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In his aimless youth, the author James Frey yearned to be the Sex Pistols of literature. Then he learned to be careful what you wish for. His memoir, A Million Little Pieces, shot to the top of bestseller lists, thanks in part to Oprah’s endorsement. Then fact-checkers unmasked its fabrications, and James found himself being more of an outcast than he’d planned for. Nearly 20 years later, when the line between fact and fiction is more blurred than ever, Frey may seem like more of a pioneer than a pariah. Together, we reflect on what it was like to face and overcome this public pain, and the inspiration behind his new novel Next to Heaven, a provocative murder mystery skewering the wealthy New England town he calls home.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

David Duchovny, James Frey

David Duchovny  00:07

I’m David Duchovny, and this is “Fail Better” – a show where failure (not success), shapes who we are. James Frey is a writer whose best selling memoir, a million little pieces caused quite a stir in the early 2000s. The book which details his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, was an initial success. That says a lot, because it was rejected 17 times before it got picked up by a publisher. Sales then skyrocketed after it was added to Oprah’s book club, although I think he says in this interview that it wasdoing quite well even before that. James then found himself in the middle of a controversy in 2006 after being accused of fabricating parts of the memoir, which he later owned up to and publicly apologized, and we get into that. His take on that is strong and I think, interesting. Stay tuned for that. James is no stranger to failure. He’s pretty candid about how he’s come back from tough times, hard won perspective. We also talk about his upcoming book “Next to Heaven”, and what it takes to become the greatest writer of his generation, or maybe the most defiant writer of his generation. Here’s that conversation.

 

David Duchovny  01:22

Thanks for coming to talk this morning about everybody favorite subject, “Failure”.

 

James Frey  01:28

Thank you for having me. I’ve failed a few times in my life. Means a few hundred.

 

David Duchovny  01:38

What I like to start these conversations (unless there’s anything pressing on your mind). I guess, the discussion is about if you’re going to smash the system and you’ve described yourself as kind of a punk rock writer, which I like very much. Where did that original system come from? Who instilled it in you? Who taught you? Who set the bar for you? And when did you decide to create your own system in a way?

 

James Frey  02:09

Great, that’s certainly. I can start now if you want.

 

David Duchovny  02:13

Take it away.

 

James Frey  02:15

Like a lot of American kids, I was raised going to public schools. I was taught, get a job, pay your taxes, get married, be a good boy, have a good life, right? I never believed in any of that. I was always like, “Why do I have to do any of that? Why do I have to do anything but what I want?

 

David Duchovny  02:36

Where do you think that contrariness came from? Just born with it? Just something in your soul?

 

James Frey  02:44

Yeah, man. I was born with it. From my earliest memories, were asking people why I had to do what they told me to do, right? Why do I have to follow your rules? Why are your rules more valid than the rules I make? I grew up, I was basically 10 to 20 during the 80s, right? I was 10 to 20 during the 80s. The 80s were kind of awesome time where we had Reagan, we had sort of a reaction to Carter, and we had the beginnings of what we’re seeing now, which is almost like a very strict surveillance slash control culture and punks were a real thing in the 80s. We were like, “Fuck this bullshit”. Why do we have to do any of this? Why do we have to go to these dumb schools and learn these dumb rules? It’s a joke my own kids say, but like, “Why did anybody ever teach me algebra and geometry?”, because I didn’t ever learn anything and I’ve never used them, but spent years trying to master them.

 

David Duchovny  03:46

I use algebra daily.

 

James Frey  03:48

Well, that must be living a pretty cool life.

 

David Duchovny  03:53

Just off camera. It’s an abacus.

 

James Frey  03:56

Yeah. Those years were kind of lost. I drank, I did drugs, I got in trouble, I went to shows, I read books. I barely got through high school. I got into college, because I was an athlete.

 

David Duchovny  04:16

What sport did you play?

 

James Frey  04:18

I played soccer, all things.

 

David Duchovny  04:21

It’s the world’s game. I don’t play.

 

James Frey  04:24

It is. I grew up a little bit outside of the US so I grew up moving around. I’d grown up playing soccer, but  just grew up with this sense of, “Why do I have to do anything that anybody tells me?”.

 

David Duchovny  04:35

Yeah.

 

James Frey  04:36

Growing up, I was a big reader. In those years, I was also reading like Bukowski, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Baudelaire and Celine – all these punk, sort of older punk writers who had all said the same thing. We all believed they had just said it, 50 years earlier or 75 years earlier. I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was 21. I read “Tropic of Cancer”.

 

David Duchovny  05:04

My dad too, by the way. My father born in 1927. Henry Miller blew his mind, and he decided to become a writer after reading those books so good on it.

