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Read other letters about this article
No need to be mean about it, ML, but I was -- like you -- beginning to wonder why no one seemed to have heard of JT Leroy, until the last couple of letters came in. (Is James Frey actually better known? I guess Oprah can bring a writer the kind of fame that even celebrity patrons can't.) But Jesse's comment said it best -- Waldman's probably too close to the furor to realize that, contrary to her opening line, "everyone" does not know who Leroy is, was, or wasn't. And I agree that the piece would have been stronger -- certainly more accessible -- had it included a couple of sentences providing the basic necessary background.
That said, ML really does seize on the key point -- the interesting thing about this whole issue is how and why so many people were duped, or let themselves be. I mean, look at the photos of this person. Does he look like a guy to you? I never saw a picture before this week (much less met "him"), so I guess I at least have that excuse. But whatever the faults in the writing or editing of this column (and let's remember this is a first-person column, not a piece of reportage, so a bit of solipcism is forgivable), let's give Waldman and Salon credit for being pretty quick to get to the hard nut at the center of this lit-world peach -- why the hell did so many people play along? If you look past the details about penis stumps, this is one person's answer to that question -- the first such account I've read. So yes, this IS, among many other things, what I pay to read on Salon.
By the way, am I the only one puzzled by the last section where she condemns Frey's "fraud" as being the much greater and more venal one? From what I gathered, he took liberties with some factual details in an account of his own life. Isn't there an implicit disclaimer at the front of every memoir that says, "Some names may have been changed to protect the innocent, sex scenes may or may not be invented, and some dialogue has been significantly altered to heighten dramatic effect"? I mean, if we could fact check his (or any memoirist's) account of what they felt, thought, or said in the tale they tell, would that make for a better -- or truer, or more meaningful -- account? If the answer to that is no, why should it matter if a memoir plays somewhat with surrounding factual events? It's a memoir, not a documentary. To call his case a "fraud" seems somewhat overstated -- at least until we learn that he never, in fact, was an addict at all, went through recovery, etc. Now THAT would be a fraud. Frey's crime appears to be more of a misdemeanor.
