The James Frey flap brings a large question to the genre of soul-healing literature: How much obligation do writers of confessional memoirs have to readers who are inspired by their stories?

"A Million Little Pieces":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307276902/qid=1136999328/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6415382-1829519?n=507846&s=books&v=glance was anointed by Oprah and went on to sell more than two million books. In describing his descent into addiction, Frey details three months spent in jail, the time a 12-year-old girl he helped was killed by a train, and other wild, intense tales that are turning out to be mostly false, according to documents found by "The Smoking Gun":http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html and an "investigation":http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/books/10frey.html?incamp=article_popular_3 by "The New York Times":http://www.nytimes.com/. Frey's publishers at Doubleday ""shrugged":http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/books/11memo.html" at the accusations today, saying that truth is a relative (and relatively mushy) concept when writing personal history. Others have agreed that it doesn't really matter.

But what does it mean for those of us who love––and are even transformed by––a good tale of bottom-scraping and redemption, especially when it's "true?” Many have found Frey's book deeply helpful. I am a memoir fan myself; I especially adore non-fiction by Mary Karr, Anne Lamott, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Maya Angelou, Vivian Gornick, and George Orwell. My life has been shaped by their voices and stories––Karr's "Cherry":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0141002077/qid=1136999068/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-6415382-1829519?n=507846&s=books&v=glance helped me accept my randy adolescent self; Erdrich's "The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060927011/qid=1136999095/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6415382-1829519?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 warmed me to the notion of motherhood; and "The White Album":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374522219/qid=1136999124/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-6415382-1829519?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 and "Slouching Toward Bethlehem":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374521727/qid=1136999124/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/104-6415382-1829519?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 by Didion cemented my early desire to become a writer.

If I were to discover that these works were not, to the best of the authors' ability, true-ish, I would certainly feel betrayed. Mainly because I have always felt––perhaps simply, naively––that if these people could get through their mishigas, then I could too. If Orwell could survive boarding school butt-whipping and still write "1984":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451524934/ref=pd_kar/104-6415382-1829519?n=283155 my smaller traumas need not be so disabling; if Lamott could make me laugh and cry with a harrowing story of boozing, maybe my pain could be useful too.