James Frey, the author who admitted making up portions of his best-selling memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” and his publisher, Random House, have agreed in principle on a settlement with readers who filed lawsuits claiming they had been defrauded.
Neither Mr. Frey nor Random House are admitting any wrongdoing, but consumers who bought the book on or before Jan. 26 — when both the publisher and author released statements acknowledging that Mr. Frey had altered certain facts — will be eligible for a full refund, said a person familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement still has to be approved by a judge.
Readers in several states, including New York, California and Illinois, filed lawsuits saying that Mr. Frey and the publisher had defrauded them by selling the book as a memoir rather than as a work of fiction.
In June the cases were consolidated to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been accepted by 10 of the 12 plaintiffs who are part of the consolidated case, both Mr. Frey and Random House will pay out no more than a total of $2.35 million, which includes the cost of refunding customers, lawyers’ fees for both sides and a yet-to-be-specified donation to charity. (link)
It would have been interesting to see this go to court. Frey could actually make a good poststructuralist defense: "your honor, since as Paul de Man has pointed out, no autobiography is ever truly authentic, no memoir can ever be required to be verifiably, absolutely 'true.' The truth claimed by the generic category 'memoir' is simply a dubious extension of the Foucauldian 'author-function,' in which the book stands in metonymically for its 'author.'"
It's also intriguing that Random House has devised an elaborate system of authentification to make sure that only "truly deceived" patrons can file for reimbursement for the fake book: from the hardcover, send back only page 162 and your receipt from the bookstore, verifying that you bought it before January 26, 2006. I'm thinking of forging my own page 162 of Frey's book and sending it in, with a letter indicating that it is in fact a forgery of a lie, but I still want my money back. I will also point out that I always knew James Frey was a fake, and that Bruce Willis was actually a ghost.
p.s. Please forgive me for my title.