Publishers Lunch reports the following:

Consumers posting on Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club message board indicate that Random House is providing refunds to buyers of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES who call their customer service line to complain in the wake of the unanswered charges made by The Smoking Gun earlier this week. One correspondent posts: “Tell them you wanted fact not fiction…. They are very nice and will tell you how to return the book for a full refund…”

This does not bode well at all. We can only hope against hope that Oprah will not shut out living authors from her book club as a result of this. Not that you can blame her if she does. If that happens, James Frey will become a literary pariah of galactic proportion. If I see him on the street, he’s definitely getting some rocks thrown at his head. I’m sure other authors and would-be writers will join me in my rock-lobbing efforts. It’s not that Oprah would actually choose our books for her club…it’s just the remote chance that she might. It’s the lottery, the shot in a kajillion. Still, a shot is a shot, and when you take away hope (especially from writers who eat rice cakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner), rocks are definitely in order.

My daddy used to say, “One monkey don’t stop no show.” My daddy was right about a lot of things, but I’m not so sure about this one.

This monkey might just burn the whole theater down.

Get your rocks ready, writers.

Previously: The Lo Zone: A Million Little Dashed Hopes