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| Frank Rich |
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Biography Biography Rich is the former film and television critic at Time magazine. His memoir is Ghost Light (2000); selected drama reviews are collected in Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for the New York Times (1998); and his latest book is The Greatest Story Ever Sold (2006). Rich lives in Manhattan. "Revered, reviled, and always rich...He's a man of many words and minces none of them."—NOW with Bill Moyers From "Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito," New York Times op-ed, January 2006 If James Frey hadn't made up his own life, Tom Wolfe would have had to invent it for him. The fraudulent memoirist is to the early 21st century what Mr. Wolfe's radical-chic revelers were to the late 1960's and his Wall Street "masters of the universe" were to the go-go 1980's: a perfect embodiment of the most fashionable American excess of an era. Oprah Winfrey, the ultimate arbiter of our culture, has made clear, no one except pesky nitpickers much cares whether Mr. Frey's autobiography is true or not, or whether it sits on a fiction or nonfiction shelf at Barnes & Noble. Such distinctions have long since washed away in much of our public life. What matters most now is whether a story can be sold as truth, preferably on television. The mock Comedy Central pundit Stephen Colbert's slinging of the word "truthiness" caught on instantaneously last year precisely because we live in the age of truthiness. At its silliest level, this is manifest in show-biz phenomena like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, juvenile pop stars who merchandised the joy of their new marriage as a lucrative MTV reality series before heading to divorce court to divvy up the booty. But if suckers want to buy fictional nonfiction like "Newlyweds" or "A Million Little Pieces" as if they were real, that's just harmless diversion. It's when truthiness moves beyond the realm of entertainment that it's a potential peril. As Seth Mnookin, a rehab alumnus, has written in Slate, the macho portrayal of drug abuse in "Pieces" could deter readers battling actual addictions from seeking help. Ms. Winfrey's blithe re-endorsement of the book is less laughable once you start to imagine some Holocaust denier using her imprimatur to discount Elie Wiesel's incarceration at Auschwitz in her next book club selection, "Night." This isn't
just a slippery slope. It's a toboggan into chaos, or at least war. As
everyone knows now—except for the 22 percent, according to a recent
Harris poll, who still believe that Saddam helped plan 9/11—it's
the truthiness of all those imminent mushroom clouds that sold the invasion
of Iraq. What's remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in
almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly
as Professor Marvel in "The Wizard of Ox"—FEMA's heck of
a job in New Orleans, for instance—we remain ready and eager to be
duped by the next tall tale. It's as if the country is living in a permanent
state of suspension of disbelief. Selected
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Benaroya
Hall, 7:30 p.m.