All of us readers know that reading any one book or seeing a film can be the engine for all the other cars in a summer reading train.
Questioning the truthfulness of the biography of Harper Lee reminded me of Oprah's famous interview with James Frey after the publication of A Million Little Pieces. The book was, as I recall, excellently written, but after she'd promoted it and pushed it to the top of the NYT best seller's list, it came out that it wasn't, in fact, a memoir, as it had been marketed.
Frey appeared on her show--and felt "ambushed" when she accused him of lying. A memoir, by definition, should tell the truth.
I Googled that interview and came up with a subsequent conversation with Oprah and Frey that was interesting and illuminating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYRQ_ZY1YoA
While Frey admits that he was hurt by the interview that we all saw in 2003, he doesn't cast blame and doesn't admit to being angry at Oprah, per se. Even if he had known it was going to be the "one man car wreck" that it was, he says he would still have appeared on the show. He doesn't blame Oprah; he takes full responsibility for shopping the book as memoir when he hadn't actually written it as such.
American Masters has just produced a show on PBS, by the way, that is a much better reflection of Harper Lee's work than the one I just read. It airs this week on Georgia Public Radio, but not on KLRN. I look forward to seeing it when it airs locally.
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