James Frey, NEXT TO HEAVEN: A Novel

[2:03]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens. Welcome to Totally Booked where I get to talk to my favorite authors and hopefully yours too. Today, we are so lucky to have James Fry, who is back on the podcast.

[2:17]James Frey: Yay. Thank you for having me. Here.

[2:22]Zibby Owens: I'm gonna read a little bit about the author here. Okay. James was called America's most notorious author by Time Magazine and the bad boy of American literature by The New York Times. He has written multiple global bestsellers, including A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shiny Morning, and The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. He has sold more than 30,000,000 books, and his work is published in 42 languages. He lives in a small town in Connecticut, and the book is next to heaven, which is not the cover. This is the arc. Congratulations.

[3:02]James Frey: Thank you. The cover's way dirtier when you actually get to see the real cover.

[3:08]Zibby Owens: I was just saying that, you know, the fact that we're giving out books to everybody in this audience, just it should come with a a rating warning. Just anyway,

[3:18]James Frey: just just throw it at me. What rating are you giving me? I don't know. No. Like, you know Like an NC 17

[3:24]Zibby Owens: or a triple x? Which one do I get? Don't listen on Audible in the car with your kids kind of like, you know, that's all. People should know. Okay. James, tell everybody what what is this book about?

[3:37]James Frey: The book is about wealth. The book is about money. The book is about how how how money I I believe that money is the most addictive drug on the face of the planet. It is the most addictive, it is the most destructive, and it is the most damaging. I also happen to live in what, from 1880 to '9 2015 was the wealthiest town in The United States and is currently the second. And and I'm not claiming I'm poor, but I I wrote a book about rich people and about sort of the insulated bubble that that that wealth exists in in in contemporary America and and and sort of what goes on within those insulated bubbles. The one I live in, New Canaan, Connecticut, is not particularly unique. There are these little bubbles all over the country. The plot of the book is it's a murder mystery that revolves around a swingers party at a billionaire's house. Right? Bored, rich people decide they wanna fucking do some crazy shit, and and they don't think that there might be repercussions. Or maybe they know there are gonna be repercussions, and that's why they do it. But, you know, it's it's supposed to be a funny, sharp, dangerous, highly entertaining book. I wrote it when somebody in Hollywood asked me to a producer asked me to read Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins. And I read it, and I thought it was spectacular. I I'd never read Jackie Collins, but I loved it. I thought it was funny and bold and dirty and actually very true to the culture out there in certain ways. The book has certainly aged. But then I read a couple more Jackie Collins books. And then I read a couple Danielle Steele books, and they were fucking good. And they're entertaining and funny and cool. And I was like, well, what would it look like if I wrote a book like that? Right? A funny, entertaining soap opera. The difference is I have the freedom of being able to be, because I am America's most notorious author, I have the freedom to do whatever I want, and I have the freedom to make the book as bold and as dirty and as dangerous as I want. And that's what I did.

[5:58]Zibby Owens: Yes, he did.

[6:03]James Frey: I would have said, yes, okay, it's about wealth. That's true. But it's about marriage. It's about relationships and It's about I mean, listen, I write books about human things. I write books about love and art and sex and human emotions. When I write a book, the goal is never to to write a book. To it's to create something, to string words together in ways that provide a reader with an experience that they have never fucking had before. Right? I I try to make books that are unlike anything that exists. I try to write I I don't try. I do write in a way that's absolutely singular. If you read a page of any book I've written, you know it's me. And so, yeah, it's it's it's the same thing I do in in other ways, just cloaked in something else. But but the goal is from the moment a reader starts reading it till the moment they stop for them not to be able to put it down, stop thinking about it, stop talking about it, stop telling their friends about it. I I I seek to always overwhelm a reader with with language, with emotions, with virtuosity, with boldness. And that's what I tried to do here. I I just made it a little probably a little lighter and funnier than the other books I've written. It's definitely not the final testament of the holy bible.

