Down with Frey

Press Release

2008-05-15T18:16:00.001-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Down With Frey Will Protest James Frey Reading in SF on May 16 at Slim’s

Contact:
Jan Frel
Down With Frey
http://downwithfrey.blogspot.com

Down With Frey Will Protest James Frey Reading in SF on May 16 at Slim’s

On Friday, May 16, at 6:30 pm, Down With Frey will protest the reading conducted at Slim’s (333 11th St San Francisco, CA 94103) by disgraced author James Frey.

“James Frey is a disgrace, a sham, a fraud and a plagiarizer,” Down With Frey founder Jan Frel said. “He peddles the worst lies about society: that drugs are bad and the cause of addicts problems, and that people can change. While most authors make a straight bee-line for the exit doors after being revealed as frauds, Frey is shamelessly sticking around, peddling his latest trash novel.”

“This is the literary equivalent of George Bush being allowed to stick around in office after committing War Crimes,” Frel said. “And the lack of public courage to denounce his very presence in the literary field is tied to the exact same passive degeneracy we’re witnessing in Washington. Someone’s got to take this on.”

Down With Frey will be handing out essays on Frey and what he represents, explaining to attendees what’s wrong with Frey, and why he’s a stain on society. Also, Down With Frey will be conducting a charity drive. All donated copies of Frey's books will be delivered to East Bay Recycling @ 2430 Willow Street Oakland, California.
All proceeds from recylcing will be donated to the non-profit organization Valencia 826, which helps aspiring children to become writers.

Down with Frey will be conducting a conference call at 1:30 pm PST: Reporters are invited on the call.

Conference Dial-in Number: (269) 320-8300
Participant Access Code: 176483#

For more on Frey, read:

Read: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7994&IBLOCK_ID=35
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/30910/

# # #

Down with Frey announces charity drive

2008-05-09T22:15:00.001-07:00

Announcement: Down With Frey announces charity drive.

Where:
San Francisco, CA
@ SLIM’S
333 11th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
When: Friday, May 16, 2008
Starting at 6:30 PM PST

What: All donated copies of Frey's books will be delivered to East Bay Recycling @
2430 Willow Street Oakland, California.

All proceeds will be donated to the non-profit organization Valencia 826.

Why: Because the proceeds from recycling James Frey's work can really help the budding writer children of 826.

Frey, on writing

2008-05-09T22:05:00.001-07:00

"“I work on every sentence as a sentence and I sort of speak it to myself and I rewrite it until it sounds the way I hear it in my head. ... I don’t revise, really. I don’t read at all.”

Gawker ridicules Frey

2008-05-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

Gawker on James Frey:

Disgraced fabricating memoirist James Frey is planning to redeem himself in two weeks with a new book, Bright Shiny Morning, clearly labeled as fiction. But there's some spadework to be done first, in terms of publicity and whatnot, and it seems Frey hasn't been too careful about, you know, "the truth" or whatever, in the run-up to his literary rebirth. He granted Vanity Fair an "exclusive" interview and got in return a "softball profile... which paints Mr. Frey as a wounded victim of market forces," in the words of the Observer's Leon Neyfakh. But it turns out Frey also talked to a UK trade publication called The Bookseller, which posted its interview to the Web just a few hours after Vanity Fair. Then there's Frey's worn claim that he first submitted his memoir A Million Little Pieces as a novel but was convinced to relabel it as a memoir. Pieces publisher Nan Talese was not pleased, to say the least, to hear that Frey has resumed saying this:

"He said this again?" she said, her voice rising in indignation. "I can’t believe he said that! You’d better check that because it’s simply not true."

When will Nan Talese, and the rest of the publishing industry, find a damn writer they can trust? If not James Frey, then who??

One of Frey's sick fans

2008-05-09T21:13:00.000-07:00

A fan writes on Frey's notice board:

Finally! I read James' other books on a trip from Virginia Beach, Va. to Hattisburg, Mississippi, it was a very enjoyable ride...thanks to the books! At the time of my trip I was coming up on a year clean & sober...I also do not attend AA or NA mtgs., everybody has their own "program", mine is helping people, I don't feel the need to sit around in mtgs when I know there's things to be done, people to be comforted! I now celebrate the freedom of over 3 years sober and James' books were such an inspiration! I think it was wonderful that he made his "life story" more interesting, that shows creativity...HELLO! I so look forward to this next book and count on being a long lasting fan!! GO JAMES!!! Maybe someday you'll read my book...oh, I also never watch Oprah...that made me cry, literally....

This is what we're up against

2008-05-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

Now, more than ever. This is the event that must be stopped. To borrow a term from another hack writer, Macolm Gladwell, this protest could very well be the tipping point -- no one knows what the long-term consquences of our actions are, but this could be the 'End of Evil' that Richard Perle and David Frum have called for. A mass protest against Frey could truly stop shitty literary fiction like Frey's in its tracks.

Why Frey?

2008-05-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

The world's on fire, everything's going to shit, and I'm calling for a mass protest on Frey?

Yep.

-- If Frey doesn't get protested in the country, then we should all pack it in. He's emblematic of the worst elements in American society: A man who sold a bullshit story about drugs and getting high to the AA crowd, blaming the drugs for his problems. He's been showered with millions for his shams.

--He's a very shitty writer, perhaps one of the worst living in America. He shouldn't be parading around giving readings -- this is a man who should be begging for a job writing ad copy for pamphlets selling cruises to Alaska.

Down with Frey

2008-05-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

First post. Let's get some of the material on Frey out there:
from The Smoking Gun:


"Book Club" author's best-selling nonfiction memoir filled with fabrications, falsehoods, other fakery, TSG probe finds

JANUARY 8--Oprah Winfrey's been had.

Three months ago, in what the talk show host termed a "radical departure," Winfrey announced that "A Million Little Pieces," author James Frey's nonfiction memoir of his vomit-caked years as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal, was her latest selection for the world's most powerful book club.

In an October 26 show entitled "The Man Who Kept Oprah Awake At Night," Winfrey hailed Frey's graphic and coarse book as "like nothing you've ever read before. Everybody at Harpo is reading it. When we were staying up late at night reading it, we'd come in the next morning saying, 'What page are you on?'" In emotional filmed testimonials, employees of Winfrey's Harpo Productions lauded the book as revelatory, with some choking back tears. When the camera then returned to a damp-eyed Winfrey, she said, "I'm crying 'cause these are all my Harpo family so, and we all loved the book so much."

But a six-week investigation by The Smoking Gun reveals that there may be a lot less to love about Frey's runaway hit, which has sold more than 3.5 million copies and, thanks to Winfrey, has sat atop The New York Times nonfiction paperback best seller list for the past 15 weeks. Next to the latest Harry Potter title, Nielsen BookScan reported Friday, Frey's book sold more copies in the U.S. in 2005--1.77 million--than any other title, with the majority of that total coming after Winfrey's selection.

Down with Frey

Press Release

Down with Frey announces charity drive

Frey, on writing

Gawker ridicules Frey

One of Frey's sick fans

This is what we're up against

Why Frey?

Down with Frey

"Book Club" author's best-selling nonfiction memoir filled with fabrications, falsehoods, other fakery, TSG probe finds