Letters to the Editor
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C'mon People
Just because you're entirely out of the cultural loop don't start blasting Salon for running an article on this. JT LeRoy has been an underground celebrity author for many years. The books have sold well, the first novel, "Sarah", was optioned by Gus Van Sant for a feature film, etc. Get your noses off the front pages and read what's in the other pages of the newspaper, or online. There have been countless newspaper and magazine articles on this writer prior to this expose. Nerve.com even has several short stories online. This is not that obscure if you at all keep up with literature. Some of the short stories are actually quite good, others stretch the limits of the imagination...
That said, the bigger issue is how so many people in the art and literary worlds allowed themselves to be duped. When I read my first story by JT, I thought, "Hmmm... this is interesting..." The more I read, the less real the whole persona seemed. I'm not meaning to sound smug, but honestly - the world JT created in "his" stories was one based on the way the intelligentsia on the two coasts like to view flyover America. It's a place brimming with dark secrets, and twisted obsessions. Having come originally from that part of the country, with an extended family that resembles a Faulkner novel, I could easily spot it for what it was. (The same could be said of another alternative darling, Harmony Korine.) Does anyone honestly think that truck stops in the deepest parts of the red states are prowled by "lot lizards" - pretty, underage boys who whore themselves out to horny truckers? I have quite a few truckers in my family, and though there's drug use and other crazy stuff that goes down in that world, juvenile hustlers would be a truly notable exception, not a rule as JT writes in his stories. That's just one point. The list goes on. For one of the situations in the stories, or even two, to be true would be believable, but for all the things this kid experiences in these stories it could only be fiction. The JT hoax says a lot more about the liberal cultural elite (sorry to have to use that expression) in America than it does about either the true author, or America as a whole. These stories fed a fantasy, as did the character of JT. It's the fantasy of those who were conned that needs to be examined, not the hoax. Literary hoaxes are as old as storytelling.