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notes on a scandal
"I Have the Road Map to Crazy": Who's Afraid of Laura "JT Leroy" Albert?
In this week's Rolling Stone profile, Guy Lawson surveys the damage of the JT Leroy implosion, described as the "first complete recounting [Laura Albert] has ever offered of the decade-long transformation of an HIV-positive, transgender street kid named Terminator into the celebrated fiction writer Jeremiah 'Terminator' Leroy." More »
poets of the metro section
Crazy Times Two: Alan Feuer And Laura Albert
How can we describe Alan Feuer's profile of Laura Albert in today's New York Times? It is misery. For one thing, we are told that the woman formerly known as JT Leroy is now reduced to living in a "San Francisco walk-up." You know what? If she was actually poor she'd move to Oakland like everyone else. And anyway, how many buildings shorter than six floors in quake country actually have an elevator? "Ms. Albert has veracity issues. Can she be trusted? What, in short, should be discarded? What believed?" That's fun, coming from a guy with a bullshit memoir. He then describes Atascadero, California as "a cheerless town of bedding stores," which is sad, as he might have enjoyed knowing that Atascadero is actually home to California's favorite all-male maximum security psychiatric facility, which employs a decent percentage of the town's residents. Boy he would have loved to torture that metaphor. Then they get to L.A. and David Milch shows up and gives her some cash and boy I bet he wish he'd kept that $500 bucks, now that, thank God, "John From Cincinnati" got shot in the face.
Her Journey, All True [NYT]
sob stories
Do You Feel Sorry For Laura "JT Leroy" Albert Yet?
So Laura Albert, who spent years pretending that her books were written by an abused AIDsy teen, feels that it is unfair that she's been successfully sued for fraud. Today, she tells Cindy Adams that her life, while perhaps not as difficult as the life of the truck-stop hooker child she invented, is still pretty rough. "My mother's just out of ICU. She can't bring even a cup of water to her mouth. My mom taught English in a New York City school. My assistant principal in Bushwick father and mother aren't together. Remarried, he lives in Stuyvesant Town. My sister's a speech pathologist. It's not a family with money. My ex is my son Trevor's father so I'll say nothing bad about him. He's a musician. He's 40. He wanted to be a rock star. And he wiped me out. From the stress my functioning has become limited. I'm under heavy medication with hypertension, diarrhea and bone infection." Jeez, did this lady never hear this in a creative writing class: "Never explain, never complain?" Apparently not, because boy does she go on. More »
channeling the fug girls
Laura "JT Leroy" Albert Only Dresses Like A Truck Stop Whore
"I was able to take problems of the soul and transform them into problems of art, to put on a disguise," Laura "JT Leroy" Albert whinged to unsympathetic Post scold Andrea Peyser. "I create like an oyster creates a pearl—out of irritation. Not to see itself on Paris Hilton's neck—and I'm not attacking her! Paris Hilton does not solve the problems of the spirit." But wait: Seriously, woman, what are you wearing? More »
Laura "JT Leroy" Albert has to pay Antidote Films $116,000. Guess the jury wasn't buying that "I was fat as a child" defense.
answering rhetorical questions
Helping David Blum
Today's David Blum New York Sun ball of crazy—about how the internet has created an environment of permissibility for anonymity which has lead to an upsurge in literary fraud, or something—asks more questions than it answers. We decided to try to rectify the situation.
sisterhood is powerful
Laura "JT Leroy" Albert: "Busty," Busted.
Here is how the Post's Kati Cornell is reporting about Laura "JT Leroy" Albert's testimony in her defense against charges that she defrauded Antidote films by implying that a transgender teen truck stop hooker wrote her books: "'I didn't want my name . . . I could have my character come out. But when that's gone and there's nobody but 'Fat Albert,' there's no place to go,' the busty writer told her lawyer, Eric Weinstein." Yuck. But maybe Kati is just trying to be reassuring! After all, Laura's whole defense seems to be that she was fat as a kid and got teased and that this caused her to have split personalities, one of whom just happened to be a writer with incredibly marketable sob story. Calling her "busty" might be Kati's way of trying to help Laura heal her psychic wounds. What a shining example of how ladies, even ladies who pose as girl-boys to sell books and ladies who pose as misogynistic men to sell newspapers, can stick together! More »
Jury selection starts tomorrow for Antidote Films v. Laura "JT Leroy" Albert. We hear the charge is fraud, though we'd like to add "making everyone feel like such dumbasses."
jt leroy
Britney Spears To Wig Out As JT Leroy
Earlier today, Britney Spears announced that she'd be starring in a Broadway production of "The Year of Magical Fabricating Identity," a Scott Rudin production of the life story of non-person JT Leroy. "I've got a wig, y'all," Ms. Spears announced. "And so did shim. Or herm. Thon! Whatever ya call it!"
