Fabricating memoirist turned novelist James Frey took the stage at Blender Theater on Tuesday for a reading of Bright Shining Morning, his critically disagreed-over debut attempt at (pure) fiction. In between the jazz accompaniment from pianist Eric Lewis and the slide show from pervy photog Terry Richardson, Frey found the time to field questions from the audience. Someone asked if he ever had trouble coming up with material. "Writer's block is for chumps," he responded. "To me this is a job, like being a banker, or a teacher. You never hear of banker's block."

Hmm. We've never actually never been bankers before and thus don't know firsthand, but banking acquaintances tell us that Frey is (surprise!) full of shit.

"Try fixing Excel spreadsheets in pitch books for 16 hours a day and then tell me there's no such thing as banker's block," a 25-year-old analyst at Lehman Brothers tells us. A second-year analyst at Morgan Stanley concurs: "I suffer from banker's block every single morning I wake up to do this job. That's why God invented Red Bull."

Still, a one-time investment banker who left cubicle life for the cushier confines of the literary world agrees with Frey. "I think this [the Post] is taking it a bit out of context," says former J.P. Morgan analyst-turned-Mergers and Acquisitions scribe Dana Vachon. "I was there, and he was only saying that he gets up and writes every day."

So you didn't become a novelist because you were suffering from banker's block? "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's?" Vachon responded. Well, unless you work at Bear Stearns.