 

James Frey  05:16

Henry Miller, same thing blew my mind. I ran off to Paris when I was 21 to be a famous writer in 1991. It was great. Back then again, when I moved to Paris, I wasn’t able to really know anything about Paris except what I could find in the encyclopedia.

 

David Duchovny  05:38

Speak any French?

 

James Frey  05:39

Didn’t speak any French. Didn’t know any French people, just took off and it was awesome. This is what I think is cool about what you talk about. By any objective measure, those years I was there for two years, then I came back to the States, and it took me eight more years to get a public book published.

 

David Duchovny  06:01

Not a lot of encouragement, is what I’m hearing either. It wasn’t like people were saying, “You’re close”. “You’re getting there”.

 

James Frey  06:01

No, it wasn’t ever you’re close, you’re getting there. It wasn’t ever you’re gifted and talented. It’s gonna be great. It was, “Are you fucking out of your mind?” Like, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re gonna wake up someday and be 55”, you’re gonna say, “What the fuck did you do with your life?”. I may say that occasionally as a 55 year old, but at least it doesn’t have to do with what I do for a living.

 

David Duchovny  06:01

Yeah.

 

James Frey  06:01

It was immense failure after it was failure after failure […]. I often think of those as some of the greatest times in my life, because it was the struggle to get somewhere instead of being there, right? It was the dedication, the work, the reading, the writing, the failing. There’s some thrill in everybody around you thinking what your dream is, is crazy. You locking down and pursuing it in a solitary manner against all odds, right?

 

David Duchovny  07:09

I’m in total agreement. Let’s go to Oprah in “A Million Little Pieces” then. What a wonderful nightmare for you. I don’t mean to gloss over it to this point where we’re like, “Oh yeah, fuck it all. I’m liberated now”, because I’m sure there was real pain involved in there and confusion at some point.

 

James Frey  07:32

A lot of it.

 

David Duchovny  07:37

Yeah, because one of things on this podcast I’m talking to successful people so they’ve gotten past whatever failure they’re talking about. I think what is interesting sometimes is to sit down in the actual moment of it, because you’ve got different roads coming out from this point. There’s many different directions you can go at this point. And here you are now, you’re okay. That’s great. But, there was that moment where you’re like, “I don’t know if I’m going to be okay”. This feels, “I’m ashamed, I’m humiliated”. It’s not humility. I’m learning here, it’s humiliation. So, let’s speak.

 

James Frey  08:23

I will say, I didn’t think of it that way ever.

 

David Duchovny  08:26

Good.

 

James Frey  08:27

It was an interesting experience. I had written “A Million Little Pieces” as like this book that was written to defy rules, to defy convention, to defy genre. When we sold the book, it was a big problem, because people read it and they were like, “What is it?”, and I would always say, “It’s a fucking book”.

 

David Duchovny  08:50

Yes, good answer. But, you had tried to sell it as fiction first. Is that right?

 

James Frey  08:54

We did sell it as fiction. Random House bought it as a novel. When they bought it, in the contract, there was a thing that said there was a chance they would publish it as a memoir. In that contract, if you’re selling a publisher non fiction, you have to cop to the veracity of it, which I refuse to do. I said, “This isn’t 100% true. You can publish it however the fuck you want”. When it came out, I did the dance. They told me, “Just go say it’s true. Everybody does it” so, I did that. The book got picked by Oprah, and it sold literally millions of copies in a couple months. I started seeing the therapist around that time, because I was suddenly wildly famous which I never expected become a sort of punk rock novelist to imagine anybody would ever stop you on a street and ask your photo and autograph. More than that, I really hated being Oprah’s boy. I didn’t want to be the Doctor Phil of fucking addiction on Oprah. I didn’t want to be her little guy that she called up when she wanted somebody to give a drug addict a hug. I didn’t like any of that. So, I was overwhelmed by sudden fame, a kind of fame that made me sick to my stomach. I started seeing this therapist about how do I manage all of this madness, this fucking tsunami that’s coming at me. But one of the things I had said to him, which I have said publicly before ” A Million Little Pieces” came out, and I’ve said it since, “When I got into this only game for me, the only game. It wasn’t to be the punk rock band that played in the local garage. It was to be Sex Pistols. It was to be the biggest, most controversial, most divisive, most polarizing, most radical writer on the planet”. You know, it all blew up. I remember I went back to the therapist that first time after it all blew up. He was like, “Yougot what you wanted. How’s it feel?”.

 

David Duchovny  11:38

When you’re sitting in that the dressing down that Oprah is giving you, at that moment though, I see two paths at that moment. You must have been just kind of like, “Where do I get purchased here?”. I don’t understand.

