Frey does L.A. car culture with a million little pixels

James Frey, the writer famous for incurring Oprah’s great wrath with his ‘fictional memoir’ A Million Little Pieces, has now turned his attention to the City of Angels. Along with photographer Terry Richardson, Frey has produced Wives, Wheels, Weapons. It consists of three stories from Frey’s previous literary outing, Bright Shiny Morning, augmented with related photo essays from Richardson.

Setting up base camp at the Chateau Marmont, the pair trawled Los Angeles to get the right visual components.

“I was drawn to what is emblematic of L.A. car culture, the immersion of highways and being stuck on freeways. It was also the idea of L.A. culture, gang culture, east coast, west coast,”

says Frey. So that’s the wheels bit. As for the weapons, the cover shoot was done in a Los Angeles gun club. Photos for the wives section was shot at the house of John Melius, who wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now.

“The idea was just to do a cool book that would piss people off,”

says Frey. Wives, Wheels, Weapons has a limited run of 1,000 copies.

-- Colin Ryan

Photo: Amazon

Green motoring by the book

About now might seem like a good time to get a basic grounding on green cars and alternative fuels. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hybrid and Alternative Fuel Vehicles by Jack R. Nerad (published by Penguin) has been out for a year (so was probably written in 2006), but offers clear and unbiased explanations on things like E85, natural gas-powered vehicles, biodiesel, electric cars and possible future forms of automotive energy.

Nerad knows of which he speaks. He’s executive editorial director with Kelley Blue Book and so has the tech savvy combined with the writing skills. Over the course of 193 pages, he goes into the safety, reliability and running costs of several forms of 'green' transport, all the while displaying a journalistic impartiality, helping the reader negotiate the many shades of gray in this green issue. With people lining up to buy hybrids and finding the current price of gas excruciating, this kind of knowledge is good to have.

-- Colin Ryan

Photo: Amazon