James Frey's Memoir - a publicity stunt?

What do you think of this controversy over James Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces? Do you think it was all planned from the beginning? For instance: Write the book, get on Oprah, get caught for not telling 'the truth,' create a media frenzy, get on Larry King Live, sell millions more books. Not a bad formula!

It certainly has made me consider what I am going to write about in my next book about Europe & the U.S. Does everything have to be 'true'? If a memoir is based on memory, which is not reliable, then how can a memoir be a lie? Isn't the emotional content, or the 'lesson' the main point? Yes and no. Readers expect that a memoir will be the truth, and when it is not - even in part - they feel as if a contract has been broken between them and the author in whom they believed. This gets back to: Perhaps, it's all just a publicity stunt? In the U.S., it seems, no one is immune to (or beneath) creating a sensation and capitalizing off of it. It's a shame, really, because this does not usually happen by 'artists' in other countries. There is still some integrity left in the Arts in, say, Europe.

Article about Frey's book- yet another memoir 'scandal.'