 

James Frey  12:01

This is a Oprah and her people lied to me. They think they’re saints, but they’re not. When I went back there for that second show, they told me that show I was going to was called “Truth in America”. That was going to be me debating a journalist about literary truth versus journalistic.

 

David Duchovny  12:18

Okay.

 

James Frey  12:18

They said that there was going to be a portion of the show about reality TV where they compared reality TV to the news. Remember, this is 2006?

 

David Duchovny  12:27

Yeah. This is the beginning of everything.

 

James Frey  12:30

They told me all these things to get me to come back to Chicago for their live show, right? I come back. I would have gone back anyway, even if they said, “We’re going to hammer you”. I’d have been like, “All right”. Thirty seconds before I walk on that stage, Sheri Salata who’s the executive producer of Oprah, comes over to me and puts her arm around me and says, “Hey, we just changed the name of the show from “Truth in America” to the “James Frey Reckoning. It’s gonna get a little rough out there.

 

David Duchovny  13:01

Just changed it to “James Frey is a fucking asshole”.

 

James Frey  13:04

It’s gonna get a little rough out there, please. I walk out there and they slaughter me. I remember going to the first commercial break.

 

David Duchovny  13:16

Yeah.

 

James Frey  13:16

All the women in the audience start booing me. I’m sitting on fucking Oprah. Oprah just yelled at me, and a bunch of ladies from the Midwest are booing me. I remember sitting there thinking, “You know what man, there is nothing you can do here”. Sometimes you got to take a fucking beating. When it’s over, you get up and you dust yourself off, and get ready to go again.

 

David Duchovny  13:37

But in many ways, that’s exactly what you wanted to. I mean, if I understand your ambition when you moved to Paris, it was to be a defiant vilified in some ways, like Baudelaire or even Henry Miller, author. Sitting there, getting booed by the women in that moment must have been in some way, the apotheosis of what you were going for. But also, what I’m hearing is, “Yeah, it hurts your feelings as well”. There’s still the little boy in there that’s like, “What did I do?”.

 

James Frey  14:10

There’s still a little boy who gets beat up on the school yard. It’s just, that little boy get up and go back tothe school yard the next day to fight again. I was always the little boy who did and so that’s what I did. I dusted myself off. My therapist and I were, sounds corny to say – my therapist is an old punk, but it was like, “All right, man. Now the real game has begun. Now, the real fight has begun”. I will say a few things about the whole Oprah thing. People are always like, “Oprah must have been so hard for your career”. I was like, “Well, I was number one on the times list for 25 weeks before Oprah and 58 after so things worked out”. My next book hit number one too. My next book after that hit number one too. My next book after that hit number one too. All of them, these radical books written with my fingers up. Actually, in defiance even more after the Oprah stuff. It was like, “I’m not gonna let you stop me. This is the game Icame to play. It hurts like fuck. You have beaten the shit out of me. I’m lying on the ground, blood, bruises, probably a couple broken bones, but I’m getting up. You cannot stop me”.

 

David Duchovny  15:27

I love that. There’s a couple things I want to sit down and hear. One is, (I got to write this down, because I forget it). There’s a misunderstanding between the concept of literature as the Oprah book club conceives of it and as you may conceive of it. What I hear you saying is, I think the book club people are going to think a memoir has got to be true. My personal opinion is, How can any memoir be true? It’s justmemory anyway.

 

James Frey  16:03

As I said, when Picasso painted a self portrait, did it have to be photographically perfect? Or was he given the liberty to portray himself in whatever way he felt?

 

David Duchovny  16:17

As you say, you’re trying to portray a feeling. To get to that feeling, you’re going to turn it up to 11, or whatever. If what happened was a six, then you’re going to turn it up to. That’s the kind of a thing.

 

James Frey  16:34

That’s also what we all do as artists.

 

David Duchovny  16:36

Yes.

 

James Frey  16:37

When you’re an actor, in a moment, you’re not going in there for the six.

 

David Duchovny  16:42

No.

 

James Frey  16:43

You’re going in there for the 11.

 

James Frey  16:44

2005 and 2006.

 

David Duchovny  16:44

No. You hope you have a good editor to take your best 11 moments. What year is that?

 

David Duchovny  16:54

We’re perched there at the beginning. We don’t even know what’s coming at us in terms of truth and fiction. We don’t even know you’re an author who’s being held to account for facts, and now we have politicians who are not held to account for facts. It’s so kind of ironic and ridiculous to think that you were burned at the stake for exaggeration and for fiction in a memoir, very little of it anyway. Now we progressed beyond even thinking that there is a fact.

 

David Duchovny  17:38

I hope you don’t think of me as the media.

 

James Frey  17:38

Even at the time Dick Cheney was telling us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I always use that example. Even in today, I’m doing a bunch of media for this book. I haven’t talked to the media in America in 15 years, but I’m doing a bunch for this.

