What’s Wrong with James Frey
It appears that James Frey, author of the faux-memoir A Million Little Pieces, is contracting MFA students to write YA novels, offering contracts that are ruinously bad for writers who are probably desperate to publish. Maureen Johnson has written a judiciously scathing blog about this, and the full expose on Frey is here. Thanks to Robin Wasserman for the heads-up.
What disgusts me most, I think, about this whole issue (though there are many levels on which it offends) is the way Frey is so focused on how he can milk young adults for money. There is no thought given in his “factory” of writers, it seems, to stories that might not just be commercially viable (and, of course, everyone in the publishing industry hopes for something to sell), but would also touch on an emotional need, discuss a cultural concern, deal with negotiating loss, friendship, independence, etc.
To see what I mean, read the description of the sort of books the factory is looking for on the middle of this page.
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