please stand up … please stand up ….<\/p>\n
If you at all follow literary events, then you have heard of JT Leroy: the child prostitute and drug addict become major hot novelist. There was such a buzz about Leroy about 5 years back that you would have thought Hemingway was reincarnated. An exciting new voice, a great life-story to work from – someone who was gritty, real, came from the outside, not a pampered writer’s workshop talent ….<\/p>\n
I haven’t read of Leroy’s work, but I still thought the story was kind of cool. Also, Leroy was YOUNG – barely out of adolescence, when this huge literary success came on him.<\/p>\n
Read this article in the Times about the latest in the life of JT Leroy<\/a>. Wow. It’s all been a hoax – or – it hasn’t been proven yet conclusively that there is no JT Leroy, but that article is pretty convincing. It looks like a woman named Laura Albert and her husband (who supposedly “adopted” JT Leroy and saved him from a life of prostitution) cooked up this character as a way to get theh attention of the literary world and get a book deal.<\/p>\n Here was the first inkling that Leroy might not be “real”. <\/a><\/p>\n JT Leroy is famously “reclusive”. He makes few appearances. I remember seeing pictures of him, at this or that event – sunglasses, head down … very cute and androgynous. Turns out, that it’s a woman who basically – is PRETENDING to be JT Leroy. A hired hand, basically, in this huge hoax.<\/p>\n FASCINATING.<\/p>\n It’s pretty awful, too – because Leroy was given a lot of financial support by writers (heavy-hitters like Mary Gaitskill, Mary Karr) – who wanted to support this new voice. Again, I haven’t read his novels – but the hype was all over the place. This wasn’t just the popular best-selling novelists singing his praises – Leroy had serious literary appeal – and serious writers were saying: “This is a very important new writer”, and that gave Leroy even MORE cache. In my book, anyway. If Mary Gaitskill says, “This guy can write!” then I am way more apt to believe her than, say, Nicholas Sparks. Just the sad and blunt truth. We’re talking about serious literary circles here – the people who have stories in The New Yorker, and stuff like that. This is where Leroy made his buzz. That’s how I took notice. This group of writers (and, actually, musicians, artists in general) wanted to make sure that Leroy continued to be able to write – that he was financially viable – so they would contribute money to him, as a way of support.<\/p>\n So back to the bad part of the story: These people have been duped (it looks like) by this Albert woman – who made sure (somehow) that all checks to JT Leroy were made out to her (because she was – in her fictional story – JT Leroy’s “legal guardian”) … Leroy also said (or – not Leroy – because it appears there IS no Leroy) – Leroy came out a couple of years ago and said he was HIV positive. More money just POURED into the coffers. I find this despicable. Whoever was the wizard behind the curtain in this hoax (but again – weirdly – the books got fantastic reviews, so SOMEONE is able to write in this scenario) – decided that the fictional author JT Leroy needed to have AIDS to make him … even more sympathetic? To have even more people donate money to support his literary career? Disgusting and cynical. To use a terrible disease in that way.<\/p>\n A lot of people are very angry right now. And rightly so.<\/p>\n But still: I’ll say this: it was a DAMN GOOD hoax. It has had people fooled for 6 years now. What a performance art piece! I’ve always had a little dream of doing something like that – hopefully without cheating people out of thousands of dollars – but I think hoaxes like this (and there are many, throughout history) are really really interesting. I think it could be quite freeing to write under an assumed identity – But to hoax the entire world, and hire someone to PLAY the fictional author? Now THAT is ballsy.<\/p>\n THERE IS NO JT LEROY. Amazing. I still can’t get over it!<\/p>\n That article gives great background to this whole hoax.<\/p>\n I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Nothin’ I love more than a big ol’ literary-world dustup!!<\/p>\n My jaw is still basically on the floor after reading that article! I was duped too! Warren St. John who wrote the article in The Times was duped. It was a damn fine performance art piece. It fooled everybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" please stand up … please stand up …. If you at all follow literary events, then you have heard of JT Leroy: the child prostitute and drug addict become major hot novelist. There was such a buzz about Leroy about … Continue reading