Every so often I listen to an old show of mine and yesterday I listened to the James Frey show when he was for My Friend Leonard. (He shared the hour with Roxana Robinson, one of my favorite essayists who also writes short stories and novels.)

Frey talked about how he was doing what Kerouac and Kesey and others had done before him–taking their life and embellishing a bit. He talked about how he had come to his own voice. As I was listening I was thinking how I liked him and liked what he had to say, and how no one would have ever lanced him over A Million Little Pieces had it not become such a mega-seller.

I wondered then–and I wonder now–how his publisher might have saved him (and themselves) a ton of tears had they simply classified his book as a novel. But of course the fever for true stories was festering, and he went along with whatever they wanted. A big mistake. When I listen to him on this recording, I think: He was an innocent guy who was grateful for a publishing deal and would have said it was a cookbook if that’s what they had wanted.

What’s wrong with a novel based on truth? Often that’s how you have to do it, and for me, I enjoy these types of novels–sometimes even more than memoirs. And how many authors make it all up, anyway?