 

James Frey  17:46

Oh, I don’t. I think of you as a new friend. I’m having a cool conversation with. But, when you talk to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or Vanity Fair, they fact check out of you, and that’s fine, but I did say something to him. I’m like, “I find it ironic that after 25 years, you’re still fact checking the fuck out of me while you let politicians say whatever the fuck they want”. Art is held to a greater standard of truth than leaders of our nation.

 

David Duchovny  18:25

Yeah. Well, if I had a mic to drop, I’d drop it and it pisses me off. It’s a bit of a magic trick, what an author does, what an artist does. It’s a magic trick. I wrote the script for The X Files and it came out. I was accused of plagiarism by somebody who had submitted an unsolicited script. Now, the policy of all the writers (I’m not even in the writers room where that thing might have come), is to not open any of that. That’s just common sense. That’s not how scripts are submitted. I was like, “I know I didn’t plagiarize it”. So I’m like, “Hey, bring it on. Let’s talk about this. This is fun”. The lawyers called me and they said, “Well, they’ve got a decent case. I was like, “Decent case? How the fuck can I have a decent case because I didn’t plagiarize this”. They said, “Well, in their script, people come back from the dead”. I was like, “Okay, all right. Zombies, all right”. In their script and your script, people come back from the dead. In their script and your script, there’s a Beatles reference. In their script, in your script, Mulder and Scully eat popcorn. I was like, “That’s a decent case”. What I realized is the law and in general. Not just the law, but consciousness of non-artistic consciousness has no idea how to approach the concept of creation. They try and backload it. You got here by popcorn. You got here by Beatles. They would ask me, “How did you come up?”.

 

James Frey  20:19

You had to have read that, to have thought of the beat.

 

David Duchovny  20:22

Right.

 

James Frey  20:22

Popcorn, a television show.

 

David Duchovny  20:25

What I’m saying, these are good lawyers, and they’re talking about plagiarism law. If you extend that to consciousness of a public in general, there isn’t a lawful way. We’re talking with Oprah here about truth and fiction. There’s an inability to kind of comprehend the alchemy that goes on when you write and and try to figure out what is truth and fiction, all that even in something that’s a memoir. To me, it’s a non-starter kind of a controversy. I know that it was painful for you, life changing and a wonderful disaster as you’re talking about it. But it’s frustrating to me, to have gone through (obviously that was in private).

 

James Frey  21:16

It was frustrating for me, man. Part of it was fun and thrilling, and certainly a lot of it was a nightmare. Like, I was married, I had a young child. Certainly, my former wife and child didn’t deserve to deal with all that shit.

 

David Duchovny  21:33

Yeah.

 

James Frey  21:35

But in retrospect, I really do think of it as it was the game I always wanted to play. It’s just that you don’t know what it’s actually like until you play that game, right? Professional athletes don’t know what it’s  to be in the NFL till some motherfucker lights them up and I got lit up. From there, I truly do think anybody who makes something great or bold in their life, you’re going to get lit up by somebody. So it’s how do you respond. How do you react to the failure, to the hurt, to the pain, to the obstacle, to whatever it is. It’s all about you keep going? Can you wake up every day and say, “You know what? I don’t give a fuck what anybody has to say”.

 

David Duchovny  22:24

What you’re saying is it’s a kind of a gut check back to what’s my authentic inspiration here. So you wanted, you wanted to. This is what you wanted and you’ve said that. But ,I have also seen where you’ve said that the book isn’t self help, but part of the book is to speak to addicts. Part of the book was to help addicts who are struggling. That’s a very different motivation from both middle fingers up. I’m notsaying that one is true and the other isn’t. I can hold both those thoughts at the same time as I think you can. But, can you speak to that a little bit?

 

James Frey  23:10

The way I approached that was, you read and even still today especially back then, I’ve read tons of stuff about being a drug addict, right? But, I’ve never read anything that got to the real core of it. I never got to somebody saying, “I’m going to bare my soul to you. I’m going to tell you my deepest, darkest secrets. I’m going to tell you all of the terrible things”. Essentially, it’s what you do in AA as one of the steps. I’m going to go there and make it as painful, as terrifying, as brutal as it was for me. Also, show that there was a way out of it for me. One of the reasons I did write the book, and I do think art can have motivations beyond the sake of purely making art. I knew a lot of drug addicts. The world was very different back in the 90s, especially the early 90s. If you went to rehab, you were fucked up. It was like going to prison. There were very few of them, only terribly fucked up people went. I went there, and at least half of the people that I was in there with who had seen brutality. This was the age of crack, right?

