Real Readers and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces: The Mediating Role of Authenticity on Perceived Non-Fictionality
Keywords:
reader-response research, qualitative empirical research in literature, storyworld possible selves, cognitive narratology, fictionalityAbstract
When Oprah Winfrey introduced James Frey’s 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces as an Oprah’s Book Club pick, she described it as “nothing you’ve ever read before” (‘The Man Who Kept Oprah Awake At Night’). A Million Little Pieces recounts Frey’s struggles with substance use and his recovery process in a rehabilitation centre. By sharing a “real” depiction of his character without pulling any punches, Frey was seen as telling an authentic story about substance use. Three months after Oprah’s emotional laudation, an exposé revealed extensive fabrication within the alleged memoir. After the controversy, the book was considered a novel instead of a memoir. This means the text has been classified as both fiction and non-fiction, making it especially suitable for studies into hybrid literary texts. Using data from a larger experiment on fictionality and narrative engagement, this paper will focus on readers who recognised some hybridity in A Million Little Pieces and believed the text to be either autofiction or “based on true events”. The paper examines how readers might come to that conclusion using their lay concept of local and global fictionality and authenticity. The analysis suggests that when there is a lack of paratextual information, readers may fall back on their previous reading experiences to determine the fictionality of the text. Moreover, the use of certain textual dimensions – the text’s origin, its reference, and its stylistic strategy (M. Martínez) – and expressions of trauma in non-standard English (Iatsenko) convey a sense of authenticity, possibly leading to readers believing the text to be non-fictional despite the presence of fictional writing strategies.
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