2 feb 06

Whew, that's a mouthful of words strung out like an addict's revenge...for those of you following the train wreak aftermath of Sir Frey, or is it Fry-em-Alive we share these bits and pieces.

For starters his agent Brillstein-Grey literary manager Kassie Evashevski dropped him. It's hard enough to get one as we know from personal experience and now he's alone in the universe.

She said, "I think the confusion over fiction vs. nonfiction may stem from the fact that early in the submission process, James raised the issue of whether he could publish it as an autobiographical novel--ONLY, he said, to spare his family undue embarrassment, NOT because it wasn't true. I told him I would bring it up with a few publishers, which I did, and the response was unanimous: if the book is true, it should be published as a memoir."

She added, "I have to wonder if there is such a thing as a "nonfiction memoir." One can fact-check facts, but how do you fact-check memory and perception? I'm less clear on whether or not I think publishers have a responsibility to carefully check nonfiction works of a journalistic nature. Ultimately, I feel an author should be responsible for his or her own work, but I leave that to the legal minds."

"In Hollywood, the culture allows people to dissemble and deceive and then they'll do another deal together. Those are the rules in Hollywood, but those are not the rules in publishing," says Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

"Contemporary publishing is a strange amalgam of art and commerce, as it has always been. But despite most houses now existing as pieces of big multinational companies, it is still an old fashioned business of gentlemen and gentlewomen," says Eric Simonoff, a literary agent with Janklow & Nesbitt Associates.

So, boys and girls remember to always tell the truth when you write about your life. Do not make anything up. Protect the weak and innocent. Change their names and identities. Inject truth serum into your manuscript.

James came clean and wrote a disclaimer to be included in his "revised" book. He said he needed the narrative story arc to create tension like all good novels do and how he played loose and fast with the truth for the sake of telling a good story.

One addict's addiction is another addict's salvation.