Re-Freyed

Revised Edition of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces to be Retitled An Indeterminate Number of Pieces Ranging in Size from Smallish to Really, Really Tiny.

 

NEW YORK (Ant Farmer's Almanac Newswire) Citing his televised admission, on The Oprah Winfrey Show and elsewhere, of "Inaccuracies," "Exaggerations" and "Totally made-up stuff" in his best-selling memoir A Million Little Pieces, Penguin Publishing has cancelled its contract with disgraced author James Frey. This is despite the book's having been written and published by Random House long before Frey signed on with Penguin.

Random House, meanwhile, mindful of the invaluable publicity generated by the uproar, is printing a second, "corrected" and retitled, paperback edition of Frey’s now-infamous book.

"The decision to rename this new edition was difficult because of the high recognition factor of the original," admits Random House spokesman Harlan Dervish, "But the veracity of everything in A Million Little Pieces was so questionable that even the number and size of the pieces was suspect."

"We considered but ultimately rejected Mr. Frey’s suggestions for a new title," Dervish continued, "Including, Okay, Maybe Not Quite so Many Pieces as I Said at First; More Pieces Than I Wanted to Count, Some of Which are Fairly Small; What's the Big Deal, It was a Best-Seller fer Crissakes; and The Fandom of the Oprah."

In a press release, Random House announced that it had settled on the name An Indeterminate Number of Pieces Ranging in Size from Smallish to Really, Really Tiny.

Along with its new title, the revised version of Frey's journey through addiction and recovery will feature a new final chapter on his writing about addiction and recovery, of being promoted by Oprah for his recovery then denounced by her for not having been addicted enough and how, finally, he recovered from that.

Because of Frey's propensity for more than total-recall, a fact-checker will be on hand during the editing process to verify each and every word of the new material as well as much of the punctuation.

The book is listed in Random House's summer catalogue and is expected to hit bookstores by Memorial Day weekend. Oprah Winfrey could not be reached for comment or a book jacket blurb.