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Tuesday, January 10, 2006 Choice Quotes in the Matter of J.T. LeRoy, Who Turns Out Not to Be RealFirst, the facts: "In October, New York magazine ran an article by San Francisco novelist Stephen Beachy, arguing that LeRoy is not a former hustler from West Virginia but a woman in her 30s from Brooklyn named Laura Albert. [The New York Times confirmed the story yesterday that Albert was the ghostwriter; it also identified Mr. LeRoy's public persona as a woman called Savannah Knoop. Anyway:] After much sleuthing, Beachy concluded that the weight of the evidence -- including LeRoy's refusal to prove his identity by offering up a Social Security card or a passport -- showed he was a fraud."Now the raw meat: ... The expose, originally written for the San Francisco Bay Guardian (whose editors didn't think the story was ready for publication, so Beachy's agent placed it with New York)...And, Full disclosure: Chronicle Acting Deputy Managing Editor David Wiegand has edited some of LeRoy's fiction.And, Reached by telephone, Ms. Knoop said, "I don't need this in my life right now," before hanging up.And, "I actually edited a story, 'Harold's End,' by LeRoy, and spent hours on the phone -- with someone -- going through a typical line-edit," Eggers said.And, "The work of both Anthony Godby Johnson and J.T. LeRoy seems quite harrowing and moving when you don't know they're a fraud," Maupin said by phone last week. "When you go back and read it again, it reads like the most awful kitsch."A story of mine was once rejected by someone at the San Francisco Writers' Grotto for a public reading on the grounds that a similar JT LeRoy story -- featuring a homeless kid on Polk Street -- had just been read at the last reading. Should I sue? Or is it possible that I'm JT LeRoy? UPDATE: James Walcott has more. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:26 PM
Comments:
I was wondering if you'd seen this; it's on the front page of today's Chron, above the fold.
I'm really impressed at how you've gotten all these other people to cop to your hoax, J.T.
"People will read fiction about a gender-confused teenage or preteen parking-lot hustler -- but only if they can believe that what they are reading is true. Then they can celebrate the person as an artist while avoiding having to actually engage with art."
That is a great quote. e
I haven't read through all the links yet but this is completely perplexing, utterly absurd and really rather infuriating somehow. Are you telling me that none of the people who were all thinking that JT LeRoy is some kind of writing god had actually *seen* said person? Damn.
If you aren't JT LeRoy maybe you should start pretending to be. Maybe you could make up his gender-confused, street-walking little sister.
Um, JT LeRoy did go out in public. But before you laught at that photograph, remember there was an airtight cover story: LeRoy was painfully shy, so he wore an outrageous wig, hat, and glasses. Also, he never read his own stories in public, because one time at a reading he got so fucked up that he puked at the podium, and he didn't want to go through *that* again.
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I never read any of the books, not for any honorable reason; I just wasn't interested. But clearly it was the compelling LeRoy legends that had San Francisco's brightest on their knees. | |
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