 

David Duchovny  23:11

No, this is considered a moral failing on your part if you’re addicted to something.

 

James Frey  23:57

All of it. A moral failing. Like I said, it wasn’t much different than going to prison. At least half of the people I met in the facility, didn’t believe in God or AA and I understood that, because it’s hard to believein God after you’ve seen and felt some of the things me or some of those people have have seen and felt. So I wrote a book like, “You don’t need God”. Again, if anything, it’s more to the punk of it. You don’t need 12 rules. If you’re gonna submit your life to the 12 rules, good luck. They work for a lot of people, butthey don’t. If they don’t work for you, here’s how some crazy ass crack head got out. By the strength of his will, by meditation, by Taoism, by willing to accept any pain that came my way and believe that I could get through it.

 

David Duchovny  25:32

Can you open up a little bit on what do you think it is in Taoism or Stoicism, which I’ve seen you speak of as well that got you through, or that matured you, or that enabled you to be sober.

 

James Frey  25:54

For me, sobriety is a very simple thing. It’s easy, simple and whether something is hard or not. For me, it was okay the simplest resolution here is stop. Once you figure out that, which is pretty obvious how to stop, I do feel like I gave the steps in some traditional method of God, some reasonable chance. But just like a song or a work of art, not everything always connects with your soul, right? I remember, my brotherbrought me a copy of “The Tao” translated by Stephen Mitchell, and I read it.

 

David Duchovny  26:36

I know that one, yeah.

 

James Frey  26:38

The translated title of the book is “The Art of the Way”, the art of the way of life. How to get through life as peacefully as possible. It was the first thing I had ever read of any kind of religious or philosophical document that just made sense – like live simply, simple in thought, simple in action. Have patience with yourselves. Have patience with others. Have compassion for yourselves. Have compassion for others. Those are the fundamental tenets of Taoism. To accept that I’m in trouble, to accept that I feel pain, to accept that whatever life throws at me, I can take it and I can just let it go right? A lot of the Taoist things, the sort of AA and recovery things do match up a lot, letting things go.

 

David Duchovny  27:29

Yes.

 

James Frey  27:29

Accepting the world as it is, accepting responsibility for yourself in the world and for your own actions in the world. I mean, you could say Taoism is my AA God, but it’s just a sort of a slightly different system. Meditation brings me peace every day, and that peace allows me to get through the rest of the day. It’s really as simple as that.

 

David Duchovny  27:53

Well, it also seems to me like when you describe your process of writing. You’ve managed to find a balance in your life where, if you’re meditating and you’re contemplating The Tao the way, then you go into your work room, and you stimulate the parts that used to drive you to drugs, and you channel them into the work.

 

James Frey  28:17

That is a reflection of Taoism – the black and the white, balancing each other out. The good and the bad, balancing each other out. Accepting that we have both of them within us. I accept that I can be a brutal person – not good, not kind, not gentle. That there are things in me that aren’t cool. I can also accept that I can be an exceptionally good human being – kind, generous, loving, helpful in whatever way I can be. To me, finding that center space where I accept both of those things, and in some way I honor both of those things, and I allow both of those things to exist within me, is the best way for me.

 

David Duchovny  29:28

You teach as well. You’re a mentor.

 

James Frey  29:31

I help a lot of people, for sure. I don’t formally teach.

 

David Duchovny  29:35

We don’t, because I was curious as to how someone who admittedly breaks rules, teaches rules. How do you teach? How do you teach a writer?

 

James Frey  29:49

I don’t really teach rules. I teach people to be true to what they feel inside themselves, right? If somebody’s most perfect and most authentic means of expression is with absolutely precise grammar, great. What I tell people is, learn to manage your fear that the thing that stops most people from being great at anything is fear of failure.

 

David Duchovny  30:20

Shame around that.

 

James Frey  30:20

Shame and fear of failure, right? It’s just, do your work. One word after another. If you focus on the next word, everything’s good. I try to teach people that we all have our own way of thinking and feeling, speaking and living, and an art should be someone’s perfect expression of someone’s inner self. Just teach people to do that. A lot of it is discipline. A lot of it is, you can go to school and they’ll teach you grammar, but they can’t teach you how to sit in a chair every day for a year and stare at an empty screen and go back every day with some sort of fundamental faith that you can do what you want to do. That’s what I teach people how to do. I don’t teach them how to write. I don’t tell them how to write. I don’t tell them the stories to tell. I tell them how to approach things in a way that will help them achieve what they want, as opposed to just thinking about achieving what they want.

 

David Duchovny  30:22

It’s a discipline.

