“Which part of novel, ahem … fiction, don’t you understand….You seem to object to the artistic use of another persona as the predicate for her writing. May I remind you that there are many female authors who represent themselves as male, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and many male authors who went the other way….You should think of why you are so offended. Is the writing good; is the novel — remember that word — touching you. If so, you need to look into yourself as to why you are so enraged, particularly when you have not even bothered to check out the truth of the errors you espouse.”
-D. David
The debate over amazon customer review:
amazon customer review
Deceived, January 11, 2006
By T. Burger
The artist is deceitful above all things.
It is unconscionable to pass yourself off as a person dying of AIDS. To those with HIV, AIDS, or those who love or are caregivers to them, it is a horrid, hideous assault. (S)he has insulted every single person who has ever died of AIDS such that it defies metaphor.
When I thought the traumas described in this book were part of an abuse pattern that eventually led to HIV infection (by that I mean having been beaten down so horrifyingly that your mindset is such that you are capable of infection…it’s complicated, but trust me on this), I was moved as powerfully as if I had been hit by a bus. Now I’m furious. The writing, good if written by a teenager, is rather pedestrian now that we know the source.
People have been commenting that I’m not reviewing the work – rather, I’m reviewing the artist. I would argue that in this case, it’s one and the same. This book, and the collection of short stories, The Artist (ahem…Heart) is Deceitful Above All Things, were very powerful when they were understood to be excerpts from the LeRoy’s life. Even though the book says “novel” on the front, it was always understood to be creative non-fiction. Indeed, LeRoy him/herself went to great lengths to make people believe that there was a J.T. LeRoy.
When I read the book, I thought I was reading something close to a memoir, and I was powerfully, deeply moved. Now that I know that this is entirely fiction, I am not similarly moved. For this reviewer, the greatest strength that the book possessed was that it was – supposedly – based on real events.
Laura Albert, the “real” J.T. LeRoy, has spent her life playing the role of different people, often with disastrous results. This is just another example of her pathological behavior. She also recently lost a court case where she was being sued by a film company who had optioned the rights for Sarah. They too understood that the strength of the book lied in its purported reality, and once the woman came out from behind the curtain, the work lost its appeal.
Mr. J. Moorhouse says:
This review is very biased. It does not actually review the title in question, but more a personal attack on the ‘author’. I own this novel and nowhere does it claim that the events described in the novel are true.
T. Burger says:
You’re right, it is very biased. The book makes no claims that the events described therein are true, but the author(s) did. And they did pass themselves off as being HIV+ to lend sympathy to their “plight” and to help increase sales and interest. That’s beyond unconscionable.
Normally I wouldn’t post something that didn’t address the work at hand. My other reviews should demonstrate that. This, however, is a special case. This “review”, such as it is, serves as a foil, of sorts. I have no problem posting it.
I did read the book, but wanted to spend no energy “reviewing” its literary merits. That would be a waste.
P. Neil Dryden says:
I gotta agree with J. Moorhouse. If the recent revelations changed your opinion of the book then you’re a bad critic. If the author’s fictional back story was responsible for your original evaluation then you’re a bad reader. I’d refer you to this take on the scandal in Slate magazine:
http://www.slate.com/id/2169125/
T. Burger says:
The author’s perfidy allows for, I believe, any take on the book, and I stand behind my review.
The article you noted doesn’t change my opinion. They are writing as if the book was supposed to be taken as entirely fiction. It was never understood by anyone to be purely fiction – not the publishers, not the celebrities that became so interested in the character of J.T. Everyone was interested in the story because there was an *explicit* understanding that the work was “creative non fiction”, regardless of the word “novel” that appeared on the front cover. The “author” herself/himself was very specific on that front and went to great lengths to make J.T. Leroy a real and sympathetic figure – emphasis on REAL. Which he is not.
If you go to Leroy’s website, you’ll see that the author, Laura Albert, has been a fraud her entire life. When she was 12, she spoke by phone to an attractive older boy she was interested in, sending him a photo of a beautiful young girl, claiming the picture was herself. After the boy became more and more interested in meeting her, Albert escaped by claiming the girl died of cancer. Imagine the poor boy’s crushed heart – and Laura’s stunned mother when the boy’s mother showed up wanting an explanation.
MG says:
First, her name isn’t Laura Ingalls. It’s Laura Albert.
