Confession: I am the real JT Leroy
If you've already received your latest copy of Transsexual Drug Addict Literary Weekly (dba,The New York Times), you were undoubtedly shocked and dismayed to learn that, last week, not one but two supposed strung-out literary boy wonders were exposed to be, tragically, much less fcuked up than they claimed.
First, we find out that Oprah’s pet addict du jour, James Frey, wasn’t 100% honest about the details of his life as an outlaw who was “wanted in three states” (ahem, for outstanding parking tickets). He spent a few hours in jail, instead of a few months. Instead of being addicted to crack, he *technically* meant he was “addicted” to “those cinnamon raisin scones at Starbucks, which are so yummy, they’re like crack.” And he also lied about the part where he said he was a dude, but in fact he’s a 40-year-old mother and housewife. Oops – wait a minute. That was JT Leroy.
As it turns out, the "gender-blurring wunderkind" JT Leroy was neither transgendered, nor male, nor 17 when he wrote his first novel, nor a former child prostitute pimped out to truckers in rural West Virginia. The real author of the novels is, by all evidence, a mother and housewife named Laura Albert, whose knowledge of cross-dressing child prostitutes in West Virgina truck stops might have been loosely based on a very special episode of "The Dukes of Hazard."
As a real transsexual drug addict and former truck stop prostitute, I find this revelation particularly offensive. Coincidentally, my story is more or less the exact inverse of JT Leroy’s. See, I’m actually a 17-year-old MTF ex-junky from West Virginia, pretending to be a 30-ish married woman on the Upper East Side of New York.
Because I am, in fact, a 17-year-old former prostitute, I could see a lot of inconsistencies in the work of JT Leroy. Critics had the literary equivalent of a cheap orgasm over Leroy’s novels and stories, calling them “real” and “brutally accurate” and “ooooh! I felt just like I was back in the truck stop in West Virginia!” Of course, the author (whomever he or she may be) was banking on the fact that about 100% of the people who read art-house fiction have never, ever been to a truck stop in West Virgina – and they never will. For all Dave Eggers knows, there could be an entire subculture of redneck truckers who get off on fcuking 12-year-old boys dressed up like plush female aardvarks. No, wait, Dave – get this – they also drug these kids and they steal – I mean, they eat their kidneys (deep fried, of course – we know how dem Suth’ners are …) while having sex with them!
For all Dave knows, this is a growing crisis that should be addressed by a Congressional Task Force. Of course, if any of Leroy’s readers had ever worked a truck stop in West Virginia (and remember – I have), a few inconsistencies might’ve jumped out at them. For one thing, in his novel, Sarah, one of the main characters is his pimp who turns out to be an all ‘round great guy. As a 17-year-old transgendered prostitute, I’ve had plenty of pimps, and I can assure you that they never, ever have a “heart of gold.”
But even if I were a 31-year-old married woman living in New York, which I certainly am not, you’d think I might be able to figure that out. Another red flag comes from the question of how a homeless kid who left middle school to become a prostitute has such advanced expository writing skills, not to mention a broad knowledge of the works of literary-elite authors such as Mary Gaitskill and Dennis Cooper. He does at least make an effort to explain this, telling us that his San Francisco johns influenced his literary tastes. (WTF???)
Okay, again – even if I were a heterosexual woman who had never been an underage prostitute - a big "if" - I might at least suspect that men who are paying for sex in public restrooms aren’t all that interested in sticking around to discuss Schopenhauer in the afterglow. I mean, I’ve heard of a literary whore, but this is taking it a bit too far.
Women writing under men’s names is nothing new – George Eliot, George Sands, and now, by the looks of “JT Leroy,” Boy George. Laura Albert, writing a fiction about truck stop prostitution in West Virginia, however “brilliant” and “honest” it may be, would probably never have been published in the first place had it been known that she was a 30-something educated, heterosexual woman and not a homeless, transgendered 16-year-old.
It’s a tired, cliché question from Lit 101 class – does the identity and biography of the artist matter, or does art exist on its own merit? In theory, if JT Leroy or James Frey’s work is so "honest," and "beautiful," what the hell difference does it make if any of it ever happened? (Of course, it should be noted that JT Leroy never claimed that his/her work was anything other than fiction, although the persona created around the author was clearly a huge part of the author’s mystique, because most of his "fans," such as Courtney Love, never read his books; in Courtney's case she has the excuse that she doesn't actually know how to read.)
The realpolitik of the current publishing world is that packaging and marketing is a an integral extention, if not actually a part of the work itself. These days, the “truth,” no matter how contrived, seems to have more merit than a work of the imagination. But we don’t want real reality, we want the sexier, better-looking kind that only fiction can create. And an integral part of the fiction is that it must sustain the illusion of “reality;” In other words, we insist on reality, but only in quotation marks. James Frey, after all, couldn’t even sell his novel about a drug addict, but he made $5 million re-packaging the same text as the “truth.”
We don’t care what the truth is; we know we’re being lied to constantly; we want to be lied to. We like it. More to the point, we insist on it. People just don’t approve when confronted with the distasteful notion that “the truth” is, in fact, in quotation marks. Case in point: the unabashedly fictionalized Weapons of Mass Destruction that led to the war in Iraq. They didn’t even try very hard to cover up the fact that it was all a lie, because they knew that we had given our consent to be lied to. Fortunately, Saddam Hussein never claimed to be a transsexual prostitute, or there might have been more of a scandal.
First, we find out that Oprah’s pet addict du jour, James Frey, wasn’t 100% honest about the details of his life as an outlaw who was “wanted in three states” (ahem, for outstanding parking tickets). He spent a few hours in jail, instead of a few months. Instead of being addicted to crack, he *technically* meant he was “addicted” to “those cinnamon raisin scones at Starbucks, which are so yummy, they’re like crack.” And he also lied about the part where he said he was a dude, but in fact he’s a 40-year-old mother and housewife. Oops – wait a minute. That was JT Leroy.