 

James Frey  31:01

Yeah. I help a lot of people, sort of very discreetly with cancelation and with addiction. I can’t tell you how many calls I get still all the time from people who are either having drug problems or someone they love, or when people go through cancelation, like, “What do I do now?”. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I can tell them what worked for me. But, I like helping people. I think it’s important. There were people who helped me on my way up. I think it’s good to be kind in the world. I think it’s good to to make it a better place, if you can. Talking to somebody for 10 minutes a couple times a week helps themout, I’m down.

 

David Duchovny  32:24

Let’s talk about the new book “Next to Heaven”. I see a thread from The Tao and pre-psychological texts to you. I see now that I know the way you create. I see you kind of trying to circumvent the interpretationof the feeling and just get the feeling down. When I look at the way your prose sits on a page, it looks more screenplay like than novelistic. It tends towards more of a dialogue feeling prose than a descriptiveor flowery or interior monologue prose. I’m wondering, if anything I’m saying is making any sense to you in terms of your style or in this book?

 

James Frey  33:14

It does make sense. Again, when I was teaching myself how to write, there were a lot of things I was thinking about, right? I was thinking about, “Okay, you have to write in a way that’s not like anyone else. That doesn’t look like it, feel like it, sound like it, read like it”. I started playing with a lot of these tricks. Again, as you were talking about sort of Pre-Freudian versus Taoism. Taoism, at its core, seeks simplicity,seeks directness and seeks clarity- simple, clear and direct in thought, in action, and in life. I went that way, and I still do for my writing – simple, clear and direct. I’m going to tell you what’s happening. I’m going to tell you where it’s happening, ow it’s happening, what it looks like, smells like, sounds like and most important, what it feels like, right? I’m going to try to be as simple and clear and direct as I can in doing that.

 

David Duchovny  34:16

It sounds to me like what you’re going for or instinctually, what you were going for is a more unmediated way of communicating. It sounds like you are feeling like grammars getting in the way of just the brute instinct of what I want to say.

 

James Frey  34:35

That was a beautiful way to put it that I’ve never heard said. But yes, it was can you write a book the way the Sex Pistols wrote God Save the Queen? Can you write a book that makes you feel the way you feel when you look at a Jackson Pollock painting? Can you write a book that has the power thundering guitars and bass do? Can you write a book that does what I said, what I wanted to do, which is shatter all these rules and utterly ignore them and defy them and still have it be a readable document – an entertaining document, a moving document, a valid work of literary art. Those were things I thought about for years and struggled with. I wrote three books that two of them I threw in the Seine, literally in the 90s, printed out books that I wrote, I read, and they were so bad.

 

David Duchovny  35:39

That hurts me. I hate throwing shit away. I’m always like, “I can repurpose this somehow”. there

 

James Frey  35:44

Somehow, there was no repurposing any of it. I actually have the notebooks that I use to write those books, still. I have the core material. My 18 year old son was looking through them, and he was like, “Dad,you seemed like you had kind of a cool life, and you were kind of a fucking idiot”. And I was like, “Yeah”.

 

David Duchovny  36:11

I have two thoughts. One, I’m surprised that you didn’t go to poetry, because that’s where you can kind of rewrite your own rules of grammar, aside from the fact that nobody reads it. You might had a thoughtof like, “I would like an audience”. Secondly, what you were saying reminds me of this possibly apocryphal story I’ve heard about Christopher Walken, who is somebody whose cadence everybody imitates. What I’ve been told is, as soon as he gets his script, he takes out all punctuation from his dialogue so that he finds his way to the meaning without these kinds of marks that people that have come before. Have said, “I need to put in here to make it legible and understandable”.

 

James Frey  36:47

That’s really interesting about walking, because one of the things I said is like, “My goal is to communicate what I feel in my soul as clearly, and as precisely as possible”. One of the reasons I originally rejected grammar is because it didn’t mimic speech, right? As I write, I say everything out loud, and it’s much more important to me how you deals, the rhythm of it, the sound of it. Before I write anything, I always say it out loud and that’s how I arrived at how I use grammar, having no quotation marks. When you and I speak to each other, I don’t say, “I say, David”.

 

David Duchovny  37:41

Yes.

 

James Frey  37:42

Right? I just talk. Part of the way the books look and the way the books are written, as you talk about poetry. One of the things I do think I have done as a writer is demolish the ideas of the genres, right? I don’t write fiction, I don’t write non-fiction, I both write poetry and don’t write poetry. If you look at how those books are laid out, there’s pages of one or two words align, just strings of words designed to make you think and feel things that is much more closer. But when I think about the book, it’s, “What’s the story I want to tell? What do I want people to feel?”. I’ve written lots of serious books about drugs, about love. I wrote a book called “The Final Testament” of the Holy Bible, about the second coming of Christ. This book, I just wanted to let it rip and have fun. We’re living in this world that’s utter madness. During the pandemic, somebody had asked me to read “Hollywood Wives” by Jackie Collins.

