James Frey, the fabulist whose memoir “A Million Little Things” was exposed as having been in many parts made up and exaggerated, has gotten an unspecified deal for a new novel, to be called “Bright Shiny Morning.”

Times story here.

WSJ story here.

Frey is a hugely uninteresting guy, but there are a couple of interesting things in the coverage. For example, there’s this in the NYT piece:

In a news release yesterday, HarperCollins announced that Jonathan Burnham, a publisher, had negotiated the deal for “Bright Shiny Morning.” Minutes before the release went out, the news was reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Times’s policy is to credit the original sources of news, but this one is either a) strained or b) mocking, I can’t decide which.

But it seems plain the Times was on the story as well; the piece, by Motoko Rich, says that Frey was “reached by telephone before the announcement” to respond to rumors he was selling a short-story collection. Frey dismissed the question, saying “I have never written a short story in my life.” The Times rather tendentiously notes he had published one–in a catalog to an LA art show last year.

More exasperating is a comment in the Times story from Nan Talese, who published Frey’s original bullshit book, and had her ass handed to her on a platter by Oprah Winfrey last year.

“I would have loved to see it [Talese said of the new Frey book], but I’m very glad that James has happily landed.”

“He made a mistake by exaggerating those things and not letting us know about it,” she said. “If it wasn’t a four-million-copy best seller, no one would have noticed you’ve made a mistake.”

Talese is using the word “exaggerate” to mean “made tons of stuff up out of whole cloth, including several of the most memorable parts of his book.” On the slow-motion car wreck that was Winfrey’s show on Frey, Talese, who as a book editor might be expected to be a bit more intellectually honest, came off similarly Clintonian.

Here’s the Smoking Gun’s original expose of Frey:

Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey’s book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw “wanted in three states.”

In addition to these rap sheet creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students. In what may be his book’s most crass flight from reality, Frey remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy’s third victim. It’s a cynical and offensive ploy that has left one of the victims’ parents bewildered. “As far as I know, he had nothing to do with the accident,” said the mother of one of the dead girls. “I figured he was taking license…he’s a writer, you know, they don’t tell everything that’s factual and true.”