Dear Ms. Albert,
I was so glad to see you mentioned in Leah Garchik yesterday. And the French aren’t the only ones who get it. I always admired your work, and when the “revelation” occurred I laughed out loud, thrilled that this boy-wonder was actually someone more fascinating to me; an artist closer to my age who struggled to achieve her success. (BTW: Pierre Louys performed a similar feat about 100 years earlier, in France of course. Maybe that’s why they are so receptive. And he, too, was received over there more as a literary celebrity… not a leper)
I wanted to write you ever since you were introduced to the world. I think you handled the events of the JT phenomenon with real finesse. It was obvious the perception of others formed this mass illusion, and you just rolled with it.
I think the JT myth offended so many here in America because he was like a mirror held up revealing their own false pretenses to why they were fans. I believe the majority of these critics were originally just hanger-on types, intrigued by the boy hustler, and the revelation called them out on it. They were suddenly faced with the question “why do you like the work?” after having spent months or years talking of JT LeRoy. They felt phony because the were actually dilettantes.
So while most of these type of fans were more interested in going to readings of JT’s work by celebrities (JT not even present), I was intrigued by the massive amount of published work JT was getting in magazines (no one speaks of this!). When I happened to notice yet another story/interview/etc for the third straight month, it became a pastime of mine to go to the newsstand religiously to look for the next article by JT LeRoy. It was phenomenal, fourteen months straight I found his/your work (before my leisure time was rudely interrupted by an eviction I had to fight), and there may have been more. Once I was re-settled, the story broke, and it was the end of an era…
Personally, I was looking forward to you receiving your much deserved success. I was saddened at the way you were crucified (Where the fuck were all the fans of your WORK?).
So what I wanted to say to you most, and this is no exaggeration, I consider you the greatest living writer. I don’t know if I have any supporters on this, those most qualified to judge such a thing would do so on your written work alone (and you may have tough competition from a few stuffy academic Nobel Prize winners). But I have my own method of measuring this. I would also take into account you as an artist and a person. In these areas you would far surpass all others. Yes, some of the very same qualities many of your turn-coat fans nullified you for, I recognize as virtues. I see true genius personified.
I was in desperate need of a new source of artistic inspiration when you came along. I’ve clung to poor Henry Miller for way too long. The eighty year gap would sometimes cast doubt (Is he still relevant? Would he make it today?). But you demonstrated a real tenacity for carving out a place in today’s world.
I can’t believe anybody had the nerve to criticize you. Especially in these insipid times when people exist like a large herd of cattle. And they don’t even have the decency to applaud when someone levitates above them and does a minuet on a cloud.
You, Ms. Albert, motivate me to continue my own work (screenwriting — I don’t do novels), and I look forward to seeing more of yours in the future.
-Joe Braden
May 19th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
While we are quite aware of the demographic and socio-political motivations for many autogynephilic transsexuals to lie about being us, our web site addresses this dynamic in great detail, we are quite saddened to have our colonization demographic expanded to include 40 year old white female writers pretending to be us. We think that the upward expansion of our exploitation value as a cultural resource into the arts is indicative of our increasing social vulnerability. What is next? Perhaps fake films written by fake transkids, informed by transsexuals pretending to be us, all serving to even more completely eradicate any meaningfull social understanding which would help end the circumstances surrounding the exoticization of our lives. Our lives are not exotic at all.
Just so you know, as we expected, your book did not convince us at all. Clue: the very fact that it claimed to be written by one of our number is the major tell. We tend not to relish making public the circumstances of our abuse and devaluation, nor do we see any value in it. One of our members was asked to review Laura, but her review was not published, perhaps because it was too brief. “It’s a fake”. If you would like to see what real transkids write, some of whom were discarded onto the street as teens, look right here. We don’t want to be socially and artistically understood, to become the next hip subculture to elicit compassion and empathy from middle class white people. We want to end our subculture.
We request that you donate the proceedings of your profits from harmfully misrepresenting us to a suitable street trans-youth outreach organization so that people who are working to actually help our population rather than profit by it may have a little more means to do so. We can suggest several. It’s what a real JT would do.
signed,
transkids.us writers