I'm from West Virginia. What gripes me about all this is that the hoax works on the assumption that people believe that West Virginia really is the way it is portrayed in JT Leroy's books. How insulting. Just one intelligent question about the state of West Virginia by someone who knows the state would have exposed these jerks. Child prostitution rings at truck stops? We do have a state police, child protective services, and 1.8 million people who would have put a stop to that before it got started. Don't we West Virginians have enough to deal with, without this crap? And by the way, there are actually real writers here, writing about real people.

Waldman says Leroy spoke of SRS (sex reassignment surgery) as "hacking it off," a sure sign that they don't know what they're talking about. SRS uses penile-inversion vaginoplasty, basically it's still there, it just goes in instead of out. It's reshaped, not discarded. This is a little-known fact, except to those who have actually learned something about the subject. It would have been easy to research the facts about SRS if you wanted to claim that status, but "Leroy" seems to have been careless with the facts.

I hope the fraud won't reflect badly on transsexuals. Probably not, since they had nothing to do with it.

Why is the news media devoting such absurd attention to these pointless stories regarding writers' self-aggrandizing deceptions? After all, such fakery is at least as old as the Bible--supposedly the word of God, which we all know not to be true.

Allow me to proffer one theory: writers and members of the media generally regard themselves as the most savvy and sophisticated of humans; therefore, anyone who succeeds in deceiving them must be a master of the trade.

Tommyrot. Our entheomaniacal president, possessing an intelligence no greater than that of the average hyena, led the country into war via fabricated pretext, and our esteemed, intrepid, and embedded reporters happily led the way, mostly oblivious to the sham being perpetuated by the entheomaniac's diabolical myrmidons.

Spare me any further handwringing regarding Mr. Leroy or Mr. Frey. Back to important matters, if you please.

Readers, stop hatin' on Ayelet! Her stories are not intended to break ground, dumbfound, or be profound! If you can't handle a little light reading (which this time happens to focus on an incredibly interesting topic, in my opinion) don't read her! And it is clear that so many of you, while griping about her every word, continue to read all of her columns -- how masochistic. Stop torturing yourselves and go read Sidney Blumenthal. I'll be smiling at the delightful frivolity -- and I mean that in the nicest way -- that is Ayelet Waldman's column.

Having not read JT, I am not be the best person to comment on his work. However, it seems to me that one of the reasons JT stuck literary gold (fool's gold, as it turned out) was that he/she artfully spun tales that simply confirmed a certain group's own prejudices about "them." In this case, fears were that those darn repressive MidWesterners were doing their best to oppress poor, misunderstood transgendered waifs.

JT was just writing acceptable porn for a left-wing audience. Porn in the sense of reflecting an audience's deep beliefs and longings, with a suitable opportunity to exclaim, "That's just awful." Titillation and righteousness in the same text is a tasty stew.

Neither side of the political spectrum is immune from this kind of social-political porn, by the way (see the recent book "Women Who are Making America Worse"). As long as we substitute this kind of porn for actual principle and reasoned discussion, celebrity trollops of all kinds (from the murderous, like Jack Abbott, to the fatuous, like James Frey) will continue to the subject of mastubatory adulation.

Is not that Frey and Leroy are despicable liars, but that their lies were what established their celebrity. What is wrong with writing a tale of abuse and drugs and sexual deviance and calling it a novel? Is there no honor in fiction?

From what I understand, the quality of the writing is not the issue. The outrage is that the authors perpretrated a hoax to gain entry into the world of coastal literati and the literati is pissed off. What they should be is embarrassed. Our culture has been poisoned by the proposition that true art can only be produced by the truly f***d-up. Craftsmenship, skill and vision are not prerequisites to success in the fine arts, and here, in literature.

True, there are the Warhols, the Basquiats, the Pollocks of the world, but for the most part this falsehood has resulted in talent wasted on self-destructive living, celebrity apportioned to creatives of questionable talent and a cult of personality.

The people who celebrated Frey and Leroy would have tossed their work in the circular file had they identified themselves as a frat boy and soccer mom. Those people are as responsible for these hoaxes as the writers themselves.

There is only one reason to care about the JT hoax--the stories he writes happen to be quite good. I've always assumed there was something fishy about the author. For instance, his books appear to have been set in the decade before his birth. But who really cares what he really looks like, or whether he's a she? Does the fact that Annie ("Brokeback Mountain") Proulx is a woman mean she can't speak for gay men? Her themes, like JT's, are universal. The fact that a lot of people in penthouses invested a lot of time in congratulating themselves on the assumption that they knew a white-trash ex-hustler from West Virginia doesn't cancel out the fact that the books are quite affecting--as fiction. In a recent novel, Peter Ackroyd writes about another literary fraud (actually one of a long line, including Thomas Chatterton and James McPherson), William Henry Ireland, who in the late 18th century produced a series of works he claimed were by Shakespeare. Several people got caught up in the hoax, including impresario David Garrick, who actually produced "Vortigern" on the stage. Why do we not hear much about Ireland and his work today? The plays were rubbish, not worthy of Shakespeare, or of Barbara Cartland for that matter. In a few years, people may still be talking, and even writing, about JT LeRoy, but, if so, it will be due to the quality of his writing; the public life that he invented for himself will be seen as the pathetic cry for help that it is. Once the feathers are smoothed and the egos assuaged, and we are able to look at the work of JT LeRoy objectively, I'm betting that "Sarah" and "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" will stand the test of time.