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About ArmaVirumque ( AHR-mah wih-ROOM-kweh) In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age. Recent posts
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Jan 12, 2006 10:45 AM by Stefan Beck
The January 7 Spectator includes a delightful (i.e., extremely grim) piece by our own Good Doctor, about a subject he knows better than anyone writing today: violent criminals. After describing the uniformity of the squalor and debasement which characterize their lives ("There is always a pile of trainers . . . on the floor, and one can almost smell the athlete’s foot from the picture"), he goes on to say The poor who once prided themselves on such things as respectability, cleanliness, honesty, orderliness and thrift, often in the most difficult circumstances, now pride themselves on their bohemianism. Disorder and chaos are a metonym for freedom and authenticity. But they are bohemians without being artistic . . .It’s almost as though he’s talking about the novelist James Frey. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you’ll doubtless have seen on the mass transit a lot of attractive, smartly dressed women reading A Million Little Pieces, Frey’s appalling--and now, we learn, mostly fabricated--memoir of crack- and booze-addiction and "recovery." These women are reading it because Oprah told them to. In her way, her powerful way, Oprah has contributed to the deeply deleterious conviction that "disorder and chaos" equal "freedom and authenticity." But James Frey gave her the very potent tools with which to accomplish that. If you are unlucky enough to have read the book, you’ll recognize the line, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal." Add "I am Boring" to that list. It turns out that even if you lie about smoking crack and beating up the entire police force of Granville, Ohio, the results are not necessary scintillating. Why? For the same reason that listening to anybody brag about anything is boring. And if you don’t believe that Frey is fundamentally a braggart, consider that he is now in the curious and rather singular position of having to sue others to allow him to libel himself. Everyone wondered how Oprah would react to the scandal. Well, what do you know--she’s decided to stand by her man. "For Oprah, the emotional truth is enough." (Oprah should write a memoir about overcoming cheesecake addiction and see if the "emotional truth" sustains it.) In the meantime, millions of readers have been given bohemianism without artistry, authenticity without facts, disorder and chaos without purpose--and they are the worse for it. It’s time to break the memoir addiction once and for all.
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