A Million Little Pieces
by JAMES FREY
Average Customer Review:
Hardcover (15 April, 2003)
list price: $22.95
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Editorial Review

The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood." Wanted by authorities in three states, without ID or any money, his face mangled and missing four front teeth, Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "he will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again, and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "The Fury" head on:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.

The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons ... Read more

Reviews (277)

How to turn a screenplay into a memoir
First, let me say I enjoyed this book as a work of pure entertainment, but as a serious memoir I couldn't get past how many techniques the author uses from his training as a hollywood script writer (Kissing a Fool starring David Shwimmer) I enjoyed the opening with him passed out on the plane, even as I wondered why any airline would allow him to fly in such a catatonic state. I didn't start to question the integrity of the author until dentist scene that seemed a gratiutious scene to show how tough the author is, but many books on screenplay writing talk about the importance of creating early identification by making your hero suffer and suffer he does, although the pain is always external, and we never get to know about the author's vulnerabilty.Still, I was willing to go with it until the introduction of the love interest when he describes their first meeting after she dropped a stack of books to the floor and they locked eyes as he helped her pick them up.I suppose this could happen in real life, but the only time I've ever seen it is in the movies, but it was the introduction of Leonard that I really started to question the authenticity of his story. Leonard is his mafiso friend who is able to reach the narrator because he understands the narrator's pain.He says, for example, he watched his own father figure gunned down right in front of him in Vegas where he held him gasping his last breath, and made him promise to play at the golf course where he worked as a lawnmower all his life.And maybe this happens in real life too, but if anyone told me this story, inside or outside of a rehab facilty, I would at least mention a remote possibility this person might be making this up.James Frey does not.He believes everything he is told by this character, as everything starts to fall into the classic hollywood three act structure, including a chase scene in the final act to save a crack whore with a heart of gold.I give this a single star as a memoir, but as I screenplay I would give it four. I am interested to see what his new book about Leonard is like, and if there will be another chase scene in the final act.

A Book Full of RAW, INTENSE Feeling
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES is written very well, in a way that captures the 'feeling' of Frey's experience like a song. His writing style is very descriptive, and lacks punctuation at points, resulting in long sentences that communicate the feeling of desperation and helplessness that Frey must have felt. His words are full of feeling, and the story made me feel quite emotional.

For some people it will ring true, and match their own experience of life.

It does contain some descriptively gruesome points that really let you 'feel' the pain of un-anaesthetized tooth removal - not nice if you're squeamish. This harks back to the pain his body is suffering as a result of his abuses.

We are reminded that James experiences a lot of pain and suffering for his addictions with painfully descriptive passages of nasty hallucinations and sensations, yet there are many descriptions of the positive qualities of drugs as well -- the way drugs make you feel at the time. Frey captures the way his long-term/short-term priorities shift in favor of the short-term, the next fix, and then documents how hard it is to shift them back.

A MILLION LITTLE PIECES is one of those books where you love the person the main character loves, you get upset when something bad happens, and you feel like you've met real people and then miss them when you've finished, but try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "THE LOSERS' CLUB: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, a funny, highly engaging little novel I can't stop thinking about.

One in a Million
Every addict has their story and this is Frey's.This book in no way tells one how to face addiction and how to approach recovery.This is simply one person's story and very well told.

Frey is angry, hostile and his life is a mess.He reaches the point where he knows his alcohol and drug use are killing him and if he uses again he will most likely die.He also tells himself that there is no program, no steps, nothing that can save him from his addiction thus putting Frey in an ugly corner which most call hitting bottom.I can't use and I can't not use and I will die if I use...Frey prepares to die and sees no way out.

This book is a memoir of his stay in a rehab, his story in the rehab and ultimately his whole story is told in the book.Other stories are told in this book when Frey has conversations with other patients.There are a million stories.There are people with nothing in common beyond the fact that they are addicts and their lives are in complete chaos.

Through other characters Frey also approaches the question, "Are there some things experienced in life so horrible that there is just no getting over it?"From one female patient who's mother sold her daughter's body at the age of 14 for drugs and eventually got hooked on drugs herself.To the young man who's pain of his father's molesting him is so fierce he lives in a constant state of pain and fear.

