Book Review - Bright Shiny Morning

Writing books is not easy.  Everybody thinks they can do it, but most people fail or if they complete a book put out a subpar effort.  People who can string together two, three, four hundred pages of coherent stuff are incredibly talented.  I am not in that category.  I have tried and failed.  It is tough to connect the beginning of a book to the middle and the end and everything in between. 

As much I love James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning I also hate it.  There is no way James Frey got a book deal (as I speculate) with a complete version of this book as we know it today.  No way.  Honestly, I think he had a quarter or a half of the book written... someone liked it and gave him a deal.  Or he had a deal ahead of writing the book since he had a name, even if it was marred in controversy.  But he has gotten rich as a writer and I am not, so who's the hack here?

Bright Shiny Morning started out like it was about to be the best book I had ever read. I like Frey's poor grammar... the run-on sentences... the quirky style that almost seems overdone. It might sense in line with his description of a chaotic and insane place - Los Angeles. Not since Mike Davis has an author done such a great job of putting his finger on what the City of Los Angeles is all about. Frey captures the pain, the glory, the riches, the failures, the unfulfilled dreams and expectations, and best of all, the fronts that Los Angeles puts on and makes people put on. He gives LA a fair shake, unlike most other authors - bashing it when it deserves, but giving it the benefit of the doubt at other times.

At about the halfway point, though, Frey loses steam. The book is designed to be a jumble, but up until the midway point, you could still tell that Frey had a plan. Somewhere though, he stopped working off of an outline. I think he was just struggling to pump out the product and the reader can tell. The second half of the book is forced, amateurish, and poorly written - just not on purpose. Without the charm and tact of the book's first half.

Despite its shortcomings, and they will be obvious as Frey hooks and loses you within a couple of chapters, Bright Shiny Morning is worth your time. Its greatest contribution is Frey's handle on Los Angeles as a place where people go looking for something; often they don't find it, and even when they do, things are amiss. Frey nicely connects Los Angeles the place to its people -- looking at features urban planning types care about and showing their relevance to how everyday life in the city emerges. This is something others have tried and failed miserably at. With Davis, Frey joins good company in making sense out of what can be a seemingly spastic place.

Frey, though, cannot seem to resist falling victim to the false stereotypes of LA.  When telling the story of a woman who moved to LA from Manhattan, he puts her in a Silverlake crosswalk where she is hit by a bus.  The driver claims that he hit her because he did not see her, he simply is not used to seeing people walking in LA.  Frey, obviously, has never set foot in Silverlake.  Of course, he is not known for being the most accurate writer.