Bookninja notes that another memoirist's memories has been accused of fabrication.
I thought about the Frey phenomenon as I was reading Dry by Augusten Burroughs this weekend. I wondered how old the author was now and when all this took place. The book was published in 2003 but I figured Burroughs hadn't been a drunken advertising executive for some time--at least since Running with Scissors came out in 2002.
Still I couldn't place the era: He referred to fashion designers, ads, and such that I remember as being hot within only the last couple of years, but the book was supposed to cover a 10-year period and many of these references came at the beginning. Then I noticed the now-standard disclaimer about compressing events and creating composite characters.
I enjoyed Dry as much as anyone can enjoy reading about someone's struggle with the demon rum; Burroughs can be quite funny. But would I have enjoyed it so much if it were a novel?
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