This week I’ve been preoccupied with job applications, with reading, and with watching James Frey stare blankly at Oprah. More fascinating even than that was watching Thursday’s panel on Larry King Live talk about Frey and Oprah’s apology. The genre of the memoir has its defenders, and then it has its defenders who want Frey defenestrated. Take Carole Radziwill, best known for her memoir-from-the-entourage of John F. Kennedy, Jr., for instance, when Larry asks her about Frey’s My Friend Leonard (a second memoir published after A Million Little Pieces):

RADZIWILL: What happens to it? I don’t know. I think it continues to sell, which is really unfortunate because, you know, James Frey lied. Is that important for the country, no, God I hope not. Is it important to writers and publishers? Yes it is because in effect he has taken two spots in every non-fiction best-selling list across the country. And, it may seem trivial but it’s really not.

I mean this is a business. It’s no longer good enough just to write well. You have to get out there and you have to sell your story and you have to sell yourself as part of that story.

And there are two writers that aren’t on those lists because of him and those are two authors, and I’m not saying it’s me, I’m not saying it’s Jeannette, we had a lot of press and we were very lucky but there are two other writers who should be on that list and aren’t and they have great stories to tell and no one will hear about them and they did the hard work it took to really write a great memoir.

And maybe it seems trivial but it’s really not. The bottom line is this is a business and it’s not a very lucrative business because it’s really hard to sell books. People just aren’t buying books, so when this happens it’s really unfortunate for everyone.

Radziwill’s selfless activism on behalf of bestseller lists and the authors who depend upon them was on display for the rest of the show. Larry: Carole, what about cocaine addiction? Radziwill: Coke is great, Larry, but Frey really should be stripped from the New York Times list! He should be excused from Amazon, too. (Not a direct quote. Especially the cocaine part.) Count me as one skeptical of Radziwill’s altruism.

My suggestion to Frey, his agent, or his publisher: get Frey back on cocaine and make of the memoirs a trilogy. Title the third, How I Ruined Your Rehab, and How Oprah Ruined Mine.

And who could explain why I still can’t disabuse myself of the prejudice, no matter how many memoirs I read—and how I enjoy their reading!—that memoirists and their books are always too self-centered? Nevertheless, memoirs sell well, so to you aspiring memoirist, more power to you, and send me an advance copy.

But of course none of that explains the return of the Octopus of Mayhem. But the picture at right, and the accompanying story of the octopus that attacked a Canadian submarine does. Could it be divine retribution against the Maple Leafs for electing the conservatives?—No, that would be too obvious. He’s probably just indignant that James Frey is keeping his memoir off the NYT.

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