JT Leroy

The Stranger – Seattle,WA
LAURA ALBERT
April 22, 2008

There was a time when we were at it like bunnies. The “modern rock” station played Portishead nonstop. It was the time of roommates and thin walls, and radios turned up to mask. And Portishead were more to mood than the Sundays (too cute) or My Bloody Valentine (too noisy) or Blur (charming beat and accents become annoying during sex, like someone playing with your nipple post orgasm). Portishead were a good indicator that I was knocked up. Suddenly I could not bear that repeating dunda-dah dun-dun. Morning sickness and Portishead were one. Trying to quickly twist the radio knob away from the sound was like trying to scratch an itch while hang gliding. My arm was stretched out as if in petition, my fingers grazing the globular button, when something came shooting out of me, an ooze of warm spittle that bubbled over my swollen belly as the song played on. Now they are back and my son is a 10-year-old drummer. Long may they both play on. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=562490&hp

Leah Garchik

JT LeRoy/Laura Albert is, she says, the toast of Paree. “The people of
Paris understood! I wrote FICTION. Fake memoir – no. I wrote Fiction
and PUBLISHED it ALL under the label FICTION. Even Spider Man has a
MySpace page. … I have found so much acceptance here in S.F., but in
Paris – they celebrated me!”

Albert was brought to France by the European public television station
Arte, and was celebrated on TV, in Technikart magazine and at parties.
She spent some time with designer Christian Lacroix, who she says
admired her literary work and offered her one of his dresses. “I am
viewed as an artist that broke new ground. … I did surprise with art
and THAT alone is to be celebrated and encouraged! Not through the
puritanical burn-the-witch lenses of an American need to have a ready
villain.
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/garchik/

http://jolenesiana.blogspot.com/2006/01/memoir-challenge.html
J. Lim:
I think your response to the JT LeRoy situation is reactionary and not very well informed. Her books are fiction. She was sexually abused. She did not say JT had AIDS to sell books, she initially said that long before she had ever written a book to the person she regularly corresponded with on a help hotline because she thought he was interested in JT sexually because as they got to know each other he was pushing that they meet in person.

This may be hard to understand, but JT LeRoy was created by the author, Laura Albert, as a part of her. JT LeRoy was someone she identified with even before she/he ever wrote. Albert’s identity fractured early on in her life in order to cope with her own childhood abuse and trauma. This is one way that some people process their trauma.

The things that people responded to in the JT LeRoy books are real, not literally real events (since they have always been works of fiction), but very real expressions, interpretations and reactions to life. These were things that Laura Albert obviously understood deeply.

Also, I am not surprised or angry at all by anyone writing under a different name or presenting themselves in a deliberate way. I think there is too much precedence of this to be controversial.

Please read the Paris Review interview and the Art on Paper article to get a better sense of what happened:

http://www.jtleroy.com/images/TPR178_JTLeroy.pdf

http://www.artonpaper.com/bi/v12n01/review-identity-theft.php

J. Siana:
She lied to a lot of people about a lot of things that I know about and that I don’t care to share on this blog.

She used people for money. Not fond of that behavior. I don’t care if the books are true or not. I know it’s art but I don’t like people who knowingly try to fool other people…to find fame or to benefit financially from it.

J. Lim:
In your reply to my comment, it doesn’t seem like you took into consideration the things I wrote. If you are going to publicly make serious claims about someone I think you should state exactly why, then if someone challenges the things you claim are the basis for your hatred, then I think you should address that. As it stands, everything you’ve written about Laura Albert is, like I said, reactionary, an oversimplification of the situation. When you express your morals as they relate to Laura Albert, you make no room for gray.

You are not open to hearing that her motives were different than you believe. You still believe she used AIDS to market her books, but that is not true, yet you use it as material to hate her. You stated in your blog that Albert “played on sympathies of others”, describing her as a predator with motives of money and fame, as if her books were not an expression of something that she experienced intimately, but they were.

Also, you obviously do care if “the books are true or not” because in your blog you spend a lot of time trying to prove that JT LeRoy was not a first hand authority on pain and struggle even though she did write from deep experience. You site this as one reason why her work is of no value. Like I said before, what Albert describes is not literal, it is an interpretation and expression. The way that Laura Albert communicated with her readers was completely real and sincere; it just came in a different package.

J. Siana:
I actually don’t hate anyone and I definitely don’t spend A LOT of time trying to get people to change their opinions. I have more important things to deal with.

If you will notice this post was written a long time ago and it’s just my opinion. I don’t care if people agree with me or not. It’s just the way I feel.

J. Lim:
You may not actively “hate” her, but in my opinion, you expressed hatred (intense revulsion and distaste) towards what Laura Albert did and what she stands for, in your mind. I never said you “spend a lot of time trying to get people to change their opinions”. I DO think you try to “prove” or show, for yourself and others (since the blog is read by other people), that you are justified in your opinions. I think it’s fair to say that you based your opinions in what you thought were the “facts” and that is why I told you the facts that I knew to be different from the things you described on your blog.

Also, it was not just one “post” it was a series of posts that spanned over the course of a few days.

How long ago you posted it doesn’t matter. You still stand by your opinion, so it can still be relevant to discuss.

Also, it is not “just the way [you] feel.” It has an impact on how other people think and act. This impact is evident in the comments on your blog, as well as in another person’s blog who directly references your posts as the source for her identical opinion about Albert.