 

David Duchovny  38:56

I was going to say. I feel like somebody must have already wanting to adapt this, because it feels like it slots really well into kind the White Lotus crowd before they go on vacation (this is in their actual home). Also, Nicole Kidman, baby girl, kind of area where the women are ultimately using sex in this world to win.

 

James Frey  39:34

Yeah, as a weapon. I read Jackie Collins. Somebody wanted me to adapt it, a new version of “Hollywood Wives”. I wanted to do a much rowdier version of of it than they did. But after I read it, I was like, “That was great”.

 

David Duchovny  39:52

Both Hollywood Wives was great. Yeah?

 

James Frey  39:54

It was. You ever read it?

 

David Duchovny  39:56

No.

 

James Frey  39:57

It’s fucking awesome, dude. You should totally read it. You’ll love it. So then I read Hollywood Husbands. I read a couple Danielle Steel books.

 

David Duchovny  40:06

Really?

 

James Frey  40:07

They’re all great people. People kind of make fun of them, but they’re great for what they are. They’re spectacular. I was like, “What would a book like that look like if I wrote it? What would a book look like i the age we live in?”, and I live, and have long lived in the wealthiest town in the country, the secretive, incredibly discreet, highly protected bubble of New Canaan, Connecticut. It is a beautiful place to live, and it is an interesting and weird place to live. Whenever I write a book up, I always say, “My job really is to hold a mirror up to society and show you what you look like”, as we were talking about sort of doing that to ourselves earlier, right? I held up a mirror to the community I live in, which is absurdly wealthy, absurdly privileged, all kinds of weird – crazy, dumb shit happens here, and it mostly makes me laugh. I wanted to write a fun, dirty, kind of satirical book about rich people.

 

David Duchovny  41:15

Yeah. The inciting event here is an orgy with, I believe engraved invitations is only I imagine the New Canaan, Connecticut would.

 

James Frey  41:32

Yeah. New Canaan has a history of this kind of stuff.

 

David Duchovny  41:33

Oh, does it?

 

James Frey  41:36

Yeah, the key party was invented here, The Stepford Wives was set here. What was that Tobey Maguire Swingers?

 

David Duchovny  41:47

The Ice Storm.

 

James Frey  41:48

Was also set here.

 

David Duchovny  41:50

Yeah.

 

James Frey  41:51

There is a history of this type of activity and started thinking about it. What would it be like, and why would somebody do it? In the sort of absurdity of the setting, how would things happen? It’s a dirty, funny, sharp murder mystery about a swingers party at a billionaire’s house.

 

David Duchovny  42:19

What I think is formidable about the plot in this case. As I said earlier, what is that men think that they’rerunning the sex game.

 

James Frey  42:39

That for sure. Anybody who’s been married knows the men aren’t in fucking charge of anything, right? Anybody who’s on a movie set run by a woman knows men aren’t in charge of anything. I do see sex increasingly used as a weapon. I think it probably always has. In today’s world, with sexual politics being as complicated as they are, relationship politics being as complicated as they are, fucking identity politics being as complicated as they are, that people are able to use sex as a weapon in ways that they haven’t before. I think sometimes about me too, and I certainly don’t support anybody who abused anybody in any way. I’ve worked in Hollywood for 30 years, man. I’ve had more women hit on me thanmen have hit on me. Those kinds of things work everywhere and frankly, women are just as guilty asof those types of situations.

 

David Duchovny  43:48

You’re stepping into a defiant position again, which is where you’re comfortable. Are you expecting to beattacked in a way for this?

 

James Frey  43:58

I’m always attacked, man. I’m always attacked for something, but I’m just saying like sex is a weapon that both men and women use, right? We like to think often that men are these terrible, aggressive monsters, and women are demure, helpless and can do nothing in the face of this monstrosity. But the reality is, sexual politics are very complicated, and sex is used as a weapon by both men and women. I see in these very wealthy communities that I have lived in for large portions of my life, the men are off working, and the women sort of very much run things. Again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just how it is. I wanted to tell that story. I think a lot of the women marry men, and then they realize, “This guy’s a monster”, but you can’t fucking get out of it, right? You’re in a golden prison of some kind. I want to have fun. The book was fun to write.

 

David Duchovny  45:08

Yeah, what I would I do?

 

James Frey  45:09

I probably just got myself in huge amounts of trouble.

 

David Duchovny  45:11

Well, are you concerned of shitting where you eat? Are you concerned when the book comes out, that your idyllic existence, quiet existence there is gonna get complicated?

