Oy, I'm all Freyed out. Yet the news stories keep on coming. One of Frey's publishers has apologized, and now people are trying to file lawsuits, which just seems unbelievably ridiculous.

I will say this, however: As a person who partly makes her living telling the truth about her own experience, I can certainly understand the temptation to exaggerate sometimes. When it’s a tough day, and you feel like you can’t form a sentence, forming a non-truthful one seems like it would make things easier. The fact that Frey succumbed to this temptation—in a big way—might be looked upon by some with sympathy, especially since the poor guy’s been publically humiliated.

But I don’t have sympathy for him, beyond feeling badly that he has to be pilloried this way. (Might as well put him in the stocks and pelt him with stones.) It’s like Jayson Blair; I’m bipolar too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to file fake news stories. Being bipolar isn’t an excuse for Blair’s behavior, as he’s suggested.

Likewise, Frey’s being in recovery doesn’t persuade me he’s necessarily a victim. There are lots of people in recovery who don’t lie, who don’t allow the publishing industry to promote a book as truth when it’s a fabrication. There have to be standards, and personal responsibility.

Literary sins, however, get washed away pretty quick—faster, even, than journalistic ones. Frey’s book will remain popular, and despite his saying otherwise, he’ll probably publish another one within a year—something about what it’s like to fall from grace in the world of big-money publishing. Let’s hope someone fact-checks it this time.