Letters to the Editor
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Good grief...
After reading the first few letters, I had to ask myself: Huh?
It's ironic to me that the spite thrown at the author of this story, revolving around the lack of the back-story, consistently refers to the authors failures as a human being. As a reader, I had no idea what the letter-writers were talking about (as they failed to provide a context for their criticism).
The author did not provide enough (or any) backstory about her subject. The complainers who criticized her mercilessly provided no support for why they thought so little of her.
I could go research the author and figure out what she did to so inflame the tempers of those who complained. But I'm honestly not interested.
I did know of JT Leroy's background. I found his stories fantastical, at best, and dismissed them early on. Did I think he was fake? Never thought much about it. I didn't care.
But when I opened Salon today and saw the headline article, I clicked through and read it with much interest. I appreciated the tale, and I thank Salon for publishing it.
Salon is not journalism. Never has been. It is openly biased towards a liberal bent - that's why most of the readers come here. People like to be reassured of their own beliefs.
Those complaining that a story about a media hoax doesn't fit within the screens of Salon, have a rose-colored view of Salon.
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For those of you complaining that you don't know who J.T.Leroy is...
I don't know who he is either. But you might want to check out this little thing on the web. I believe it's called a "search engine". Yeah, I'm sure I read about that in some tutorial or other. When you have a question about something, it can help you find the answer. There's a really, really big one called "Google". It can get you links to almost anything.
For example, when I typed in "J.T. Leroy", I got a list of 926,000 pages, including "his" official home page, which was on top of the list. I'm pretty sure you can find the answer to who "he" is somewhere on one of those pages.
And since "he" writes books, there's always Amazon, which also has one of these "search engine" thingies on it. If you put in "his" name, you'll get all the books! As Hewell Houser would say, "Isn't that a-MAY-zin'?" What these techno people come up with, I swear!
[/sarcasm]
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One of the worst ever, sorry.
I'm not usually interested in the entertainment/literature stories, so I'm accustomed to skipping them. What drew me in to this one is that I had no idea who JT Leroy is or was, so I started reading....
and reading....
and reading...
all the way to the end and I STILL don't know.
Yes, I know I could google him/her/it, or read all the other letters here, but I've wasted enough time already.
Editors, it would have taken only a sidebar.
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The amazing thing to me...
...is that people are actually still talking about this empty glass of a story. I guess I am too, but what can I say? I am a man twisted by paradox (i.e., wishy-washy).
Much tempest over what essentially amounts to discussing someone's poo. "It's brown." "No, it isn't!" "I like brown!" "Brown is teh suXXors." "You intellectual peons fail to grasp the unendurable pathos of umber." Etc.
When all is said and done, I am left with one desperate and possibly unanswerable question: who do I have to bribe to get that photo off the home page? I mean, seriously. Do I really have to wait until tonight around 8pm Pacific? Gah!
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another JT con, just as mystifying
I wrote a review of Leroy's first book, Sarah, when it came out for The Montreal Mirror. I liked it, even though I found it a little fantastic. When Leroy's second book came out, The Heart is Deceitful, another editor at the Mirror pulled me aside. After reading Sarah, she was so moved by it, she wrote to him/her/them. Leroy not only wrote back, but they struck up an intense enough correspondence that he included her in the acknowledgments of his second book.
This editor has since moved to Australia, but as far as I know they remain friends.
So there you go, Ayelet. Leroy wasn't only "conning" celebrities, she was also "conning" ordinary people. Actual ordinary people, not relatively ordinary people such as yourself. Or maybe she was just making friends. Novelists create fictional characters. So this novelist took that task a little too seriously. Does that really make everything about the friendship false? Does it make the work less compelling or more.
It all raises interesting questions, which I believe is supposed to be what writers do.
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And another thing...
It really isn't that we can't do some quick research to get some background on JT, (most of us probably did anyway) the concern is that the issue is so trite? The character so off the planet. Why this issue is worthy of Ms. Waldman's moral quandry puzzles me. Its so simple---star fucking.
Come on, aren't they all kind of a hoax. Maybe even the provocative Ms.Waldman is pulling our chain for fame and fortune.
And Salon, we premium subscribers deserve better stuff. Where IS Camille BTW?
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Absolutely hilarious...
Not the article, which was just all right. No, what's great has been 83 letters worth (so far) of people bragging about their moral superiority over Ayelet Waldman.
Now, I'm one of the ones who DO know who JT Leroy is. I actually gagged my way through one of his/her books once, even. (It was utter shit, by the way.) What I didn't know was who Ayelet Waldman is, because I'm a newish subscriber and I've never read her stuff before. And now, after reading pages of vitriol directed against her, I'm still not sure who exactly she is, but I know one thing: I like her a lot. 'Cause when the mere fact that someone exists is enough to make a lot of douchebags prattle on about how much better they are than she is, that to me is someone I'd like to know more about.
I've never before heard of cultural cluelessness used as proof of someone's moral superiority, although many have done so here today. But seriously, how can anyone who has read a book in the last five years NOT have heard of this JT Leroy asshole? At the very least, that New York magazine story was everywhere a few months ago! Or is it that if it hasn't been on Oprah's Book Club, you haven't read it, or what?
For the record, I always thought "JT Leroy" was a dead ringer for Steven McDonald, the bass player for Redd Kross, and for a few minutes after the New York article, I wondered if maybe McDonald was the stand-in. (Given Redd Kross' fondness for put-ons back in the day, and Albert and Knoops' indie rock affiliations, it wasn't completely off-base.) So so much for that "Come on, how could anyone this that was a guy" jive.