Bright Shiny Morning

by James Frey
(Harper)

Two years after Frey’s memoir “A Million Little Pieces” was outed as part fiction, the publicly chastised writer resurfaces with a novel much of which purports to be fact. Set in a Los Angeles populated by miniature-golf moguls, ex-beauty queens, gun-shop owners, debauched child actors, meth dealers, and yoginis in thongs, this gargantuan book is seeded, Melville-like, with chapters cataloguing the city’s snarled highways and quirky innovations (e.g., the world’s first video graveyard). The characters are relentlessly stock: two lovesick kids from the heartland (“nowhere anywhere everywhere”); a bulimic, closeted movie star with a “MEGAWATT!!!!!” smile; a Mexican-American maid with an abusive employer. Frey strives for incantatory but winds up with banal; when it comes to emotion, the best he can muster is “It’s deep, it’s true, and it’s real real real.”

The New Yorker, May 26, 2008

Comments

[kiko]

Well-said.

[moazzam sheikh]

to be able to sell banal as art to an agent, agent to a publisher, and publisher to bookstores and libraries is indeed an art in itself, the kind people in this country excel handsomely :) thanks for critics like you! too bad not too many comments left.

- moazzam sheikh