Second, she certainly isn’t the first person to fictionalize a memoir. Look at Virginia Woolf’s Orlando or Gertrude Stein’s The Biography of Alice B. Toklas, both acting as a screen in which to present themselves. Check out Audre Lorde’s biomythography or Zora Neale Hurston’s autobio which was so fictionalized critics still can’t even determine how old she was. Making up one’s “memoir” is actually a part of literary tradition. Laura Albert just made hers a real life performance art piece. I love it.
T. Burger says:
I don’t think you can compare Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Audre Lorde or Zora Neale Hurston to Laura Albert, for obvious reasons, and others that would involve a lengthy discussion that I wouldn’t be interested in (also for what should be obvious reasons).
Thanks for the correction.
panopticon7 says:
it’s very telling that you needed to believe that the author’s having lived a pathetic and diseased adolescence was required for you to enjoy this surreal little book. now that you’ve had your self-righteous magnanimity all spoiled, wasted on a phantom that really didn’t need your anonymous pity at all, you throw a tantrum and blame the author for having catered to your own peculiar emotional needs. until she was outed, of course. of course, the review you’ve posted is entirely about you. of course, this review of yours belongs on your own personal blog–not on amazon. don’t let the helpful ratings of those like yourself fool you–what you’ve written here is of no value in determining the book’s literary merit and doesn’t belong here. but please, keep insisting that it does. it’s cute and shows just how effectively the author’s campaign was–a campaign that was targeted at people just like you.
D. David says:
Which part of novel, ahem … fiction, don’t you understand.
Let’s do this one step at a time. You appear to be upset that the artist represented herself as HIV positive. Excuse me, would you mind pointing out where she did that. The answer, which you may not want to hear, is never. While there may be reviewers who carelessly made that claim, the truth is that Laura never made such a representation.
Second, you seem to object to the artistic use of another persona as the predicate for her writing. May I remind you that there are many female authors who represent themselves as male, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and many male authors who went the other way. If you have seen the recent film based upon Bob Dylan’s life (I believe his real name was actually Robert Zimmerman), you will note that they used 6 different characters to play him, mainly because he had “misrepresented” his past. What about Borat? At the time the movie was shot, the public figures thought they were talking to a foreign journalist. Did that deception inflame your passions in the same way?
Third, as to the lawsuit, the final chapter has yet to be written. That matter is on appeal and Ms. Albert has supplemented her team with a nationally known firm that will give her the representation that is appropriate to the important literary issues involved in this matter.
Finally, you should think of why you are so offended. Is the writing good; is the novel — remember that word — touching you. If so, you need to look into yourself as to why you are so enraged, particularly when you have not even bothered to check out the truth of the errors you espouse.
T. Burger says:
I’m not changing my opinion on this. And fine, let’s do this one step at a time.
We both know that I understand the word fiction, so, cute reply aside, we’ll leave that alone.
First, the artist did represent herself – I mean, himself, J.T. LeRoy – as being HIV positive, and used that “poor me” to sell books and to gain sympathy from any number of celebrities, all (or 99%) of whom have fled her “cause” in droves. As a human being, I find her use of HIV infection objectionable. As a person who has lost more friends than I care to count to AIDS, I find it unconscionable. It’s one thing to pretend that you’re someone who has a degree in, say, astrophysics. Or that you’re a gang member, infiltrating a gang to write a book about what that’s like. It’s another to do what she did. And what she did was ONLY interesting to me because I thought I was reading the real life experiences of someone. They were reasonably well written when I was led to believe that they were composed at the direction of “his” psychiatrist to help “him” deal with the trauma and pain of “his” early life, and that “he” was still in “his” teens when he did so. I mean, really – a *kid* wrote this stuff? Wow. Impressive. It blew me away. However, knowing that an adult wrote this – well, something that’s “reasonably well written” for a teenager becomes “not very well written at all” when it’s from a much older woman. And when what she wrote about became known as fiction, even the topics were less interesting.
If she had done this as a literary exercise, it could be viewed differently. But she didn’t. She couldn’t sell her writing as herself, so she went with what she did best – she knowingly misrepresented herself as a horrifically abused boy whose abuse later led to HIV infection.
Second, I don’t care that a female represented herself as a male. See above. The rest of what you say regarding that is irrelevant to this.
Third, Albert won’t win. She crossed that “unconscionable” threshold when she pretended to have HIV/AIDS. Aside from that, she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. That should be clear to anyone following the case.
