Identity, Transparency, and Truth
Amidst the flurry of controversy about James Frey and his fictional work of non-fiction, another dissembler has been out-ed, the mysterious JT Leroy, whose first novel seemed to be a shocking autobiographical story. It was about a young boy who passed himself off as girl named Sarah and worked as a prostitute in the truckstops of Middle America. There was a lot more to the book, too, and it was a strange, unsettling, read. Especially when the "hype" surrounding the book painted Leroy as that kid. Turns out, it was all a bunch of bullshit.
It's come out now that JT Leroy, from the name to the work to the image, is fake. A concoction by a couple of frustrated writers unable to get their own work out there and popular. So they created this character with a disturbing past and an important voice to be heard. After Leroy started publishing and gaining attention, the two writers added a third party to their little deceit, a woman to play Leroy in public, in radio interviews, and photo shoots.
I was researching the movie being made out of "his" second novel, when I came upon this confusing but detailed timeline of the whole story behind JT Leroy. It's fascinating, really, when you think about this story in relation to the obsession our country has with celebrity and how smart people can twist that obsession into financial and commercial success. It should really be admired.
Interestingly, Pitchfork ran a brilliant article by Marc Hogan last week detailing this story from the music side. They posit that the literary world should not be surprised by fiction, in writing or in reality. Musicians have been creating "personas" for decades now, playing it up for the cameras, or just writing huge fictional pieces and passing it off as... close to fact. It's a great read, highly recommended. Hogan touches the mystique of some of the DIY bands that come out in the last year as well as the meta-fictional quality to lyrics and even the "thug" image so popular in hip-hop music.
I think there's a certain authenticity expected of artists. Especially writers. Creating a character "for the cameras" should be purely a business decision, a way to grab attention, not a substitute for real creativity. What Frey did, passing off fiction as memoir is inexcusable, the people behind JT Leroy plotted to deceive the public and are wrong. If their motivations were more selfless, like James Tiptree Jr. then the deceit should be applauded for its audacity.
It's come out now that JT Leroy, from the name to the work to the image, is fake. A concoction by a couple of frustrated writers unable to get their own work out there and popular. So they created this character with a disturbing past and an important voice to be heard. After Leroy started publishing and gaining attention, the two writers added a third party to their little deceit, a woman to play Leroy in public, in radio interviews, and photo shoots.
I was researching the movie being made out of "his" second novel, when I came upon this confusing but detailed timeline of the whole story behind JT Leroy. It's fascinating, really, when you think about this story in relation to the obsession our country has with celebrity and how smart people can twist that obsession into financial and commercial success. It should really be admired.
Interestingly, Pitchfork ran a brilliant article by Marc Hogan last week detailing this story from the music side. They posit that the literary world should not be surprised by fiction, in writing or in reality. Musicians have been creating "personas" for decades now, playing it up for the cameras, or just writing huge fictional pieces and passing it off as... close to fact. It's a great read, highly recommended. Hogan touches the mystique of some of the DIY bands that come out in the last year as well as the meta-fictional quality to lyrics and even the "thug" image so popular in hip-hop music.
I think there's a certain authenticity expected of artists. Especially writers. Creating a character "for the cameras" should be purely a business decision, a way to grab attention, not a substitute for real creativity. What Frey did, passing off fiction as memoir is inexcusable, the people behind JT Leroy plotted to deceive the public and are wrong. If their motivations were more selfless, like James Tiptree Jr. then the deceit should be applauded for its audacity.
posted by elad at 11:55 AM
5 Comments:
This new wave of authors being "outed" as fakes is so strange - because these same authors could have just said the story was fiction and it would have been fine - but because they passed the same story off as real then they have deceived the public. But in actuality, the "story" they are telling comes down to exactly the same words. Does the story change because it is fact or fiction? Does it matter that the story could have really happened? Aren't writers supposed to use imagination and creativity in writing a story?
I often listen to music and hear the words and think how the singer must have felt when they went through that situation they are singing about. And then recently I realized that the singer isn't always singing about themselves. Do they have to call their music fiction then? This is especially true with the songs written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. He often writes songs about situations he has never lived through - but he knows other people have experienced. After listening to songs like "Styrofoam Plates" from The Photo Album, you would think Ben Gibbard was abandoned by his father and has built up all this hatred over the years towards him. But I am pretty sure that in fact Ben Gibbard comes from a well adjusted family - with his parents still together at home.
So should we turn against Ben Gibbard because we thought his music was about him, but really it wasn't? Well, he didn't actually say the music was about him - it was just an assumption - so I guess we have no real grounds to say anything. Either way - the fact that he can translate someone else's experience into something so real that you thought he went through it himself is a huge amazing accomplishment.
why does everything always come back to death cab for me?
by the way - i found out this week that Ben Gibbard has a girlfriend named JOAN!! :(
check out this article where Ben is asked to put his IPOD on shuffle and talk about the first 5 songs that come on (he says that one of the songs that come on was recommended to him from his girlfriend)
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/45620/2
one more thing - elad you would like this IPOD top 5 from David Cross
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/45620/5
Also, one thing to keep in mind is that publishers are often only interested in what is selling at any given point in time and I really believe that our culture is so hungry for shocking memoirs or tragedy to latch on to and believe in, that publishers are desperate to find the next big thing in that category. So desperate, in fact, that I have to question if its likely that if I were to write a novel inspired by some details of my own past and experience but largely fiction and send it to a publisher, could they then say to me "you don't really want to publish this is fiction do you? this is mostly true, isn't it?" ... I wonder how much of these scandals are smart people working the system in a greedy and misleading way or desperate writers writing what they know will get noticed OR desperate writers allowing their fiction to be marketed as memoir if that's the ONLY way its gonna get published.
I think thats very possible that this is happening, like most structures, from the top down. Money dictates what is allowed to be called art in the mainstream.
I'm saddest for fiction writers here. I think they are losing on all sides, because now that a few frauds have been discovered, the public is looking for more and more and more "reality" - the memoir is the next reality tv show, but I wonder how manufactured it can get before its all formulaic. Or are we already there?
ooh memoirs and reality shows -- never saw the parrallel -- very interesting
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