The first review that the New York Times wrote of fabricating memoirist James Frey's new novel, Bright Shiny Morning, was gushy to the point that it was written in the style of his novel. (It ran in the Arts section and was written by Janet Maslin.) But the NYT's Book Review takes it on this week—this time, the results are the literary equivalent of dropping a piano on an author's head. "Stupefying" and "Wikipedian" are some of the kinder words issued. At one point, it is actually suggested that maybe Frey is being bad on purpose.

The review is illustrated with a clay bust of Frey, wearing a striped t-shirt of the variety that three-year-olds wear. So that's embarrassing. But that's only the beginning! Writes frequent Book Review contributor Walter Kirn:

"When Frey presents Parker's agent as "incredibly smart, incredibly savvy, incredibly smooth, incredibly successful and incredibly rich," it's possible — if one is used to being demeaned and has grown practiced in denial — to think that Frey is being bad on purpose; that he's reproducing others' mental impoverishment rather than exhibiting his own. It's hard to sustain such a charitable view, though, after seeing a character depicted as "an extremely attractive woman in her early 30s," a pair of chaise longues as "stylish, yet comfortable" and Beverly Hills's Rodeo Drive as "lined with the most expensive and most exclusive boutiques in the world." These aren't images, they're ratings. This isn't fiction, it's catalog copy. And "stylish, yet comfortable" isn't a description, it's a Zagat's review — but based on what? Who knows? The primary data about things and people that would allow us to apprehend Frey's world is sorely lacking in the book."

Also,

"Here is some of Frey's prose, ladled up from the huge pitcher in which he has blended events, ideas, dialogue and dozens of pages of Wikipedian trivia relating to everything from Los Angeles's freeways to its neighborhoods and street gangs into a sort of verbal fruit smoothie every sip of which has the same consistency."

It's a far cry from the paper's first word on the novel, "That's how James Frey saved himself."


NYT Book Review on James Frey

[Illustration: Karen Caldicott]