

Hoax Memoir Spectacular!
A Million Little Pieces Hoax
- James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was a memoir about his struggles with addiction.
- Oprah picked it, boosting sales, but later retracted it after discovering fabrications.
Bestseller Formula
- Bestsellers often mimic previous successes, prioritizing profit over originality.
- Publishers seek similar but not identical narratives, as seen with Sybil and Michelle Remembers.
Oprah's Influence
- Oprah's book club significantly boosted A Million Little Pieces sales after featuring it.
- This marked Oprah's return to contemporary books after a period of focusing on classics.






















This week, flim flam correspondent and certified April Fool Chelsey Weber-Smith is here to talk about a fistful of fake memoirs, featuring girls raised by wolves; the chicken pox of James Frey; what poetry can give us that memoir can't; and Eugene, Oregon (twice!).
Read more about it here:
The Smoking Gun's "A Million Little Lies" https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/million-little-lies
Blake Eskin's "The Girl Who Cried Wolf" https://www.bostonmagazine.com/2008/08/18/the-girl-who-cried-wolf-a-holocaust-fairy-tale/
Michelle Dean's "Opal Whiteley's Riddles" https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/opal-whiteleys-riddles
Christopher L. Miller's Impostors https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo29203296.html
Listen to Chelsey's podcast American Hysteria:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/american-hysteria/id1441348407
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