Dr. Frank's What's-it

Frey'd

Want to hear something crazy? Then get someone to read this aloud to you:

Random House will refund readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, a move believed to be unprecedented, after the author was accused of exaggerating his story.

(via Bookslut.)

UPDATE: "Random House," says Mr. Frey on his weblog, "is NOT offering refunds!" He quotes a statement allegedly from RH, but there's no link or attribution. Made-up? Or real? As soliciting customers to apply for refunds for a puffed-up memoir seems totally, utterly, unimaginably insane, I think it's more than plausible that the CNN report was in error, but you never know, and anyway it's kind of fun to imagine that he made that up, too. I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?

UPDATE 2: I just watched the Larry King interview, and wow: just when you were thinking it couldn't get weirder, it got weirder. Frey, his mom, Jerzy Kozinski ("well, you know, he committed suicide - not that I'm suggesting..."), Ernest Hemingway ("they didn't have memoirs back then, it's a very new concept"), the nature of truthiness ("usually memoir is thought of in the genre of 'nonfiction'"), and a final climactic supposedly unexpected call-in from Oprah herself ("Anderson, we're going to have to go over: we've got Oprah on the phone! we've got Oprah!") who stands by her man, but blames the controversy on the publisher for mislabeling. And then Anderson Cooper mentions that Gloria Vanderbilt would have been mad at him if he had cut off Oprah. Let's hear it for mothers. Boy oh boy. God Bless America.