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Embattled author James Frey defended his best-selling memoir on Larry King's CNN talk show Wednesday, saying while he may have embellished some of his past in A Million Little Pieces, he stood by the "essential truths" of the book. And in a last-minute telephone call to the show, Oprah Winfrey, who made the memoir her book-club pick for October, proclaimed her support for Frey for the first time since the book came under fire this week.
"This is a truthful retelling of my story," Frey said. "The primary focus of the book is not crime, but drug and alcohol addiction."
Frey's appearance came three days after investigative website thesmokinggun.com published a 12,000-word expose accusing Frey of embellishing and fabricating his criminal past. Based on a six-week investigation of police and court records and interviews with law-enforcement personnel, the site found few documents or sources to back Frey's claims of extended jail time and more than a dozen arrests.
But Frey, 36, told King that only 18 pages of his 432-page memoir were in dispute, an "appropriate ratio for a memoir." He said there was a "great debate on what a memoir should serve: the story or some kind of journalistic truth."
Frey, accompanied for part of the interview by his mother, Lynne, said: "I've been shocked by the furor that's erupted. I don't know any memoir in the history of publishing that's been so carefully vetted so long after publication."
Winfrey said that the controversy is "much ado about nothing" and that the book's message still resonates with millions of readers. She said she would continue recommending the book. She said she was "disappointed by the controversy, because I rely on the publishers to define the category the book falls into and the authenticity."
Winfrey's latest endorsement could likely keep Pieces a strong seller. (Frey's follow-up, My Friend Leonard, is No. 6 on USA TODAY's best-seller list; Pieces is No. 1.)
Doubleday, the Random House publishing subsidiary that released Pieces in hardcover, said it would offer to refund readers if they had bought Pieces directly from the publisher -- the same standard refund it offers on all its books. But spokeswoman Alison Rich said that so far there had been few calls from readers.
Major booksellers are not reporting returns. "It's still our No. 1 book," says Barnes & Noble spokesman Bob Weitrak. Pieces remains online retailer Amazon's top-selling book. As far as returns go, "we haven't heard of any yet," spokeswoman Patty Smith says.
A Warner Bros film based on Pieces remains in development.
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