On Hoaxing

Has anyone out there read anything by JT Leroy, the author of (among other things) this year's big literary hoax? I haven't, because the sort of stuff LeRoy was writing is exactly the sort of stuff that generally doesn't appeal to me (stories about drugs, tortured family dysfunction, street life, etc.) unless it's handled with a light, or manic, touch (I love Augusten Burrough's Running With Scissors because of his voice, not because of his horrifically dysfunctional upbringing). It's interesting to me that so many of these hoaxes--James Frey, Leroy, Janet Cooke--involve people writing about the most sordid, seamy underbelly of society. It appears that some people think these stories are more authentic by virtue of their subject matter, and thus the fall from grace is even farther when they're revealed to be false. Of these three, I think Leroy's hoax (which was less about what "he" was writing than about who "he" was) is the most excusable--I don't really get the big flap, to be honest. Frey and Cooke were both writing what purported to be truth: Frey was writing a memoir, Cooke, a feature for the Washington Post. Leroy's work was (I believe) always labeled as "fiction"--what was a hoax was the character of Leroy "him"self.

Leroy appears to have been perpetrating a weird sort of performance art: for several years a whole family (Laura Albert, her boyfriend Geoffrey Knoop, and his half-sister Savannah Knoop) were "Leroy"--Albert did the writing and played Leroy's handler, Savannah played Leroy on those occasions when a public appearence was required. Since Albert was based in San Francisco, I've been watching this whole thing play out for the last year or so: articles about the reclusive author, speculation about who "he" really was, etc. etc.. The ruse appears to have started as an odd sort of performance art, fueled as it went on by envy and panic and the desire to make friends with celebrities. Leroy's friendships with various writers and artists began as phone calls; they celebrities morphed into mentors; now a number of them are feeling used. Still, comments like "Laura Albert is a traitor to writing itself, specifically to memoir. ... It's such a slap to the artists who really are toiling away to create meaning from the hardships of their live. It turns the redemptive quality of a lot of writing into a total farce," seem to me pretty over the top. Of course, I wasn't one of the people who was cozzened.

So I'm wondering: anyone read any of Leroy's work? Any thoughts on it? Because I'd love to know whether the flap is about someone who couldn't publish what she wrote without dressing up as a tortured street kid, or someone who wrote well, and conducted this elaborate role-play for more particular and more exotic reasons.

O Happy Day.

Among other things, today is Rosie O'Donnell's birthday, and Timothy Dalton's and Matthew Broderick's. Thomas Cranmer and Pocahontas died on this date, the British lifted the seige of Lucknow and ended the Indian Mutiny, Alcatraz Prison closed, and Kate Smith recorded "God Bless America."

This date is also tnh's birthday. She is the patron saint of exploding things, finely polished sentences, information for the love of it, and yarn. I had the privilege of working for her at Tor for almost two years, and am delighted and privileged to call her my friend. So happy birthday, T. Hope you got everything you always wanted and didn't have yet.