[7:36]Zibby Owens: Well, stylistically, there are some things you do every time. Like, you don't You have a thing against quotation marks, which punctuation, which is great. You repeat words every so often to, like, drive them home. You It's very poetic in a way, how you narrate,

[7:52]James Frey: essentially. Yeah. I mean, the the the goal the goal is to write a lot of what I do comes from art. Right? My education is much more in art than anything else. I'm a self taught writer. And so I don't follow rules. A lot of what I do is is very specifically designed to do certain things to the to the reader. And it mimics language, but not written language. Right? When we speak, we don't have all these fucking rules. I don't put quotation marks around shit when I talk. I don't say, well, I'm gonna say and then say it. I just talk. And so in my books, I remove the artifice of all that shit that we're supposedly required to use when we write, but doesn't do anything but slow a book down, make it more cumbersome, diminish the reader's experience. You know, we live in a world that's fast. We live in a world where we're bombarded with information, where we have very little time to to do or think or pause. And literature and art should always be a reflection of the time we exist in, and mine is. I I write fast. I bombard you. I overwhelm you. I don't give you a chance to take a fucking breath. It's bam, bam, bam, bam. And so all of the things that I do stylistically are designed to do things to the reader. There are no paragraph indentations because that half second it takes for your eye to move slows you down. Right? There are no quotation marks because they're they're unnecessary. They're cumbersome. They slow you down, and they don't in any way mimic actual language. It's just some arbitrary bullshit somebody said we have to do. Well, I I don't accept it. So I wrote, you know, the way I write.

[9:48]Zibby Owens: It's like the ultimate rebellion.

[9:50]James Frey: I don't know if it's rebellion. It's it's it's trying to do something unlike anything else. It's trying to be singular. The greatest artists, the greatest writers, the greatest musicians, the greatest businessmen, the greatest businesswomen are absolutely singular people who altered the world because of what they did and how they did it. And that's The goal is is for me as a writer and an artist, it's to leave the world differently. It's to write in a way that's unlike anything ever anyone's ever seen. It's so that when a reader picks up my book, like I said, I don't want them to stop. And when they're done with it, I want them to say, I can't believe he did that. I can't believe he writes like that. I can't believe he says what he says. And I can't believe he does it without apology. That was the coolest fucking thing I've ever read. That was the most fun I've ever had with a book. It was the most intense reading experience I've ever had with a book. And and that's the goal. And there shouldn't be rules or

[10:57]Zibby Owens: impositions placed upon me. And when they are, I don't accept them. So I know we talked about this when I talked to you about Katerina a few years ago, and I know this question has gotten you in trouble in the past. But is this true at all?

[11:12]James Frey: So I I I get this question a lot, and I'm getting a lot now. I'll say a few things. Truth is a subjective word. Right? And I've been saying that for thirty years, and suddenly the rest of the world understands what the fuck I'm talking about. Right? We have fact, and a fact is a documentation of a verifiable event. Truth is however anyone interprets that event. And you and I will interpret this event differently. I think we'll both think it's cool because I I You're an old friend, and I adore you, and I'm happy to But be everybody else here will interpret however they want. And that's what truth is. It's like love and God, man. We all have our own. Okay. And and factual? And for this for for this book for this book, I I just say what I always say, which is if a publisher wants to publish me as nonfiction, what happens is journalists and readers, some readers, not many, but mostly journalists and and people in the media tear it apart to figure out what's not true. And if I write a novel, they tear it apart to try to figure out what is true. And the point of what I do, the subjective nature of how I fuck with the word truth, which is different than the word fact, is that I don't allow you to know. Right? I I think of what I do as a painting. Like, when you look at a painting, do you say, well, painter, is that a non fiction painting or is that a fiction painting? You don't. You say that is a work of art and I am going to interpret it how I feel I should. I'm going to interpret it in what it does to me, in what it makes me think and feel, in in how it changes me, or how I can reject it easily. And that's how I think of the books I write. Other people can call them whatever the fuck they want, and it's it's meaningless to me. I write books. I make art with words. I tell stories that are designed to thrill and terrify and turn on and break readers. Right? I I I I try to do things, like I said, so so that when you're finished with the book, I read. And I don't know if any of you have read my books. I'm gonna guess you probably have. But when you're done with the book that I read that I write, I don't want you to be the same. And I don't want you to think of books to be the same. And I don't want you to think of reading to be the same. And I want you to hold everything else you ever read to the standard that I fucking set. Right? I I I want you to say, you know what? That was great, but it wasn't James fucking Fry. Right? And I did that with this book. Like, I don't write a lot. Part of that is because writing takes part of me away. Part of it is because I'm isolationist and solitary and very private. And part of it is because I only write when I'm ready to fucking bring it. Right? I'm not gonna be a writer who just pumps shit out to get a paycheck or to get my name in a newspaper. I I write shit when I'm ready to bring what I've got. And, you know, I think with every book I've written, I brought it, and I think I brought it this time. It's a little different. It should be more fun. It should be more laughable. It's way way dirtier. But I think if you've read anything I've written in the past and you've enjoyed it, you'll you'll dig this. Probably more. Hopefully, find new readers and hopefully I bring new viewers to your podcast with all the crazy shit that I say.