As it turns out, the "gender-blurring wunderkind" JT Leroy was neither transgendered, nor male, nor 17 when he wrote his first novel, nor a former child prostitute pimped out to truckers in rural West Virginia. The real author of the novels is, by all evidence, a mother and housewife named Laura Albert, whose knowledge of cross-dressing child prostitutes in West Virgina truck stops might have been loosely based on a very special episode of "The Dukes of Hazard."
As a real transsexual drug addict and former truck stop prostitute, I find this revelation particularly offensive. Coincidentally, my story is more or less the exact inverse of JT Leroy’s. See, I’m actually a 17-year-old MTF ex-junky from West Virginia, pretending to be a 30-ish married woman on the Upper East Side of New York.
Because I am, in fact, a 17-year-old former prostitute, I could see a lot of inconsistencies in the work of JT Leroy. Critics had the literary equivalent of a cheap orgasm over Leroy’s novels and stories, calling them “real” and “brutally accurate” and “ooooh! I felt just like I was back in the truck stop in West Virginia!” Of course, the author (whomever he or she may be) was banking on the fact that about 100% of the people who read art-house fiction have never, ever been to a truck stop in West Virgina – and they never will. For all Dave Eggers knows, there could be an entire subculture of redneck truckers who get off on fcuking 12-year-old boys dressed up like plush female aardvarks. No, wait, Dave – get this – they also drug these kids and they steal – I mean, they eat their kidneys (deep fried, of course – we know how dem Suth’ners are …) while having sex with them!
For all Dave knows, this is a growing crisis that should be addressed by a Congressional Task Force. Of course, if any of Leroy’s readers had ever worked a truck stop in West Virginia (and remember – I have), a few inconsistencies might’ve jumped out at them. For one thing, in his novel, Sarah, one of the main characters is his pimp who turns out to be an all ‘round great guy. As a 17-year-old transgendered prostitute, I’ve had plenty of pimps, and I can assure you that they never, ever have a “heart of gold.”
But even if I were a 31-year-old married woman living in New York, which I certainly am not, you’d think I might be able to figure that out. Another red flag comes from the question of how a homeless kid who left middle school to become a prostitute has such advanced expository writing skills, not to mention a broad knowledge of the works of literary-elite authors such as Mary Gaitskill and Dennis Cooper. He does at least make an effort to explain this, telling us that his San Francisco johns influenced his literary tastes. (WTF???)
Okay, again – even if I were a heterosexual woman who had never been an underage prostitute - a big "if" - I might at least suspect that men who are paying for sex in public restrooms aren’t all that interested in sticking around to discuss Schopenhauer in the afterglow. I mean, I’ve heard of a literary whore, but this is taking it a bit too far.
Women writing under men’s names is nothing new – George Eliot, George Sands, and now, by the looks of “JT Leroy,” Boy George. Laura Albert, writing a fiction about truck stop prostitution in West Virginia, however “brilliant” and “honest” it may be, would probably never have been published in the first place had it been known that she was a 30-something educated, heterosexual woman and not a homeless, transgendered 16-year-old.
It’s a tired, cliché question from Lit 101 class – does the identity and biography of the artist matter, or does art exist on its own merit? In theory, if JT Leroy or James Frey’s work is so "honest," and "beautiful," what the hell difference does it make if any of it ever happened? (Of course, it should be noted that JT Leroy never claimed that his/her work was anything other than fiction, although the persona created around the author was clearly a huge part of the author’s mystique, because most of his "fans," such as Courtney Love, never read his books; in Courtney's case she has the excuse that she doesn't actually know how to read.)
The realpolitik of the current publishing world is that packaging and marketing is a an integral extention, if not actually a part of the work itself. These days, the “truth,” no matter how contrived, seems to have more merit than a work of the imagination. But we don’t want real reality, we want the sexier, better-looking kind that only fiction can create. And an integral part of the fiction is that it must sustain the illusion of “reality;” In other words, we insist on reality, but only in quotation marks. James Frey, after all, couldn’t even sell his novel about a drug addict, but he made $5 million re-packaging the same text as the “truth.”
We don’t care what the truth is; we know we’re being lied to constantly; we want to be lied to. We like it. More to the point, we insist on it. People just don’t approve when confronted with the distasteful notion that “the truth” is, in fact, in quotation marks. Case in point: the unabashedly fictionalized Weapons of Mass Destruction that led to the war in Iraq. They didn’t even try very hard to cover up the fact that it was all a lie, because they knew that we had given our consent to be lied to. Fortunately, Saddam Hussein never claimed to be a transsexual prostitute, or there might have been more of a scandal.
posted by Marguerite at 12:35 PM
2 Comments:
Maybe it's a tired old cliche in Eng Lit 101, but I think it's a really interesting question (whether it actually matters that Frey's work was "truth" or "fiction"). I can't exactly put my finger on the reason, but it really does matter to me (or would if I gave a sh*t about his book in the first place). Then again, I believe the earliest English novelists (by which I mean Daniel Defoe) peddled their work as "truth"; and I loved Robinson Crusoe.
It is an interesting question - does the "author" become a character him/herself? But should we care if it's *really* real, or just the author winking at us, inviting us to be in on the make-believe? Fascinating point about Defoe - inspired me to re-read the author's preface to Moll Flanders (my favorite Defoe novel). Now I have to go all English-major dork and write a whole blog entry about the picareque tradition as it relates to Oprah's book club, for which I apologize in advance to the reader. And to the picaresque tradition.
Post a Comment
<< Home