Finally. I’m perfectly fine with my assessment, as I’ve noted before. No further self examination is necessary. Obviously, many people disagree with me. That’s fine – and it’s what makes Amazon a fun place. We can all disagree with each other. If I was worried about writing unpopular reviews, I wouldn’t have given “Rocky Balboa” two stars, or Eldest one star. As you can imagine, those weren’t very popular reviews.
Neither is this. Fewer than half of the people who voted on this agree with me. I’m OK with that.
D. David says:
You are correct, I chose to post my response to you as a comment. I do not understand the rest of your comments.
You once again claim that Laura claimed JT was HIV+ and this appears to be a big part of your rage. Again, I challenge you to point out one place where that occurred. If you can’t or won’t do that, then everything you say is baseless. And, you will not be able to do so, because it does not exist.
If I am correct, and you then continue with your position based upon that assertion, you are dishonest. Therefore, I will make it clear, I challenge you to provide one place where Laura alleged JT was HIV +. It is your choice whether you choose to accept such a challenged.
T. Burger says:
If you don’t understand the rest of my comments…well…I think I was very clear, and my comments were germane to the topic at hand.
At BEST, here is the situation, quoted from an exhaustive salon.com article: “Although Albert didn’t initially publicize LeRoy as being HIV-positive, at some point in the media swirl, the young prostitute was mentioned as having the virus, and Albert never discouraged the rumor, which continued to disseminate through articles and blogs.”
That’s at BEST. If you’re a writer, and someone says that you have HIV, and this information is being disseminated through articles and blogs, and you’re NOT HIV positive, then at best you are allowing people to believe that you have HIV, which we know only increased the trauma of poor JT Leroy, and would likely lead to an increase sales. This is painting this in the best light possible, and it still clearly marks Albert as dishonest. To allow others to think you have ANY disease to encourage sympathy for you (or a creation of yours) is heinous and breaks several implied social contracts regarding decency and honesty. Lies by omission are still lies.
At worst, from Wikipedia (and read the entire thing): “A New York Times article by Warren St. John, published on January 9, 2006, gave evidence that the person appearing in public as JT LeRoy was Savannah Knoop, half-sister of Geoffrey Knoop [11]. This article is also the source of the claim that LeRoy presented himself as being HIV-positive: St. John and Silverberg both made the accusation, although neither offered any substantiation. No evidence for it has been produced since; nothing in LeRoy’s many interviews and articles, or in his voluminous email correspondence, provides any documentation of JT claiming to be “infected with HIV” or “dying of AIDS.” All of the early writers, publishers, and editors were aware of JT’s HIV status because he brought it up consistently as an excuse as to why he couldn’t enter the public (e.g., “I am covered with Kaposi sarcoma.”) The idea of having a ‘death sentence’ was just one of the early abuse narratives that JT claimed, but no longer needed when Savannah Knoop took on a more polished public role.”
I remember this, vividly, from web searches when I first read Sarah.
Then there are how this affects people. Armistead Maupin has said: “A lot of people argue that such frauds cause no harm and are a great joke played on the literary establishment… But in fact there’s something very callous about using AIDS and an abusive childhood as a way of getting sympathy and support… I’m surprised that people were bamboozled as long as they were.”
I agree with Maupin’s assessment.
I began this comment by saying that most people that knew the LeRoy story believed that he was HIV+. That Albert never corrected it is bad enough in my book.
D. David says:
Please note, as you yourself recognize, “neither offered any substantiation” of the claim that JT had claimed to be HIV+. Further, as you state, “nothing in LeRoy’s many interviews and articles, or in his voluminous email correspondence provides any documentation of JT claiming to be ‘infected with HIV’ or ‘dying of aids’.” While I applaud you for your honesty in at least half-way admiting that JT never made such a claim, you nonetheless persist, now arguing that it was JT’s obligation to specifically reject the statements of others as to his health.
The change in argument would indicate that your mind was made up and that a change in the facts will do nothing to change your conclusion. If someone had asked, “Are you HIV+?” and JT had danced around the question, I might consider your point further, but I see no way to even understand that you are angry now because JT did not respond to others’ speculation. Tell me, how is that dishonest, how is it wrong to not respond to such speculation about yourself? Are you now telling me that every person is obliged, upon hearing speculation that he/she has HIV to state the true condition of their health? If so, I repudiate you and your position. That issue is a matter of privacy, and no one need respond merely because of public speculation and curiosity.
T. Burger says:
This is just silly.
