January 9, 2006
Authors Gone Wild: Lies, Crossdressing, Drugs, Disease and Oprah
Wow, Gothamist takes a break to re-read The Chronicle of Narnia and suddenly contemporary literature is rocked! The big stories: The Smoking Gun's expose on bestselling author James Frey's lie-laden memoir (and Oprah book), A Million Little Pieces, and the NY Times'investigation in JT Leroy, revealing he doesn't quite exist! Next, we'll find out JK Rowling is a marketing scheme cooked up by the British government! The Smoking Gun's article about Frey's lies seems so thorough that TSG will certainly be able to write the Cliff's Note for it. Sure, it's a compelling story, and sure, some writers embellish their memories...but embellishing whole parts? Wil this drive Frey fan Lindsay Lohan back to the brink? Now, all the 2003 blustering about people wanting to kick the crap out of Frey makes even more sense - remember Neal Pollack's issues with James Frey? And Jonathan Franzen must be looking pretty good to Oprah now.
The NY Times' JT Leroy story seems inspired by Stephen Beachy's New York magazine feature on who JT Leroy is. Beachy proposed that Leroy, who said he was the son of a prostitute who hustled him onto the streets and turned into a beloved author with cult following and famous friends (and lately claimed he had HIV), was actually the creation of a couple, Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, and the Times' Warren St. John says that Knoop's sister Savannah was the one who essentially "played" JT Leroy at various events. Aha - so that's why Asia Argento, who directed and starred in an adaptation of Leroy's book, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things,was never really pregnant with Leroy's baby. And we guess the Times is trying to play catchup with its writers' and contributors' writing habits - JT Leroy wrote an article for the Times' T magazine last fall about Disneyland Paris; expenses and questions with hotel staffs there helped the Times realize he might not exist! Dunh dunh dunh.
Have you read Frey or Leroy? What do think of the news? Gothamist would appreciate someone creating a diagram and/or timeline to help us understand these literary shams. And as Beachy's feature noted, this is totally The Night Listener, which is now a movie.
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A Million Little Pieces is unreadable. Lame prose, repetitive, too whiny. Who cares if it's real or not?
hmm-- frey lied about being arrested, and lied on oprah (to millions of people), and made millions of dollars from his lies, but laura albert made up JT Leroy out of whole cloth, and swindled money and sympathy out of people by telling everyone that he had AIDS. i think that's probably worse.
still, modern star-fucking literature was terrible to begin with-- and frey and leroy sucked hard already. now they suck hard and are known liars-- but does it really make any difference? all the suckers who liked their books will still like them-- they'll just say the writers took creative license or were postmodern or some bullshit like that. and all of us who thought they were wack will still think they are wack and read out graham greene novels or whatnot. so status quo is preserved.
frey's writing sucks more. And somehow he seems more despicable. Maybe becasse the blonde wig and monkey penis disguise seems like they wanted to be found out....
It matters whether it is real or not, becuase Frey CLAIMS it it real. I understand embellishing the truth for literature's sake. But he DID make up entire parts and he TOTALLY capitalized off a of a local tragedy (car/train wreck).
I don't think it all has to be real. I realize some will be embellished (a la Bukowski and Kerouac), but put a disclaimer on the book and don't claim it is all real - and then when questiond claim AGAIN it is all real. His follow up book, "My Name Is Leonard" has a disclaimer ....this book should have as well...
I don't know-- saying you have AIDS to dupe celebrities and make big $$$ off your writing-- that seems about as low as you can go. Frey strikes me as more of an exaggerator-- at least some of his story as some basis in fact!
James Frey's work--which I've been questioning myself for a while--is basically exactly what the hipster "chick lit" crowd who does not want to be connected to "chick lit" loves to consume.
Now, he's a dude. We all know that. But the chick lit aspect is the fact that Frey's portrayed himself as the young self-destructive "rebel" that the Williamsburg crowd loves to lap up. He portrays himself as redeemable and it's relatable. And the kind of semi-hipster kid we all want to crash on our futon or we've known to do so.
And he sucks.
Oprah fell for it out of that "I can relate to the pain of a younger" generation junk. And the second she accepted it, people should have really wondered what was up.
Frey ain't no Selby.
Frey vs. Leroy: Whatever. All I know is, Neal Pollack rulz.
Random House does it again; fake memoirs with Wilkomirski in the late 1990s, then the highly embellished memoirs in 2000 with Elizabeth Chambers' (Elizabeth "Kim"'s) "Ten Thousand Sorrows", where they had to stop the paperback edition after an AP article. And still they aren't fact-checking??
J.T. Leroy vs. Frey - I don't know from that; all I know is that I bought into the J.T. thing. I heard and read interviews with "him" - he gave quite a few, for such a reclusive fellow. Even Terry Gross interviewed him. You can listen to it on the Fresh Air web page. The freaky-ass thing is that he sounds more authentic in interviews than on the page (although he does, in fact, sound like a woman - and an older, mature woman, at that). Is J.T.'s creator a no-talent hack, exploiting people's sympathy for truly disturbed young men who need help? or is she herself truly disturbed? either way, I feel like a chump for believing the story, and feeling uplifted by the idea of a young man whose life was saved by literature. That was the whole point. What he wrote was actually pretty crappy.
J.T. Leroy vs. Frey - I don't know from that; all I know is that I bought into the J.T. thing. I heard and read interviews with "him" - he gave quite a few, for such a reclusive fellow. Even Terry Gross interviewed him. You can listen to it on the Fresh Air web page. The freaky-ass thing is that he sounds more authentic in interviews than on the page (although he does, in fact, sound like a woman - and an older, mature woman, at that). Is J.T.'s creator a no-talent hack, exploiting people's sympathy for truly disturbed young men who need help? or is she herself truly disturbed? either way, I feel like a chump for believing the story, and feeling uplifted by the idea of a young man whose life was saved by literature. That was the whole point. What he wrote was actually pretty crappy.
I like this, an author who wants to "slap" the bad-ass: http://eagraham.com/den/
Great. Now can someone please expose Augusten Burroughs for the obviously embellishing hack that he is?
I really don't know what to think about the Frey episode. I bought and read his book, I have an 18 year old son that has struggled with addiction the past few years, and since he read this book he is clean... Sounds to me like even though some things are false in the book, the 'TRUTH' is that his book has helped someone I love. I have also heard of it helping others. What help has JT done?