[15:17]Zibby Owens: Okay, mental exercise of where I cannot put this podcast. No, I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. The the book deals a lot with disappointment. All the characters are really disappointed in the way their lives have turned out in some way, whether it's the choice of spouse or what they're doing or just their life in general. Nobody is overly happy with who they are. And I was just wondering, are you disappointed with your life? No. Very much the opposite.

[15:47]James Frey: But I I have a great life. I have a life that I have built very in very specific ways to to to to bring myself the peace that that is important to me. I live in a black house at the end of a dead end road in the woods. Right? I meditate. I read. I write. I listen to tunes. I look at art, and I hang out with my children. I'm a father of three. I think I've had a dream life. I've had I've had the life that when I was young, I I I used to read about other people having. And I I I would say, holy shit. For all the madness of my life, I've had a crazy life. I had addiction very young. I had I had problems with the law very young. I had insane fame. I had insane controversy. I was married to a woman I loved for a long time. I have three children I love. I met all kinds of cool, crazy people. I've had the the the life of my fucking dreams for all the good and for all the bad. Like, it's what I signed up for, and it's what I chased, and it's what I dreamed of. So I have no no regrets. You know, people ask that a lot. Like, do you regret? And I and I always say no. And if you look back at the earliest interviews I've ever given, I always said this I said the same thing I will say today, which is I came into this to be the most controversial, most influential, most widely read writer of my time. Right? You can look at data and ask if I did it or not. That'll tell you one story, but the real story won't be told while I'm here. Right? History and time will decide if I pulled it off. But that's always been the goal. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

[17:42]Zibby Owens: Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and 365 returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zippy.

[20:23]Zibby Owens: So with the characters in the book, should we take away that

[20:30]James Frey: because a lot of them end up making changes. And of course fiction is like the illustration of change. I mean, listen, I will say that to to get back to the disappointment, I got sidetracked. I I live in this incredibly wealthy place with these people who have all the money in the world. And I don't say money's bad. I don't think money's bad at all. But I see the disappointment that they feel in their lives and and largely because we I live in in an in an environment with the some of the highest achieving people in the world, some of the wealthiest people in the world, some of the most a type people in the world. And they've they've done extraordinary things, and they're still not happy. And and and there's also a theme in the book of more, more, more, more, more. And you're not gonna find happiness. You know, there's a saying from the Tao Te Ching, which four thousand years old and it and it is, If you chase after money, your heart will never unclench. And I think that's a theme of the book that that people have extraordinary means and assets and they're still not happy with the life they live. I do think that I see a lot of disappointment that I meet and see people all the time. I'm like, why can't you smile? Why are you still working? Why do you you have $400,000,000. Why aren't you spending every second you can with your 12 year old son? And I see these things. And and I don't directly comment them on that, but one of the things I've also said for a long time about what I do and how I write and why I write what I write is my job as an artist is to hold a mirror up to the society I live in. And I hold that mirror up, and I don't pass judgment on what I reflect. I don't generally interpret it for people. I don't tell them what it should mean and what it should wouldn't shouldn't mean. I hold up a mirror, and I tell them to look at it. A lot of times it's real uncomfortable for people to look at it. A lot of times it makes them feel not particularly good things. And that's all I've done here again is I've held a mirror up to the society that I live in. And I find the society I live in, like the book, I hope to be, filled with extraordinary wealth and privilege. I I find it to be utterly absurd. I find it to be terrifying. I find it to be thrilling. I find it to be humorous. I find it to be ridiculous and terrifying and sad. And so hopefully, the book is all of those things. Hopefully, it makes everybody who reads it feel all of those emotions. And