Frey is extremely sick physically and mentally.He is full of an intense anger he has had since he can remember which he refers to as 'The Fury'.He is resistant to any help, believes in nothing that is offered to him to aid him in recovery.But slowly Frey starts finding peace of mind.Through communicating with his parents, through the guys he becomes friends with on the unit, the feelings he has for Lilly on the female unit and very important by a small gift his brother gives him.A small book but powerful enough to give Frey calm and hope.

You don't need to be an addict by any means to read this book.This is a terrific contribution by James Frey.Brave. ... Read more

Isbn: 0385507755
Subjects:  1. 1969-    2. Biography    3. Biography & Autobiography    4. Biography / Autobiography    5. Biography/Autobiography    6. Drug addicts    7. Frey, James,    8. Literary    9. Minnesota    10. Narcotic addicts    11. Personal Memoirs    12. Rehabilitation    13. Specific Groups - General    14. Substance Abuse & Addictions - General    15. Biography & Autobiography / Literary    16. Frey, James    17. Reading Group Guide   

Less Than Zero
by BRET EASTON ELLIS
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (30 June, 1998)
list price: $12.00 -- our price: $9.60
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Reviews (185)

NO Less Than Zero STARS is right!
Less Than Zero was a book I knew going into that I may not like it.I'm not a fan of those books that add in the end of the sentence "...as they got in their new BMW".I just don't like reading about things like that when mainly I want to read a book to get away from those things. That is just my first complaint about the style of Bret's writing in this story.

The main character Clay seems to be a lot more intelligent when he is thinking in the story rather then his actions and what he ends up doing (like ditching Blair for a young hook up at a bar).I would've enjoyed this story a lot if Bret just would've added something more. The whole time I was enjoying reading the book, I was waiting for it to pick up. Everytime it was just sleep-in, Clay wakes up does some drugs after chasing his dealer all over hollywood trying to get some, then going out to some party he didn't want to go to, getting hit on 5 times then witnessing something strange and wrong happen or leaving with that nights hook-up. The story was very consistant like this till the end. I must admit it picked up a little before it ended, which I thought was leading somewhere, but when there were no more pages to turn I began to get angry and hate the book several days later after being pleased with it.

I don't care much for Rules of Attraction the movie, so I should've looked a little bit more when selecting a book to read instead of jumping on something like this book which sounded like it would be interesting. The cliche idea to the story really bothers me that people actually get paid to write this stuff, I feel as though it was a collection of rumors and gossip he knew when he was younger that he wrote about... and I could easily do the same without adding any creative twist or climax to my story.

Like someone said above this post, only read this in "as few sittings as possible", or when your on a long flight or something with not much on your mind (in order to handle the ever so long list of characters you will meet). I only give this book 2 stars because I enjoyed reading a book for the first time in awhile that I actually felt like I was going to finish.

Breathless prose, tepid story
This is the first Ellis book I've read, and it was enjoyable enough to prompt me to look for more. He writes at a breathless clip, juxtaposing a wealth of images with great success. This particular style requires a lot of "extreme" content (snuff films, drugs, male prostitution) to avoid boring the reader, as the pace more or less precludes any sort of "depth" (imagine the exact opposite of Faulkner). The problem is that in the absence of a really clever plot device or particularly insightfull asides/metaphors (Less than zero lacks such memorable lines as "I am an emotional vampire" from rules of attraction), the thing hinges entirely on how shocking or entertaining we find the particular events that the plot consists of, and how we react to the narrators persistent nonchalance.

It all comes down to style, and despite what you might think, Ellis' sort of objectivity is vastly more demanding (on the author) than the fiercely engaging style of writing that someone like Hunter S. Thompson uses. I applaud what Ellis has done with this book, but it really lacks the substance necessary to push it from stylized mediocrity to greatness.

A Novel You'll Never Forget!,

Less Than Zero is narrated (in the same cold, run-on style as my opening paragraph) by Clay, a young man returning to his Los Angeles home for Christmas after his first four months of college in New Hampshire. This isn't Andrew McCarthy (from the movie), mind you... all charm and awkward smiles and broken heart. Bret Easton Ellis's Clay is brooding, spoiled, and as close to dead as a protagonist can be. He is both witness to and participant in a world so soulless and depraved that we as audience can do little more than drop our mouths in shock while we turn from one page to the next. Clay is merely our tour guide, and not someone we root for.

