I don't blame you if you've never heard of James Frey. I'm kind of ashamed that I have, actually. For the fortunately unaware, Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces, a supposed biography chronicling the writer's struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. In September of 2005, Oprah Winfrey selected the memoir for her book club, causing sales to skyrocket. Unfortunately for Frey, The Smoking Gun released a report this January, claiming that he fabricated many parts of his supposedly true story.
Initially, Frey vehemently denied the charges. However, later that month he appeared on Oprah, where, after being bitch-slapped by the host, he confessed to making up parts of his story. Part of Frey's justification: the heightened drama from the fictional passages was the only way any publisher would take a chance on the book. He also said some pretty weird stuff about how the same "demons" that drove him to drugs and alcohol had caused him to lie.
Why is this important? Well, Deadspin is doing an NFL preview feature where one literary fan of each team tells the world "Why My NFL Team is Better than Your NFL Team." The choice to write the article on the Cleveland Browns? You guessed, James Frey.
The piece is fairly well written, albeit about pretty standard Cleveland fan stuff (lots of moaning about having never seen a championship). However, at the end of the first paragraph, Frey drops this doozy on the reader:
"Before they left for Baltimore in 1995 (Fuck you Art Modell), they had been rebuilding for several years. In typical Cleveland fashion, that team won the Super Bowl ... as the Ravens two years after they left."
Seems like a pretty logical complaint for a Browns fan, right? Except, the Baltimore Ravens didn't win the Super Bowl in 1997. The Denver Broncos did. The Ravens didn't even win the Super Bowl in 1998. The Denver Broncos did, again. In fact, the Ravens didn't win a championship until the 2000-01 season, their fifth year in Baltimore. Hmmm. Exaggerating a point to add drama. Still can't shake those "demons," can you Jimmy?
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