[23:12]Zibby Owens: it's just me holding a mirror up. My How do you think it's gonna go over? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. How do I think it's gonna go over Say, with the how do think it's gonna go over, like, the in the neighborhood? You have the two grocery stores in town here as you're pushing your cart getting, you know, lettuce.

[23:28]James Frey: I mean, it's been interesting. Certainly, when when the book first got announced, people around town started talking about it. A a woman I know who works at the bookstore in New Canaan is here today, and and and you can ask her. But, yeah, everywhere I go in New Canaan now, people, like, ask me questions or they do the same thing. Who's it based on? Who's it based on? I'm like, fucking no one, man. I hope it I hope it it stirs it the town a little. The town needs it, man. Do you agree? I agree. Am I am I accurate in my description that people like, if I go to town, people stop me and talk to me about it, and I don't say much. I'm like, It'll be out in June, man. Give it a read. Come come by the library. I'll be giving a talk. I hope it stirs everyone everywhere who reads it. Right? Not just the town I live in. I hope it sells a billion copies. I hope everybody reads it. I hope everybody loves it. Will they? No. Will it sell a billion copies? No. But, like, I can't control any of that anymore. Right? Now it's in the world, I'm doing this kind of stuff. I haven't done this kind of stuff in a long time. I think you were the only person I spoke to for Katarina in the in The United States. I hope the book does well. I have a publisher that I love who's been nothing but a dream. We'll see. I know it's not the last of them. Right? I sort of detoured and went a bunch did a bunch of things. I was a CEO twice, and I I had big fancy jobs. But I missed being a writer. I missed being alone in a room with an empty screen in front of me. I missed, at the end of the day, seeing that that screen wasn't empty anymore. I missed the challenge of writing books. I missed the intensity of writing books. I missed the fever dream of the experience of writing the books. That's almost why I do it more. I can pontificate on all this bullshit, but at this point in my life, I write books because the experience of writing for them them for me is like this deeply personal, deeply intense, like magical thing. I've said before, I don't read books that I write. I've never read a book that I've written. My memories of my books are are not the words on the page, but the experiences I had writing them. And each of them has been very very different. And I describe them usually with with single words. So A Million Little Pieces is probably the book people in this room have read. And I describe that book as as a long scream. Some guy screaming bloody fucking murder for as long as he can. I describe this book as a little giggle. Right? That's what it was. I sat at home and I listened to great tunes and I was in a comfortable chair and I my house is mostly glass. I looked out at, like, these beautiful trees and I literally listened to the birds sing and I put on music and I wrote, and I laughed. And I I did things, like, simply because I can, and because they made me laugh, and because they made me feel good. There's there's this weird it's been written about now a few times, this weird poem in the book, Oh, Connecticut. I don't really remember what I said. I wrote about, like, trees and birds and shit. But just to do that, I I I don't remember what I wrote, but I remember when I was writing it. And I was sitting in this chair, and it was probably two in the morning. And I was just high from working so long and staring at a screen. I'd probably been working for fourteen or sixteen hours or something. And it's at the beginning of a chapter, and I had finished this chapter at, like, two in the morning. And I thought, oh, Connecticut. And so I just kept writing, and it was just delicious. And I hope when readers read the book that it's just fucking delicious.

