Abstract for 2008 Honors Colloquium
Adam Miller
Literary and Cultural Studies
"Oprah's Book Club and the A Million Little Pieces Controversy"
The thesis explores the ways in which James Frey's embellished memoir, A Million Little Pieces, exposed the disengenously corporate nature of Oprah Winfrey's media empire. A Million Little Pieces was selected by Winfrey to be part of Oprah's Book Club in 2005, but the memoir has since come under fire for being largely fictionalized. The resulting scandal exposed not just questions of truth, but it exposed the methods Oprah Winfrey uses in marketing not just her products, but her entire media empire.