The world he introduces us to is the playground of Los Angeles's yuppie children of the 80's. It is a world devoid of morality and substance. Nothing is real, everything is fake. In this world, if you don't have a tan because you've been in New Hampshire for 4 months, you simply visit a high priced salon and have your skin dyed.

The inhabitants of this world are as wealthy financially as they are bankrupt morally and they have no regard for anything other than themselves. They experience life as a series of empty exchanges with others like them in a non-stop party that doesn't so much end as it simply moves down the road to the next club or mansion. If reality begins to close in a little, they just snort another line, jump in the Mercedes and cruise along to the next escape. Drugs, clubs, parties and MTV substitute for reality, and sex substitutes for relationship. It's no surprise that the characters are so bored with their trappings that they find increasingly more bizarre and shocking stimulants to keep them entertained.

$400 for a Temple of Doom bootleg soon makes way for a $15,000 snuff film featuring a 15 year old girl having nails pounded into her neck while a 16 year old boy is castrated, after being bound and raped by a "fat black guy" with "a huge hard-on". And when the big screen TV version gets old, they drive up to the next mansion and try the real thing on a 12 year old addict. For these people, life is an endless music video with all the sex and violence cranked up to 10, and if the music or the video starts to get boring, there's always another channel, and if not, then there's always a video game instead.

If the characters aren't buying new clothes, they're buying drugs. If they aren't snorting, they're shooting up. If they aren't gossiping about each other, they're screwing each other.

When Clay arrives back in Los Angeles, he quickly falls into his old habits, despite an instinctual understanding that this isn't any kind of way to live. He is so deadened by his upbringing, however, that he cannot express his guttural feelings of loneliness and longing. He simply doesn't have the tools to express those feelings, let alone interpret them.

Not that it matters! Who would he tell them to? His mother is a divorced alcoholic who doesn't seem to care about anything that doesn't have a high price tag on it. His father is too busy getting facelifts and taking business meetings to offer his son anything other than money. His two sisters (13 and 15... he thinks) are so vapid and brainless that when they aren't bickering or competing with each other, they're stealing coke from Clay's bedroom. His girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend) is little more than a sexual escapade for him, a diversion that no longer gives him any pleasure now that she seems mildly upset with him for leaving her. His psychiatrist is more interested in taking Clay's money and getting Clays input on his screenplay than actually helping him with any real issues. His "friends" are all addicts, dealers, and/or prostitutes and just as lost as he is. More so actually. At least Clay wants it to end, even if he doesn't have the language or ability to say or do anything to actually stop it.

Throughout the novel, characters try to engage Clay with a question or a comment, only to elicit his usual reply "Why not?" He applies the same unmotivated response to just about every question asked to him, and who can blame him? Nothing matters in a world this hopeless and inconsequential.

It's only long after Clay's month long trip to Los Angeles is over that he finds the words to express what he's been feeling through out the book. He describes his experience to us within the final paragraph:

Less Than Zero is a damning chronicle of a bankrupt and heartless existence in a specific time (early/mid eighties) and place ( upper crust Los Angeles), and it depicts this world with such telling realism that one cannot help but believe it. It is a book I don't believe I'll soon forget, and I highly recommend it to anyone who suspects that there may be more to life than dollar signs and coke lines. It is a book that seeks to tell the truth about a world that doesn't want to hear it. And for that, it get's my highest recommendation. Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Ellis, but very much on my mind since I purchased it off Amazon is "THE LOSERS CLUB: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.


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Isbn: 0679781498
Sales Rank: 9507
Subjects:  1. Drug addiction    2. Fiction    3. Fiction - General    4. Friendship    5. General    6. Generation X    7. Narcotic habit    8. Popular American Fiction    9. Young men    10. Fiction / General   

More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction
by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (31 December, 2002)
list price: $14.00 -- our price: $10.50
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Reviews (25)

What Is Everyone Thinking?
I am the type of girl who means to read and then never does. I check a book out of the library and without fail 3 weeks later, I bring it back unread. But with Miss Wurtzel??? NO way. I could not stop reading. I really love this book, not only because it tells of her own personal struggle with drugs (which it does) but because she has a very real ability to put feelings into words. Many of her feelings are my feelings too. She says things that I never could figure out how to say. The way she lays things out, namely the stuff about the death penalty and how people react to tragedy, is very well done and easy to understand. This is a book that lets you see Elizabeth Wurtzel as a HUMAN who goes through life with a crazy story...!!! And then she gets through it! I honestly wish she had more books that I could read! If you have ever struggled with drug use or know someone who has, you'll appreciate this book.

