There’s an elephant in the cramped, dank, subterranean crawlspace that is my corner of the blogosphere. It’s an elephant that’s been lingering around and taking up far too much space for nearly three weeks now, an elephant that happens to be dressed exactly like a Sensationalized Literary Scandal In On Which Everyone’s Been Weighing, And Heavily. But I haven’t, yet. Granted, 8,102,938,393 other people have, and continue to, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s 8,102,938,393 too many. No doubt, when the story broke nearly three weeks ago, you all followed this link (which, if it existed in the real world, would need duct tape and twine to hold it together, it’s been used so much recently) to the Smoking Gun and their exhaustive exposé of the man in question (I don’t really want to invoke his name too much; it could have a Candyman/Beetlejuice effect). And as soon as you did, I’m sure you all began waiting on tenterhooks, wondering when I was going to throw my hat into the blogging ring and offer my singular perspective, and then you’d have my opinion on the matter and therefore know what to think and what talking points to regurgitate at cocktail parties in order to sound erudite.

And the thing is, I wanted to write something, seeing as how the issue is inarguably relevant to Literature and Writing and Media, three capitalized words I spend a lot of time contemplating these days. But again, it seemed entirely superfluous when so many before me—wittier, more successful people like this guy and this gal—had already done a perfectly good job of summing up the absurdity of the whole issue. (And of course Gawker’s repository of Freynalia, including today’s Oprah appearance, offers a hilariously snarky recap of the whole dustup.) With so many pros on the case, it seemed not just unnecessary, but deleterious, for me to add my voice to the clamor.

Because here’s the thing. James Frey is not worth the time it takes me to type this sentence, much less this entire post. We’re just taking his bait. It’s like when you were young, and your parents told you to just ignore the schoolyard bully because all he wants is attention. (“Don’t you see? The more we bitch about James Frey, the more powerful he becomes! We’re giving him exactly what he wants!”) This is why, when the subject arises in conversations with friends and colleagues, I just kind of roll my eyes and shrug my shoulders in an easily-recognized semion for “I’ve got nothing to add.” And I really don’t. Simply hearing his name makes me so angry, and then so tired, that I just give up. Besides, there’s not a whole to lot to be said about the guy except the painfully obvious: he lied. He’s a liar. It’s just that simple.

A lot of media response to the issue referred to it as a controversy. And it is a controversy, I guess, in the sense that someone did something wrong and a lot of people are up in arms about it. But it’s not a controversy in the sense that there’s some kind of moral ambiguity to Mr. Frey’s behavior and subsequent outing as a fraud. For once, things are pretty unequivocally black-and-white: he lied. He’s a liar. As Mary Karr succinctly put it: “Distinguishing between fiction and non- isn’t nearly the taxing endeavor some would have us believe. Sexing a chicken is way harder.” James Frey broke the pact that all writers of non-fiction, implicitly or explicitly, make with their readers when those readers pick up a book and begin to read it, which is, simply: I will tell the truth. I may leave out some inconsequential details that don’t affect the story’s trajectory; I may compress time in the interest of creating a smoother narrative; I may change a name to protect someone’s privacy. But I will not alter the truth in a radical or openly mendacious way that nullifies this selfsame pact. Some of Mr. Frey’s apologists use the word “embellish” to describe what he did. They are categorically wrong, and I suspect that some of them know it. He didn’t embellish; he lied. There’s a difference. It’s not at all ambiguous.

I shouldn’t have to tell anyone who knows me very well that I’m not conservative or stodgy when it comes to literature; I’m a closet deconstructionist from way back, and I acknowledge and celebrate the permeability of certain borders between fiction and non-fiction, the instability of authorial intent, all of that. I’ll get stoned with you and talk about Plato’s cave, Wittgenstein’s broom, Derrida’s differance, Muriel’s wedding, etc. until we pass out on our copies of Saussure. In another venue, under different circumstances, we could talk about these things and how they relate to contemporary non-fiction, but this isn’t that time/place, and for us to have heady conversations about theory and aesthetics over wine and canapés (or more likely black & tans), the kind of discussions that are punctuated by exclamations like, “But really, what is truth?”—to do this in the name of James Frey would be giving him much more rhetorical currency and literary heft than he deserves.

It’s always nice, one could argue, when something like this thrusts literature into the common consciousness—sort of like the Harry Potter phenomenon, or Oprah’s previous clash with a writer whose initials were JF—and since it’s ostensibly now my vocation to write and teach writing, you’d think I’d be begrudgingly happy that this whole fracas, as sensationalized and hysterical and ultimately sordid as it is, has gotten people talking about literature and memoir. But I’m not, not really. I would love for people to talk about literature and memoir, often and in great numbers. By all means, let’s have that conversation about literature and memoir. But let’s please not have it because a malevolent person—and, lying or not, mediocre writer—clearly holds his readers’ credulity in such obvious contempt.

And if you’ve made it this far, you’re probably thinking: “You’re such a dorkus malorkus. You’ve not only violated the moratorium you just placed on discussing all things Frey; you’ve gone way overboard in devoting a greater word count to the issue than probably all but the most cathected commentators out there.” Well, that’s probably true, and I don’t really have a very good response to that. But if it helps keep down some of the bile that I begin tasting every time I see another big NYT article dedicated to the whole mess, maybe you’ll just have to indulge me.

Earlier this evening I went to hear Kaye Gibbons speak, and she had such incisive and pithy things to say about the issue, and was so witty and spot-on about calling Mr. Frey a massive tool in her charming North Carolina accent, and was just so disarmingly positive and well-spoken about literature in general, that it pretty much inspired me to come home, bloviate for about a thousand words, and then officially put the matter to rest for my own peace of mind, if nothing else. The elephant has left the room.