James Frey has a new book about the bible

I never read A Million Little Pieces. Memoirs don’t interest me usually so certainly fake ones won’t. I’ve never read anything that Oprah’s team deliberately chose to push on her gullible audience. No, I’ll amend that. I read a couple based on the allure of their dust-jacket summaries, not because some celebrity told me I’d like them.

Anyway, James Frey is back in the news with his upcoming book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, released via an art gallery for some reason. Maybe because gallery publications tend to be expensive? I see Amazon’s charging $50 for this thing and I quote their write up:

In The Final Testament of the Holy Bible James Frey, America s most controversial bestselling writer, has written the most compelling and provocative work of his career.

It’s a popular step for writers, this Jesus business.

Anne Rice raised more than a few eyebrows when she stepped out of the Gothic world she’d filled with dead yet eternal characters to write about a different dead yet eternal character. She’s since dropped the guise of being Catholic and Christian but I didn’t realize that she announced her break-up via Facebook. That’s funny, but maybe not that surprising considering how many people do become fans of famous people on there. What better podium for announcing such a thing these days?

William P. Young wrote The Shack, which was a huge bestseller in the Christian market a few years ago. That was less about Jesus and more a revamp of God, I think. Young wound up in a lawsuit over it because of the publishers and royalty arrangements, unfortunately, but he’s probably not suffering money-wise otherwise.

Dan Brown made buckets of money off The Da Vinci Code. It also wound up the subject of lawsuits, coincidentally, but those involved plagiarism and he was found innocent of those charges.

I’m trying to think of other authors who’ve gone this route for fame and fortune. That can’t be all of them.

I know Deepak Chopra did a novel about Mohammad that our library accidentally put a non-fiction number on. I don’t know who finally noticed the word “novel” on the cover and got that sorted out. We also had some fun figuring out where to shelve the manga versions of the Old and New Testaments, treat them like young adult fictional superheroes or like bibles? Accuracy won out on that in the end and they got numbered like bibles are. Where individual branches choose to shelve the things is ultimately up to them, though, so I expect some of the books wound up beside Spiderman anyway.