[27:48]Zibby Owens: By the time you get to that, that's pretty far along. You've already interspersed the chapters with these short excerpts that seemed so real about the town that I was like, should I be googling New Bethlehem? I mean, I live in New York City. Have I never heard of this place?

[28:02]James Frey: I mean, the town is New Canaan, Connecticut. Right? I changed it to New Bethlehem to give myself the freedom to fuck around. Right? Even I've I've changed it. You're like, well, what's real? Imagine if I had called at New Canaan and some motherfucker's gonna come up to me while I'm trying to buy, like, you know, shampoo. And they're gonna be like, you got it wrong. Waveney Park's Trail is this, not this. So I called it New Bethlehem, and when people wanna complain, I'm just gonna like lift the fingers and be like, fuck off, man. It's a book.

[28:34]Zibby Owens: Speaking of the trail, I love how you have, Devin and Belle who are, like, regrouping on everything sordid and salacious that happened the night before, and they're sharing all of their stories. And they kept passing other people up being like, oh, hi, Val. Hi, Roz. And then, like, wait thirty seconds. Keep going.

[28:54]James Frey: Hi, Rosalie. Hi, whoever. It's how it works at the parks in New Canaan. We have these huge parks. We have a park there that's almost as large as Central Park. It's called Waveney. It's a Lapham, the family that founded Texaco had a 700 acre estate that they donated to the town and their trails, and I walk it all the time. If any of you follow me on Instagram, and I don't presume that you do, but if you do, you would have seen yesterday morning, I posted a video of me and my friend Mordecai Rubenstein, who's a a very well known fashion dude walking in Waveney Park. And literally, we do the same shit. We're like fucking gossiping and and we see people we know. I'll be like, Morty. And we look up and we go like, hey. What's up, man? And then we keep fucking going. And the women do it too. We all do it. It's like you have your bullshit, your walking buddies. I walk alone most of the time, but like probably once or twice a week. My girlfriend who's not in in the country right now, she walks with me a lot, but when she's gone, But me and Morty were walking, doing the same thing. Right? It's it's it's what happens there. I mean, are a lot of things in the book. The gossip, which I call the tea. Was gonna say your your Greek chorus of voices. The check. You told him, and he told her, and didn't Literally how it works. Right? New Canaan's a town of 17,000 people. If this statistic is still accurate, I think there are 41 billionaires in a town of seventeen one 17,000 people. It's it's an extraordinary sort of bubble, and and information moves in that bubble. Not in ways that are probably any different than the world or other towns, but, like, I I just thought I was funny. So I tried to write funny weird shit about how it works. Janie tells June. June tells Amy. Amy tells Mary. Mary tells Alice. Alice tells. Right? And the story gradually gets twisted with each telling of it as we were discussing truth earlier. Right? But yeah, I tried to, again, hold a mirror up to the town. That's where I live. And and and I will say the people who have A lot of the people who have read it in the town, I don't think there are that many, maybe 20. And we, again, we can we can ask, generally think that it's pretty accurate reflection of the place. Would would you agree? Yes. Right? One of the one of the people I had read it, one of the my son's one of my son's closest friends is the son of of one of the very high ranking police officials in town. He was literally the first person to read it in town. And I gave him the book, and I was like, check this out, man. Let me know what you think. He called me maybe a week later. He was like, I fucking loved it. And he goes, half the town is gonna pat you on the back and shake your hand, and half the town's gonna think you're a piece of fucking shit. And I sort of giggled and I was like, perfect, man. Just the way I like it. Jave, thank you so much. Thank you. It's so good to see you again. Thank you all for coming. And if you read my book, I hope you dig it. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you. And hey, we should all thank Zibby. Books books and and culture are are are fading, and and to have somebody who's so passionate as a writer, to have somebody who's so passionate about what we do and and and and for so many writers, you have done so much. And just as a writer, I say thank you for all you do.

[32:41]Zibby Owens: Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.