into, but we don't think he would have been surprised.

The curmudgeonly and outspoken Olsen was a real reporter and the author of over 30 non-fiction books, many of which could be categorized "true crime." He was the best of those writing in that genre, though he hated to be identified as a true crime writer, if for no other reason that he never wanted to be mentioned in the same breath as Ann Rule, who was more successful than he, and whom he despised.

He always differentiated his work from true crime writing, most of which, he said, typified the decline of nonfiction. The problem presented itself in the inventive conjecture and made-up quotes in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, the extravagantly successful nonfiction novel about the 1957 Clutter family murders, which was considered the first true crime book.

“In Cold Blood did two things, it made true crime an interesting, successful, commercial genre, but it also began the process of tearing it down.”

Olsen spoke of the success of the nonfiction book, Sleepers, by Lorenzo Carcaterra which was made into a successful 1996 movie starring Kevin Bacon, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro, Minnie Driver, and Dustin Hoffman.

“Here was an $9 million book: a story of injustice in Hell’s Kitchen,” he said “Very sensational: a priest suborning perjury, the DA putting in the fix, two heroic boys getting even for a year in a reformatory where they were sodomized. It was 100 percent bullshit. Carcaterras didn't do 5 minutes of research on Sleepers and it got him $7 or 8 million. ”

Olsen and six other nonfiction writers unsuccessfully petitioned the publisher, Ballantine, to withdraw the book, refund the money of those who bought it under its pretense of nonfiction, and reissue it as a novel- just as critics are demanding of Anchor, the publisher, of A Million Little Pieces.   

“I’ve reached the point," Olsen said, "where if my next door neighbor turned out to be the goddamndest quadruple murderer involving sex, incest, serial murder, I wouldnt write about it. It would go right on the true-crime shelf, in between this piece of crap and that piece of crap- the average reader would say, ‘There are three pieces of crap’.”

“Other forms of journalism insist on things be true, but the one form that’ll be around a hundred years from now- books!- nobody cares. With computers, this should be the heyday of truth and accuracy in journalism. I’ve suggested book publishers have fact-checking departments like newspapers, but they say it’s too expensive.”

He also pointed to another a very successful true crime book, one that crosses over into different genres, Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil.  It was 4 years on the NY Times bestseller list and made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring John Cusack, and Kevin Spacey.

"It’s an amazing story," Jack said.  "As I was reading it I was saying to myself--'[author] John Berendt goes down to Savannah, Georgia, he meets all these fantastic people, he meets the killer, he gets intimately involved in this whole murder and he writes about it.' I’m saying to myself, 'why can’t this happen to me?'"

Jack met Berendt at a writers’ conference and learned that he hadn’t been involved in it at all- he had merely inserted himself into it as a vehicle for telling the story.

"So there’s perhaps your best selling hard cover book in modern history and the main thrust of it is faked. He wasn’t even in Savannah when the murder happened, he came down later and constructed the whole thing with him in it.--it was a literary device he never let us in on. He's a good writer- the mood stuff and the setting stuff was excellent.

I have to say it was  good craftsmanship --except it was not true.

But what’s happened now is like Gresham’s Law: Bad writing, bad reporting drives out good. Apparently it's no longer important to the reading public if you go out and bust your ass to get the facts right or if you just make it up. It’s no longer important. That completely wipes out the main tools we journalists have--technique, journalism, research- you don’t need that any more."

Comments

[howie in seattle]

This is great stuff, Michael. I have always had the highest respect for Jack Olsen.

[Critter]

First let me say I like Oprah and especially admire her for her achievements. She wasn't handed her success or popularity on a silver platter, such as Paris Hilton and so many others, she earned her station in life. Having said that:

I don't think for one second Oprah would have apologized if she hadn't received so much mail from her angry fans after her phone call to Larry King. She had no choice but to apologize (if she wanted to maintain her following).

Like everything else; it's all about the mighty dollar. Frey's publisher proved that on Oprah by saying she is holding off printing more books (the same book of lies) until they can add Frey's comment.

They shouldn't be re-printing it at all! They should also be apologizing and returning the money to the consumers. Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime.

I question, now, whether Frey is even a recovering addict or alcoholic. Once somebody lies to me, I can't believe anything they say.

I repeat...it's all about money.

[Andrew]

When Oprah originaly defended his it realy seemed like corperate knee jerk reaction.

Like when Fred Meyer was caught including the weight of packaging in the price of meat their response was "Fred Meyer works very hard every day to earn the trust of our valued customers... We consider honesty and integrity to be our company's most important assets." Before or after screwing us? On the eve of Ford laying off like 25% of it's employees there have been allot of rosy Ford commercials on TV all of the sudden. It's a corperate reach around.

[joanie]

Isn't everything in The United Corporations of America all about money? I've joked for several years now that we should replace the stars on our flag with a dollar sign.

This is old news.

[joanie]

I've been upset for a long time about the fictionalization of history . . . it is bothersome because a lot of people believe what they read, watch and hear from books, movies, plays and other media that presents as fact largely fictionalized material.

We live in fuzzy times . . .I'm not sure what truth is anymore.

[Noemie Maxwell]

The same voter/consumer credulousness brings us a million little pieces, oh Oprah, radio fakery, tv reality fakery, fake food but real children with dissolving teeth, fake seeds and fertilizer real disappearing farms, fake presidency and fake wars with real blood, fake freedom of the media but real porno dudes with fake press passes, fake informed consents for every consumer or medical risk making us all fakers, fake science but real glaciers melting, real ski resorts with no snow. Big Daddy says, “Mendacity. What do you know about mendacity? I could write a book on it...Mendacity. Look at all the lies that I got to put up with. Pretenses. Hypocrisy….. It's-it's got me on the number one sucker list."

[joanie]

"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?"

Great post!

[Burl Barer]

Jack Olsen was my dear friend and mentor. His praise, "Burl Barer writes true crime at its best" is plastered acrosst he cover of my books. He told me to get out of true crime or I would end up like him. He kept urging me to build a career in fiction, and blurbed by fiction novel HEADLOCK. Sadly, I'm still writing true crime -- and doing my best to stay true to the ethics Jack and I so strongly believed in.