She has "veracity issues," huh? That's NYT's euphemism for "full of shit" these days?

If that's not a photo of Loretta Lynn, I'll eat my shoe.

Oh Laura, when will the lies end?!

laura once said to me, "your voice is like a knife cutting through my flesh." i wish i were kidding.

Nothing sucks quite like being all bummed out when you go to buy a mattress.

Towns built around or containing all-male psychiatric prisons are bad news, but make for some very interesting war stories. Case in point: New Haven, CT, which used to house a giant psych ward that was shut down in the '60s and whose inmates were subsequently released into the streets. Their descendents populate the town to this day. One time I was chased out of a liquor store at broomstick-point(!) because I asked the proprietor for change for a dollar.

Evidently asking for change is considered a high insult in Crazyville -- akin to pronouncing a word incorrectly in China, failing to show proper respect to your business associates in Japan, or refusing local insurance offers in Sicily.

The heart, above all things, lacks veracity.

OMG! She's broke like all other writers! That's nto fair! She's special!

Hey, Laura! Make a sex tape with James Frey if you're so broke. Then leak it to Bookslut. America is defined by its willingness to pay good money to see people's dignity burst into flames, so you should really take advantage of that, or, as my mother would say, you're not that broke.

Bullshit or not, the JT Leroy books are very well written and I hope she gets her head on straight so that she can write as Laura.

@GorgeousGeorge: is Foxxy Brown from that town?

@Mel'sDiner: Foxxy Brown would be considered somewhat well-adjusted and normal in New Haven.

@KarenUhOh: It's probably worse than paying a lot for a muffler. But not much worse.

I can't believe this woman is still squeezing drops from the publicity teat.

@Sigerson Holmes, Part Duex: You must be kidding. I thought Sarah was pitiful. Not even good bad.

If she was actually poor she wouldn't have a "Chinese woman who cooks and cleans her home."

@MisterHippity: Only when there's space to be filled, of course.
As opposed to Mr. Milch - when "John From Cincinnati" was first reviewed in the Times his name was in seven out of 22 paragraphs. When its obit ran, he was mentioned in only one of 21. So he was probably sticking his face in as a way of saying "Thank you."

I have absolutely no sympathy for this lying sack of shit. She's bankrupt and still has maids? Can't afford SF? Join the club and move somewhere financially doable. Oh, and continue listening to Mr. Milch if you know what's good for you.

@Carol Gardens: That Chinese woman was actually in High School Music 2 but got cut.

And the JT Leroy books are turgid. More evidence that our country is willing to eat entire pieces of shit whole if you line them with tragedy.

@Carol Gardens: @Sayser:
Yes, the maid was my favourite part. Although I hold that against the author of the piece, rather than Albert herself. Don't tell me someone is down-and-out, living with a roommate at 41, then sneakily drop in that she has hired help do her cooking and cleaning.
I mean, I'm broke and have that, but we call her "mommy," so it's different.

@IBentMyWookie: Hey Wookie, are you a Costanza? Awesome.

@Sayser:
WOOKIE'S GETTING VERY UPSET!

Oakland?

Hell, if she's really broke, she'd make like MC Hammer and move to Tracy.

i truly don't get her 'woe is me' thing. it's not like she deceived people in print because she was being held hostage while she was writing it, or some other crazy bullshit story. she actively chose to deceive people, and expects the world to feel sorry for her.

the world doesn't feel sorry for you when you wrote a book about a fake semi-autobiographical story about yourself as a fake author, then the same fake story gets opted to be a major motion picture and had well-known actors cast in the roles.

now you cry bankruptcy, but you still have hired help and a 'walk up' in san fran?

bitch, please.
sit down and shut the hell up.

In that picture she looks like zombie Brooke Astor. Eek!

@IBentMyWookie: WOOKIE DOESN'T LIKE BANANAS!

Yeah...I think if she can afford a Chinese housekeeper, and still be in San Francisco, she's okay.

Do you think she wept because the 500 wasn't enough?

Basic questions that do not have answers:

Why does Alan Feuer insist on referring to himself throughout the article as "reporter"? Why did he write a memoir in the third person? (Does he know how to use the first person?)

Why did he need to drive from San Francisco to L.A. to interview her? Couldn't he just meet her in L.A.?

And most importantly: What "narcolepsy pill" did she take?

I needed one after reading this article.

Crap, now I feel bad about living in a fifth-floor walk-up.

And I'm not even a shamed author!

It's the opening sentence of the whole piece that is most offensive:

"I'm hopeless at this stuff," Laura Albert had been saying as she stood in her apartment on a recent morning, placing objects into - then removing them from - a bag."

Huh?

Nice to start with a quote...we all do it...but what's with the past perfect progressive 'had been saying'? Why? The tense isn't used again. Even worse, the split/hypen at the end puts a bizarre empahsis on the words "a bag" for the reader. Again, why? A bag? What else would she be putting "the objects" into, a shoebox? An armoire? A vacuous hole? If the point is to show that Albert is indecisive and doesn't know how to pack, and I believe that is the point, why structure the sentence around where her objects are going as opposed to how her objects are getting there? Oh, and never mind that "the reporter" never tells us WHAT the objects are. How can he just say "objects" and not say what they are? This is illegal!

I could go on, but I've wasted enough time already. The Times offers its readers a double whammy...first it had the nerve to feature a piece on Laura Albert, a proven fraud, and second, it's an article written with all the basic writing skills and journalistic prowess of a love child between Jayson Blair and Jerri Blank.

@snobber: I wish your voice actually had been a knife cutting through her flesh.

Sigerson Holmes, Part Deux, you are dead to me now. Dead. The writing in the JT Leroy books was a shitty mash-up of Dennis Cooper and S.E. Hinton, with a little Dorothy Allison thrown in.

"The writing in the JT Leroy books. . ."

Writing?

You mean typing?