James Frey wrote his new book in 57 days. He doesn’t want Oprah to read it

In many ways, James Frey is unlike other writers. He is unashamedly confident, an author who writes in a flurry (his new book Next To Heaven was written in just 57 days), and rarely edits his work.

Frey doesn’t read his manuscript after it’s submitted, nor does he read reviews. He is, by both design and circumstance, a publishing pariah. And yet, in one crucial way, he is exactly like every other writer on the planet. “The goal has always been to write books that change people’s lives,” he tells me via Zoom, holding two separate vapes, one in each hand. “That’s all I really wanted.”

The memoir covered Frey’s battles with drug and alcohol addiction.

By his own metric, Frey achieved that goal more than 20 years ago with the release of A Million Little Pieces, a book that changed at least two people’s lives — his own and Oprah Winfrey’s.

Published in 2003, the memoir covered Frey’s battles with drug and alcohol addiction, followed by a tumultuous stay in a Minnesota rehab. It was raw, painful, funny and heartbreaking. Absolute catnip for someone like Winfrey, who picked it as her official book club selection in September 2005.

At this time, Winfrey’s power as a cultural tastemaker was unrivalled, and A Million Little Pieces quickly became the No.1 book on Amazon, topping The New York Times Bestseller list for 15 straight weeks.

Critics lauded his “staggering genius” and Norman Mailer and Bret Easton Ellis endorsed him. As far as debut books go, it was all too good to be true, which became an issue when the investigative team at The Smoking Gun website claimed it was all too good to be true.

Oprah Winfrey interviews James Frey.Credit: AP

In 2006, the website published a six-week investigation, The Man Who Conned Oprah, which reported Frey had embellished or made up significant portions of his memoir, including details about his criminal record and treatment in rehab. Oprah’s revenge was swift, inviting Frey back onto her show for a public dressing-down - “You duped me, James!” - after which he kept a low profile for many years, relocating to France.

In 2011, following criticism for her overzealous response, Winfrey apologised to Frey for annihilating him live on air.

Long before cancel culture, Frey and Winfrey laid out the blueprint. First comes the cancellation, then comes the backlash to the cancellation, and eventually, the dust settles. Or does it?

While Frey admits to lying, he maintains that “about 85 per cent” of the memoir was true. However, when discussing the controversy, he remains coolly detached, explaining that his perspective has shifted.

“If you look at a page one of A Million Little Pieces, it’s clearly manipulated information, right?” says Frey. “I long said I’ve changed everybody’s name, I changed identifying characteristics, but the problem was I blew up the rules of publishing.”

Frey’s chicken-pox mugshot, taken by the Berrien County Sheriff’s Office in Michigan in 1988.Credit: Screenshot

Frey points to the recent rise of autofiction, a genre that blends elements of autobiography and fiction, as proof that the punishment didn’t fit the crime. “My book didn’t fit into their classification system, so they got mad. Say what you want about A Million Little Pieces, it’s still read, it’s still purchased, and it’s still an iconic part of culture.”

Frey, 55, is not one for life lessons, but if the encounter with Winfrey taught him one thing? “Writing is not about making a f–king talk show host happy,” he says.

James Frey took just 57 days to write Next to Heaven, a murder-mystery set among the bored ultra-rich in Connecticut.

Instead, these days, he prefers to entertain himself with his work, which was the driving inspiration behind his latest novel, Next To Heaven, published by Authors Equity.

The plot centres on a group of uber-wealthy friends, living in the fictional gated community of New Bethlehem in Connecticut (based on the real town of New Canaan, where Frey has lived since 2013), whose collective boredom inspires them to host a swingers party. Their perfect lives are turned upside down when one of the guests turns up dead, kicking off a classic small-town, big mystery, whodunit.

In Next To Heaven, everyone is beautiful, rich and awful. Hedge fund traders, bitcoin bros and trophy wives, sleeping with each other one day, gossiping about each other the next. The book slots neatly into the “eat-the-rich” genre that has dominated popular culture; TV series such as Succession, The White Lotus, and more recently, Your Friends & Neighbours have fuelled our fascination with the 1 per cent. Unsurprisingly, he’s already sold the TV rights.

“I enjoy those series as a consumer, but I wanted to take people further behind the curtain, show them that money is the most potent drug on the planet; it wreaks the most havoc and does the most damage,” he says.

“I live in a highly insulated, heavily protected bubble filled with some of the wealthiest people in the world,” adds Frey, who describes himself as the poorest motherf---er in the area. “A town of 19,000 people with somewhere between 20 and 40 billionaires. And when you can have and do anything you want, you look for bigger thrills.”

Given his reputation, he’s quick to clarify the characters are not based on New Canaan’s billionaire set; instead, they just “showed up”. “There are always two or three books dancing around in my head, and when one of them starts to assert itself, the characters just show up.”

This is a side-effect of his curious creative process, driven by what Frey labels “the fury”, an intense and self-destructive streak that he manages through a combination of therapy, medication and meditation.

“When I’m not writing, I have all these systems in place to manage it, but when I start writing, it all has to stop. I stop taking my daily antidepressants, I stop meditating, I usually walk every morning and night, I stop that too. Then I can tap into this reservoir of emotions and unleash myself.”

He says he spent up to 16 hours a day at his desk, and the book was completed in just 57 days. “I only write one draft of a book, and I don’t use outlines,” he says. “Contractually, I have what we jokingly call the ‘You get what you get, and you don’t get upset’ clause, which means the publisher has to accept what I give them,” he says.

Self-help with a side of cigarettes. James Frey at his house in New Canaan, Connecticut.

You get what you get, and you don’t get upset might also describe Frey’s response to the book’s critical reception. Reviews have been mixed. The New Yorker praised his prose as “endearingly excitable,” but ultimately concluded, “James Frey’s new cancelled-guy sex novel is as bad as it sounds.” Meanwhile, Kirkus Reviews raved about his return, saying, “Frey’s literary affectations don’t get in the way of a good time”.

Either way, Frey positions himself as genuinely unmoved.

He’s rich, he’s happy, he’s written a book that changed his life, for better or worse. “What is anybody going to say about me that hasn’t already been said? What insult? What criticism? It’s been 20 years, and I’m still giving them the finger and doing what I do best.”

James Frey’s Next To Heaven (Allen & Unwin) is out now.

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