The creative team behind J.T. Leroy should send James Frey flowers, since his little revelations have given the J. T. Leroy hoax story a sort of also-ran quality. However, we were pleased to see the San Francisco Chronicle finally pick up the story and give it a well-sourced local angle. First up: the local literary Who's Who with regard to who was sucked in: Dave Eggers, Susie Bright, David Wigand, Michael Ray, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.
Second up: the take from local author Armstead Maupin, who turned his previous hoax experience into The Night Listener:
"A lot of people argue that such frauds cause no harm and are a great joke played on the literary establishment," he said by telephone Monday. "But in fact there's something very callous about using AIDS and an abusive childhood as a way of getting sympathy and support," Maupin said, adding, "I'm surprised that people were bamboozled as long as they were."
Photo by Brant Ward of the San Francisco Chronicle.
By SFist Lisa, ContributingThird up: Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket), who points out that the Bay Area's got a long history of literary hoaxes. SFist is very impressed with Handler's equanimity, considering that he was the target of a letter from Team J. T. Leroy back in 2004 which concluded:
I oppose you with enormous trepidations, especially as films of our books might be going against each other and you will most likely whomp my ass at the box office. I don't have Jim Carey (sic). I do, however, have Winona Ryder and Peter Fonda, and I think in an extreme wrestling match they could do some damage to Mr. Carey (sic).
Frankly, going by critical receptions and box-office grosses for The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things compared to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, we think Team J.T. should have worried less about how that movie was received and begun working on shopping around the movie that will undoubtedly hit the festival circuit in winter 2008: how some failed San Francisco rock stars perpetuated a critically-adored, star-f**king literary hoax.
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I have to admit that I find this story fascinating. I've never cracked a J.T. LeRoy volume in my life (and certainly won't now), but it seems like the story behind the "author" is lot more interesting than the books themselves. I'm so tired of 90s-style decadent-post-junkie-streetwise fiction, anyway. That noise is beat, as in "ground down to the sidewalk."
From author/blogger Ron Franscell at http://underthenews.blogspot.com ...
American literature -- considered an oxymoron in the rest of the world -- has gone downhill fast since New York surrendered America's storytelling standards to Hollywood, where illusion -- EVEN IN TRUE STORIES -- is exactly the point. Today, the "perfect" story is determined by its film-worthiness more than its literary quality. In the name of creating Californicated literature, New York editors have blurred the line until even they don't know what's true. "It's a good story," they'll say, "so who cares if it's an utter and ballsy lie?"
I care. Capote admitted on the bookjacket that "In Cold Blood" was fictionalized in some part. Coleridge's definition of fiction was "the willing suspension of disbelief." What if it's not willing? That's the difference between making love and rape, albeit without either the exhilaration or violence. If you thought you were reading a true story, you were conned. What if we found out next week that the famous Zapruder film was, in fact, a Hollywood dramatization passed off as a hyper-realistic eyewitness home-movie and you shoulda seen the look on your face and, oh, isn't it funny how we fooled you??
This is the literary equivalent of Reality TV. They tell you what you're seeing is real, but it's not real at all. It's simulated reality, edited into convenient 30-minute bytes ... and we eat it up.
In America today, we live with too much fiction posing as fact. Blogs, books, TV, videogaming -- and some would say, the news -- thrive on it. But it's not art to swear you're telling the truth and then fib. That's just common lying. The artful trick is to tell me you're lying and make me believe every word is true.
The best thing I could come up with (or, at least, the snarkiest) is that the whole act is a form of minstrelsy -- in blackface, no less. Though I admit, I agree that the errors were to cater to a market that would otherwise eschew fiction.
Truth is cheap these days, yet in very high demand.
I really liked that book, Sarah. I don't really care if the authorship was a hoax. Great writing!