Breakfast at Tiffany's – Because I Do Not Know

When It Sounds Too Good To Be True ...

... It usually is. Heralded "HIV-positive, transgendered, former child prostitute" author JT LeRoy is not what he, er, she seems.

LeRoy, it turns out, is none of those things. In a revelation that has rocked the literary world, he doesn't even exist. The painfully shy 20-something writer who rose out of truck-stop child prostitution and heroin addiction in West Virginia to become a best-selling novelist and voice of the downtrodden is a persona created and perpetuated, for an astounding 11 years, by one Laura Albert, a 40-year-old middle-class white woman from Brooklyn, N.Y.

Aided by her mother, her husband and her sister-in-law, among others, Albert charmed celebrities, famous writers and publishers into believing that LeRoy had produced remarkable works of harrowing fiction, informed by a woeful past of abuse, prostitution, drug addiction and, ultimately, gender transition. Literary heavyweights like Dave Eggers, Mary Gaitskill and Dennis Cooper eagerly promoted LeRoy's writings, and celebrities from Madonna to Courtney Love to Carrie Fisher offered enthusiastic support and encouragement.

Albert was able to pull off this elaborate hoax by saying he/she couldn't appear in public because he/she was transgendered. That should have been a warning sign. If RuPaul can do it, anyone can.

I know they didn't "live" the fairy tale lives that LeRoy did, but might I suggest a few real writers (who happen to be gay) who should be celebrated more outside our community for their talent and not who they sleep with.

2 comments Jake McCafferty last posted at 7:15 PM
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2 Comments:

I've been too caught up in the Million
Little Pieces debacle to focus on the whole LeRoy deal but since LeRoy's a
fiction writer,I'm not as miffed about that as Frey's pathetic lies.

You're right about folks being gulliable enough to buy that"can't go out in public" bit-heck,at one BEA I attended,a very obvious drag queen was handing out promos for her mystery novel(yes,I took one-still have it,I think). Publishing is not
shy about showmanship.

By lady t, at 8:02 AM

Maybe she/he/it will soon be sleeping with James Frey.

By dAAve, at 4:32 PM