I certainly didn't want more
After finishing this book, I was left wondering why Elizabeth Wurtzel is considered one of our best young writers. I loved "Prozac Nation," but since then, Wurtzel has revealed herself to be a very pompous and marginally talented writer. I got very sick of hearing, in this book, how "smart" and "pretty" the author is, and began to feel like "More, Now, Again" was a therapy project assigned to get Wurtzel to realize what a lovely person she is deep down. This book is neither enlightening nor especially well-written; if you're looking for an honest, powerful memoir about drug addiction, read James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" instead. That way, you can avoid this arrogant, self-aggrandizing display.

Enough already!
Can't the author just shut her self-entitled pie hole? I'm normally not this obnoxious, but this twit is too much. ... Read more

Isbn: 0743223314
Sales Rank: 100497
Subjects:  1. Biography & Autobiography    2. Biography / Autobiography    3. Biography/Autobiography    4. Literary    5. Personal Memoirs    6. Psychopathology - Addiction    7. Biography & Autobiography / General   

Infinite Jest: A Novel
by David Foster Wallace
Average Customer Review:
Paperback (01 February, 1997)
list price: $18.95 -- our price: $18.95
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Editorial Review

In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novelThe Broom of the System.Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves. ... Read more

Reviews (300)

DFW creates a completely "other" universe....
The detail contained within this novel is staggering (as one might guess from the sheer heft of the book itself)--the hundred pages or so of footnotes, in tiny print, are amazing.I found myself marveling, at several points while plowing through this literary monster, at the intricacies of the world DFW has created.The concept of subsidized time, the slang, the "new technology" (most of which we already use in our everyday lives today), the political world of North America and the Quebec separatists.... If nothing else, you have to hand it to the author for even being able to come up with the bizarre and creative universe in which the book takes place.

However, if you're someone who has a desperate need for resolution at the ends of books and movies, you may want to steer clear.There's nothing to give away in that department--no explosive denouement, no shock (except for maybe the fact that you've devoted so many hours to reading the incredibly long novel with infinite plots and realizing there's no way to tie them together).However, I think the fact that there is no shock is a sort of sly "wink" by DFW to the reader; after all, one of the main themes in the novel has to do with entertainment--what qualifies as entertainment, how dependent American culture is on entertainment, etc.Reading a novel is entertainment--so the fact that there's no convenient conclusion ought not upset us, since we've been entertained for hours and hours just by getting through the book.While his version of American culture may be exaggerated, there is some truth to the notion of living and/or dying for the sake of entertainment.

If you ever have a chance to read this novel for a college class or a book club, I highly recommend it.I read it on advice from a friend who finished it and desperately needed someone to talk to about it.I think by discussing it, there may be more clarity to so much information.

So, a few suggestions when tackling this novel:read all the footnotes, esp. the filmography of James Incandenza.Read the book as quickly as you can while still retaining the insane amount of information--stuff from the beginning ties back to things at the end, and it's frustrating to have to go back when you vaguely remember something from 700 pages earlier being referenced later.Have a dictionary handy.
All in all, just enjoy the finely-drawn world that the author has created.Don't expect too much in the way of tying up loose ends.You won't have the chance to read many books like this one.

