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As I think most people here know, the matter of the hustler that never was, well, not exactly, JT Leroy, is of great fascination to me, but then I've always been consumed by tales of commerce.
When JT Leroy turned out to actually be a housewife, I was pissed off, in a vague, conflicted way, not so much for the lie or a sense of betrayal, but for all the people who haven't lied over the years and, of course, for the knowledge that in mainsteam publishing what you write seems increasingly less important than who you are. There are a lot of reasons I didn't write a novel in my 20s and one of them is that I was terrified that I, myself wouldn't be a good enough sale. Not pretty enugh, or young enough or traumatized enough. I'm not a good product. I'm too big and rangey in teh head and too handsome in the face.
Now there's this whole civil fraud trial thing because of the movie rights contract that was signed by JT Leroy, who, of course, never really existed.
Or did he?
It's easy to talk about mental illness in the case of Albert, the woman who actualy wrote JT Leroy's books and wrote JT Leroy into being. It is certainly the angle that's being used in her trial -- she has her own history of abuse and quests for redemption in unlikely places. I get that, I have sympathy for it, and I also don't really care in any deep way. It is neither my problem nor representative of any of my problems.
But then there is this quote.
Read that aloud, would you? If your current location permits. It is interesting to feel what it is like to say that. For above all things, when read aloud, it is, I think, a statement of longing.
Can things like this be spoken of without being or appearing crazy?
Does it matter?
Can the artist be sane?
What are these borderlands creators inhabit and must we not speak of them or always couch them in disclaimers?
Surely, I am not the only one to whom such caution feels like a betrayal.
I suppose it is not the idea that I live an entirely fictional life that disturbs people. Rather, the idea that I live only a partially fictional one.
And that it's all true.
So maybe that's the best thing I have to say for the JT Leroy mess and Albert in the end -- that their unmaking allows others to, if not whisper into truth, whisper about it.
It makes me sad. To the bone. That Albert seems desperately sad and JT never got what he wanted, unless it really was just fame. And most of all there's that impulse to say, at the end of all this, "but unlike her, I'm not crazy." I really shouldn't have to bother.
Ah, JT Leroy. All the books about it will get it all wrong. It's not the damn swindle that's interesting. Or even the madness. Just this winking in and out of being ghost of the never was.
When JT Leroy turned out to actually be a housewife, I was pissed off, in a vague, conflicted way, not so much for the lie or a sense of betrayal, but for all the people who haven't lied over the years and, of course, for the knowledge that in mainsteam publishing what you write seems increasingly less important than who you are. There are a lot of reasons I didn't write a novel in my 20s and one of them is that I was terrified that I, myself wouldn't be a good enough sale. Not pretty enugh, or young enough or traumatized enough. I'm not a good product. I'm too big and rangey in teh head and too handsome in the face.
Now there's this whole civil fraud trial thing because of the movie rights contract that was signed by JT Leroy, who, of course, never really existed.
Or did he?
It's easy to talk about mental illness in the case of Albert, the woman who actualy wrote JT Leroy's books and wrote JT Leroy into being. It is certainly the angle that's being used in her trial -- she has her own history of abuse and quests for redemption in unlikely places. I get that, I have sympathy for it, and I also don't really care in any deep way. It is neither my problem nor representative of any of my problems.
But then there is this quote.
“He was my respirator,” she said. “He was my channel for air. To me if you take my JT, my Jeremy, my other, I die.”
Read that aloud, would you? If your current location permits. It is interesting to feel what it is like to say that. For above all things, when read aloud, it is, I think, a statement of longing.
Can things like this be spoken of without being or appearing crazy?
Does it matter?
Can the artist be sane?
What are these borderlands creators inhabit and must we not speak of them or always couch them in disclaimers?
Surely, I am not the only one to whom such caution feels like a betrayal.
I suppose it is not the idea that I live an entirely fictional life that disturbs people. Rather, the idea that I live only a partially fictional one.
And that it's all true.
So maybe that's the best thing I have to say for the JT Leroy mess and Albert in the end -- that their unmaking allows others to, if not whisper into truth, whisper about it.
“He wanted his own body. He so wanted to be out of me. I wanted this other child I had to be out in the world. He didn’t like being inside me. He could talk such smack about me.”
It makes me sad. To the bone. That Albert seems desperately sad and JT never got what he wanted, unless it really was just fame. And most of all there's that impulse to say, at the end of all this, "but unlike her, I'm not crazy." I really shouldn't have to bother.
Ah, JT Leroy. All the books about it will get it all wrong. It's not the damn swindle that's interesting. Or even the madness. Just this winking in and out of being ghost of the never was.