fake writer day
Laura Albert's Tits Nicer Than JT Leroy's
Fake writer Laura Albert, who wrote the books originally attributed to a male truck-stop hooker named JT Leroy, continues to light the fire of our righteous indignation. Albert, you'll recall, is unrepentant, using the whole 'it was a literary hoax, I'm playing with notions of gender and identity' thing as a copout. She also 'didn't do it for the money,' she claims in this recent interview, though there must be a considerable amount involved, considering that two of Leroy novels have had their film rights optioned. But perhaps most infuriatingly, Albert seems to completely misunderstand the process by which profile subjects are selected to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. Here, she's talking about how thrilled she's been to be featured on the cover of the Paris Review:LA: What's really funny is: you can have these people talking smack about it, you know, "She's this and that." But the fact is, it's the Paris Review. If there wasn't some value to my work, which, you know, that's the thing that has been questioned...Laura, everyone knows it doesn't always mean you've got nice tits. It can also mean that you have a small, wet ween. More »
[Interviewer]: Right. That's true. And If you get the cover of Vanity Fair, that's questionable. It could be about the gossip.
LA: Well, it means you've got nice tits. Wait a minute, no — I have nice tits, I could do that.
remainders
Remainders: Fake News Day?
gossip roundup
Gossip Roundup: Lindsay Lohan Is, Like, Totally Samantha
alex kuczynski
Alex K and the Bee, Foiled Again
Life isn't so bad for New York Times Style writer Alex Kuczynski these days, what with the release of her book, Beauty Junkies, going cold turkey on the needle and all. What more is there for her to accomplish? Why, to win the Council Of Literary Magazines & Presses Spelling Bee, of course. More »
fake writer day
J.T. Leroy and Other Treats for Credulous Media Outlets
A little Fake Writer Day nostalgia for you this morning, courtesy of Laura Albert, the woman formerly known as cult novelist and utter hoax J.T. Leroy, who gives an interview in the fall issue of the Paris Review: More »
books
Further Literary Revisions Suggested by Stephen King
I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls.- Stephen King, expressing his hope that J.K. Rowling will not kill off Harry Potter in the last book of the eponymous series, by alluding to the death scene of Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle More »
fake writer day
'Vanity Fair' Tells Us About This JT Leroy Thing
We've spent the last 6 hours reading Vanity Fair's online exclusive about the "untold story" behind Fake Writer JT Leroy — honestly, it wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't kept nodding off. So far as we can tell, the only part that's exclusive or particularly untold are the direct quotes from Geoffrey Knoop, estranged husband of JT mastermind Laura Albert. Kudos to VF for actually making this story less interesting — maybe that's why it's only available online? Not bland enough to kill, but not spicy enough to be printed on a glossy page. More »
amy sohn
• A glimpse into Jared Paul Stern's future at Page Six: "Insiders say that Walter Ripley, currently serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for racketeering, has been slowly moving in on the cigarette and pornography concession previously run by kidnapper George 'Two Thumbs' Theophilus." [McSweeney's]
• More on Ron Burkle's power in Democratic party. [Kausfiles]
• And even The Onion weighs in. [The Onion]
• MySpace is so dangerous, they've hired former federal prosecutor Hemanshu Nigam to keep the kiddies safe from internet predators. [NYT]
• The only Ann Coulter movie we'd ever see. [Towleroad]
• "JT Leroy" continues to write, albeit for something called Lemon. [FishbowlNY]
• Smirnoff will teach Brooklynites "how to do graffiti." Brooklynites, in return, will teach Smirnoff how to fuck off and die like the corporate whores they are. [Consumerist]
Remainders: Amy Sohn Capitalizes on Motherhood
• New York mag's sex columnist Amy Sohn spares us her return. Instead, she'll be writing in-depth features for the magazine on matters such as breast milk and bjorns, reasoning that "parenting is hot right now." Yeah? Tell that to our Ortho Tri-Cyclen, crazy lady. [NYO]• A glimpse into Jared Paul Stern's future at Page Six: "Insiders say that Walter Ripley, currently serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence for racketeering, has been slowly moving in on the cigarette and pornography concession previously run by kidnapper George 'Two Thumbs' Theophilus." [McSweeney's]
• More on Ron Burkle's power in Democratic party. [Kausfiles]
• And even The Onion weighs in. [The Onion]
• MySpace is so dangerous, they've hired former federal prosecutor Hemanshu Nigam to keep the kiddies safe from internet predators. [NYT]
• The only Ann Coulter movie we'd ever see. [Towleroad]
• "JT Leroy" continues to write, albeit for something called Lemon. [FishbowlNY]
• Smirnoff will teach Brooklynites "how to do graffiti." Brooklynites, in return, will teach Smirnoff how to fuck off and die like the corporate whores they are. [Consumerist]