Never Ceases To Astonish
I have just finished (today) my third complete read of David Foster Wallace's mammoth, extradordinary 1996 novel "Infinite Jest", and I am every bit as amazed and puzzled as the first time I waded through.It's not to say I'm a glutton for punishment, I have simply enjoyed this book more completely than anything else I have ever read.It is an ambitious work that is staggeringly complex and, very frequently, as magnificent as anything written in a very long time.I won't even try to summarize the labyrinthine plot, I'll just say if you haven't read it, and are not intimidated by the length, or of Wallace's penchance for using $65 dollar words, you will be rewarded with a literary experience unlike any other.This book will make you laugh, cry and most importantly, it will make you think.Wallace may seem cruel in that he offers no easy answers for his tale's meaning, he draws his story in oblique and roundabout lines, and leaves it up to the reader to discern for himself what the connections are and fill in the blanks with the clues he's given.I know, I know, that is one of the biggest complaints of the book, that and after nearly 1000 pages of story and nearly another 200 pages of footnotes, there's no real conclusion to all the myriad plotlines.I for one like the fact that he doesn't feel the need to spell everything out for the reader, and makes one mull over his story, and possibly even go back and piece together little fragments of seemingly inconsequential lines of dialogue and ambiguous scenes.But most people have far more important things to do, I'm sure, than wrap their heads around a magnificent work of an acrobat of the English language.Hey, I hear John Grisham has a new book out (or coming out, who can remember?)and the new season of Survivor is sure kicking into high gear.Ifor one like things that remind me that I have a brain and force me to exercise this wonderful organ.Infinite Jest is quite a workout for the brain indeed.

Poor Yorick
Nearly a decade after its first publication, David Foster Wallace's novel "Infinite Jest" remains an ink-blot test for readers -- and writers -- of serious fiction.With its 1,079 pages (including nearly 400 footnotes), and its fondness for gags, drugs, cultural theory, recent US popular culture, scientific minutae, and latinate vocabulary, the novel almost invariably divides on matters of literary technique and the question of Wallace's literary talent.

I tend to fall into the camp that says his stylistic pyrotechnics are not bright enough to hide the comparatively dull substance of his writing; but I find it impossible to fully dismiss Wallace as a literary artist."Infinite Jest," like the rest of the rest of the author's work, is neither the Next Big Thing its fans claim (unless we're talking about one of the weighty tomes itself), nor does it signal the beginning of the end of American letters, as Wallace's harshest critics (Dale Peck et al) would have it.

The most damning criticism of such a putatively bold work is that it lacks emotional depth, and this is the the novel's tragic flaw.Wallace seems more interested in inventing acronyms (though who doesn't get a chuckle out of O.N.A.N., for the "Organization of North American Nations"?) and an "apres" filmography than in rendering the human element underlying these.And while his drawing adolescent tennis phenoms in the terminology and speak of popular psychology and millenial technological frenzy rings true, his doing so with the residents of a halfway house, most who are lower-class urbanites, does not; it's pedantic, and perhaps elitist.Wallace is only able to render some of his characters on -- and in -- their own terms.

Moreover, focusing on such young, shallow characters violates what might be the only rule for compelling fiction: there has to be something at stake for the people described therein.True, you won't soon forget Hal Incandenza, the teenage tennis and linguistic prodigy who is as close to a protagonist as this novel offers; but you'll remember him for this (implausible? irrelevant?) combination of natural gifts bestowed by Wallace, not for his rendering of Hal or Hal's story.Hal's lower-class counterpart, a thirtyish petty thug named Don Gately, recovering in a Boston-area halfway house, is more intriguing simply for the difficulty of his situation; however, as written by Wallace, Gately lacks self-awareness to a degree that makes him sympathetic only for his plight.There is little reason to invest much emotion in the personae of "Infinite Jest."

Wallace's experimental style does not disguise the primary weakness of his writing here either. Few of the narratives coalesce, and it is often difficult to imagine why the book's editor did not send certain passages to the exosphere.The apparently arbitrary chronology works against any sort of pace Wallace might have established otherwise.And, though the novel wisely ends on an ambiguous note, this note is frustratingly oblique.It's difficult to imagine why a writer of Wallace's blinding intellectual gifts and erudition would offer up a metafictional trick as the conclusion to his magnum opus."Infinte Jest" feels like it should have ended at least 500 pages earlier, and yet it hasn't earned an ending.

Wallace seems to be trying to add intellectual depth to modern American fiction, without sacrificing the traditional literary devices of characterization and narrative.The author should also be commended for attempting to dramatize the ways in which our hydra-headed consumerism affects the consciousness, and the conscience, of a recognizable cross-section of America at the cusp of the millenium.However, too often the novel reads like a litany of symptoms of modern social malady, with little interest in the implications of these.
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Isbn: 0316921173
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - General    3. General    4. Fiction / General