 

James Frey  45:24

No, I live in a black house at the end of the dead end road in the woods, right? Somebody’s coming, I know. There’s a lot of gossip around the town right now about me and the book, and I’ll just go about mybusiness the same way I always have, right? I’ll be the best dad I can. I’ll be the best friend I can. I’ll bethe best co-worker I can. I’ll be the best writer I can.

 

David Duchovny  45:53

It doesn’t sound to me like it’s a Truman Capote situation where your book sounds very fictionalized to me. It’s not where I don’t give away actual secrets.

 

James Frey  46:08

No, I don’t generally use books to settle scores, right? I may in the future, I’ve been thinking about it. I have a couple scores I wouldn’t mind settling.

 

David Duchovny  46:19

Yeah.

 

James Frey  46:20

None of the characters are based on real people, but the book is very much based in reality. I think, a lot of my books, half the people in this town are going to read it and say, “He’s a fucking piece of shit. This isa desecration of our beautiful town”. And I think half the people are going to read the book and belike, “Thank God somebody was willing to say it”.

 

David Duchovny  46:42

Well, that’s the position that you like. You like to be half loved and half hated.

 

James Frey  46:47

Yeah. I always tell people, that’s how I know when I’m going to quit. I’m going to quit writing books whn I’m either universally loved or universally hated, because I will know I have failed. But until I am, I’m going to keep going.

 

David Duchovny  46:58

Absolutely. The last quote that I wanted to run by is from your book – “The Final Testament of The Holy Bible”. You write that trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you, while allowing you to still live. I feel like that’s bleaker than your actual thoughts, because obviously, what you went through is traumatizing, maybe because you were an adult. It’s more survival and you weren’t a child. I don’t know.

 

James Frey  47:36

I will say the Bible was written after I had a child die. I had a son who died of a disease called spinal muscular atrophy which is like childhood ALS.

 

David Duchovny  47:50

I’m sorry.

 

James Frey  47:53

I was coming off all what people think about as the trauma of Oprah, and then my son died, right? Again, that was sort of a reframing moment where you think, “Oh yeah, everybody thinks that this experience you’ve had is so tough or so traumatic, then you live out a very legitimately tough, traumatic moment in private”. More than any book, the Bible is an expression of human pain. The Bible is a book that I wrote to keep myself alive. It was “All right, kill yourself, get drunk or write a really hard book”, and I wrote the book. But, I do think that statement is maybe not necessarily true to my life and my experience, but true to a lot of people. I think so many people in their lives get or experience trauma thatannihilates them. They never recover from it. They never are willing to allow themselves to recover from it. If my life, my career or this conversation is about anything, it’s that you can recover. You can recover. I’ve recovered from addiction. I’ve recovered from a girlfriend dying, a best friend dying, a child dying. I’ve recovered from public controversies, humiliations, embarrassments, situations, whatever you want tocall them, because I get up every day and I say, “You can keep going, man, You’re not done yet”. You choose the conditions of your life. I wish everybody did that. If you learn anything from me, it’s that you should. Keep going.

 

David Duchovny  49:59

Thank you, James.

 

James Frey  50:00

Thank you, David. This was a pleasure. It’s a real honor to be here. It sounds corny. I’ve been a fan of yours for a lot 35 years.

 

David Duchovny  50:11

It does sound corny, but I’ll never get tired of hearing it.

 

David Duchovny  50:27

Some post James Frey thoughts. To go back to something that I don’t think I said when we were talking about the Oprah business. Her calling him out for quote/unquote lying in a memoir. The history of the novel is very much involved in that discussion. I haven’t gone back to figure this out or to research it, but I do remember when you’re talking about the earliest novels from the 18th century. Part of the appeal, part of the commercial outreach, was these are true stories of the middle class, the lower class before this epic poetry, before the novel. Only great personages were the subject of literature, epic poems. The novel was really a democratizing art form. Probably there was no democratizing art form as consequential as that until television, the 1950s where the subject of our art, became real people. That was the idea. I think in many of the early books, even though they were fictive or fiction, they were sold as real stories. That was the titillating aspect of it. Interestingly, James went through that too. It’s a version of the truth. It’s not the truth. Anyway, that’s a little professorial here.

 

David Duchovny  52:24

Thanks so much for listening to Fail Better. If you haven’t yet, now is a great time to subscribe to Lemonada Premium. You’ll get bonus content, like my thoughts on conversations with guests including Alec Baldwin and Rob Lowe. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple podcasts, or for all other podcast apps. Head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe. That’s lemonada premium dot com. Fail better is production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aroa Bracci and Dani Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of newcontent is Rachel Neel. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kopinski and Brad Davidson. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. Themusic is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, David Roland and Sebastian Modak. You can find us online at Lemonada Media, and you can find me at David Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your prime membership.