A lie by omission is still a lie. If you don’t think so, then what do you think about a sex partner who has, say, HIV, doesn’t tell you about it, and you become infected? That person bears no culpability? If that’s what you believe, fine – then we agree to disagree. Otherwise, JT is as guilty as sin.
Because: if “JT” knew that people claimed that “he” had “HIV” and “he” did nothing to discourage anyone (knowing that such an affliction would only increase talk about “him” and thereby, potentially, sales) then “he” is every bit as guilty if “he” said so “himself”.
AND “HE” DID.
The part you conveniently decided not to quote was that “JT” gave, as a reason that “he” couldn’t make public appearances when “he” first hit it big, was that “he” had AIDS. Kaposi’s Sarcoma. Big, purple lesions that make people become recluses. “He” just didn’t say it to newspaper reporters: but he did say it to editors. They count, don’t they?
“His” actions are unconscionable. Disgusting. Why do I think so? Because I’ve seen REAL people DIE of AIDS. People that I’ve loved, people that are friends. I’ve seen people ill with Kaposi’s. Again – people that I’ve loved, friends. It’s not pleasant, and it’s not something to be faked. I could go on explaining why faking this is so awful, but it really should be painfully obvious.
By chance, are you Laura? I know that she’s trolled the Amazon boards, writing fake reviews, and repudiating those who found her work less than good or honest. She delights in this sort of thing. Pretending to be someone else… Lots of jollies.
I don’t have anything further to contribute to this discussion. My review, as it is, and all of my comments support my belief as best they can. I won’t say, or write, another word.
D. David says:
Ah, once again your fundamental dishonesty, or at least lack of logic shows — on second thought, it is actually both.
First, again I challenge you to cite a single place where JT ever claimed that he didn’t want to be in public because he has karposi’s. He has said that he doesn’t wish to be in public because he doesn’t want to be touched. He has said he doesn’t want to be in public because he is shy — but I challenge you to point out one place where he laid the reason for that aversion on Karposi’s or HIV. You can’t.
You previously indicated that you just “know” that you read that JT made a claim somewhere, that you certainly remember it in the “vast research” you did on the web. Again, I challenge you. Most web sites have archives. If you are anything other than a hypocrite, find the source for your statement. Otherwise, you are little more than Joe McCarthy claiming to be holding a blank sheet of paper which “shows” communists in the State Department.
As to your claim of trying to equate JT’s failure to speak to a similar failure to speak in a situation of personal intimacy, you are truly deluded. Of course one has an obligation to speak before putting another at risk. But if you cannot understand the difference between remaining silent and putting another at risk of a potentially life threatening disease versus an author not answering a reporter’s speculation about the author’s own backstory, your values need serious readjustment.
As for your meally-mouthed attempt to claim the high ground, by claiming that you know people who have died of AIDS, you reek of the hypocrisy of those who claim that some of their “”best friends” are ______ (fillin the blank with a group of your choice), and therefore they have a special insight that entitles them to extra credibility.
I also have watched friends die of AIDS, fortunately a much less common situation in the United States in recent years. That gives me neither greater nor lesser right to attack this author, who let me remind you again was writing a novel.
As to your question, I am not Laura. But, let me turn it about, are you a shill for Antidote, the parasitic company that tried to steal her life rights and then sued her?
That being said, once again I simply note that it is obvious that your McCarthyite unfounded assertions cannot substitute for honest reportage. Of course your opinion will not change, they were never based in fact and, therefore, pointing out your factual errors will not change them. Thank goodness, there are others that see past your feigned indignation and who will evaluate this work of fiction, for better or worse, on its own merits.
D. David says:
Well, at least you have seen fit, in part, to comment on the core issue — was the writing good or bad. As to that, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, although a little more analysis would have been helpful. If you think the writing is poor, as you obviously do, why? Do you have problems with the characters, is there something about the plot development? What is it that leads you to your conclusion.
When my daughter was younger, she developed a two point rating system for wines, yum and yuck. Although it was certainly helpful in knowing which wines she liked, it did little in explaining why she felt that way or in predicting how she might react to other wines. She grew out of the monochromatic view of the world of wines, and hopefully you will similarly enlighten us with a fuller understanding of your view of the merits of this novel.
That being said, you seem to fall into the same flaw as your mentor. You make conclusory statements without support. Why don’t you tell us where, before the revelation that Laura was writing as JT, that she made such a statement, oral or written?
It would certain help to respond in a meaningful way to your points, rather than simply having to accept your interpretation of what was said.
