An Alcoholic and a Drug Addict and a Criminal. Maybe he should throw in Liar too.

I just read "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey, in two sittings, which means I could not put this book down until I finished it.
Mom on A Mission read it and well there it was at Costco with the big Oprah sticker on it - so I had to get it.

It was an absolutely gripping story and I recommend anyone to read it - but with some words of caution. Mr. Frey has the ability to put words on paper that so closely resemble a sub-conscious voice, it is possible to forget we are reading. Author and poet, Mary Karr who wrote Liar's Club and Cherry, also has this gift.

It wasn't until the very last 20 or so pages of Mr. Frey's book that I started to get an unsettled feeling. I felt like I was being Lied to (yes with a capital) and the last bit of his confession, about the priest in Paris, just doesn't come together for me and it cast a huge dark shadow of doubt over his whole story.

Do I think he is an Alcoholic, an Addict and a Criminal? Sure. Did he go through much of what he writes about? Probably.

Does it matter if every detail is pure and true? That's up to you. For me, it does very much, because he bases his recovery from being an Alcoholic, an Addict and a Criminal, on what is TRUE, not God [doesn't believe there is a God], not the 12 Steps [that's trading one addiction for another] and not on support from anyone [when confronted with an alcoholic beverage he will choose to say no, no AA mtgs, no family support - it's not their fault].

His recovery is based on just what is TRUE [and be a motherfu*king tough guy] and he doesn't necessarily say that it would work for anyone else but it is an alternative, hmmm.

Further if he is going to use Tao Te Ching as the basis for his understanding of what is TRUE, I think he should remember the first two opening lines of book 1- as should I:

The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not real.

None the less it has been a very long time since I have contemplated the ideas in the Tao Te Ching and so just for that nudge back to examine what is TRUE in my own world was worth the two sittings to read this book. I'm sure James Frey gives a sh*t what I think.