Aurthor JT LeRoy Called A Hoax

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - The edgier part of the local literary world, the heirs of William Burroughs, are somewhat embarrassed over the news that local celeb author J.T. Leroy, a seemingly authentic bard of the marginal, turns out to be a hoax. … It’s quite a yarn and worth taking the time today to give you the rundown:
The celebrated Leroy had three claims to fame: a) He was a supposed kid hustler whose accounts of his childhood experiences on the road from West Virginia truck stops to Polk Street made him a kind of Kerouac of the crapulous, b) he was notoriously shy and often failed to show up for public readings, yet c) he became a celebrity, taken up by the authors of the edgy and by stars ranging from Winona Ryder to Carrie Fisher.
Now it turns out that he, and apparently his writings, were the concoctions of a local clan of three or four intent on lit’ry helter-skelter.
Years ago, before Leroy was known, I received a pile of Xeroxed pages one day in the mail from someone who called himself “Terminator.” In the cover note, Terminator said an anonymous mutual friend thought I might be able to edit the pile of handwritten notes into a publishable manuscript. Some of the pages were copies of a diary, some were efforts at composition. They were fascinating but it wasn’t clear if the work was a memoir, a novel, or pastiche of truth and fiction. To me, it read as if the author had been writing as part of therapy and then inspired, perhaps by the success of “Angela’s Ashes,” decided to write a book.
Anyway, the manuscript was beyond my emotional experience, or even imagination — it left me just tongue-tied. So I’d be no help as an editor. That was the end of the matter.
Then a few years later, I began to see that some of the pages Term-inator sent me were being published under the Leroy name. Good, I thought, he found an editor equal to his harrowing, incredible life.
But soon, as the newly published and lionized Leroy became infamous for failing to show at appearances, I began to think of another book, one published in 1984. It was the novel “Famous All Over Town,” an account of growing up in an East L.A. barrio by one Danny Santiago. Santiago’s much-praised book won a prestigious $5,000 prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, but he failed to show at the ceremony. … Questions were raised. Then it turned out that no one, not even his editors, had ever even spoken to Danny Santiago.
Far from being a tough, exuberant teenager from East L.A., Danny Santiago turned out to be a 73-year-old former Hollywood screenwriter, one Daniel James, who had been blacklisted for his membership in the Communist Party. … Was someone pulling a Danny Santiago with this character J.T. Leroy? Certainly seemed so.
J.T. Leroy turned himself into an industry, eventually writing for 7x7 magazine here in The City and even for The New York Times. He began to appear in public as a shy Boy George-type character.
Meanwhile, San Francisco author Stephen Breachy was tracking down the real identity of J.T. Leroy. Breachy’s unmasking of the hoaxers appeared in a recent piece in New York Magazine, originally intended for the Bay Guardian, which did not print it. The New York Times described the imposter in detail Monday.
Now, many champions of the author and bizarre celebrity are trying to save face. The line seems to be: “Well, even if Leroy is a fraud, the books are still good.” It’s a strong argument. For example, no one knows the true identity of the author B. Traven (he might have been Ambrose Bierce), but that doesn’t detract from the worth of his words.
In Leroy’s case, the argument fails. What Leroy was supposed to have done was give us an authentic glimpse into a really marginal world. Now that is all suspect … I suppose the real question is this: What was it about the dubious, dark world created by Leroy that so seduced his champions? The answer might explain the collective unconsciousness of a large coterie of our fellow citizens who worship the marginal. …
Another thought that comes to mind was best expressed by another San Francisco author who found a pseudonym liberating, but never denied his true identity: Mark Twain. In one of his novels, a Twain character is musing on a hoax about to be pulled off in a small community. The conspirators are anxious, but take heart when one says encouragingly, “How can we lose? The fools in town are on our side.” Well played, J.T. …
by P.J. Corkery - The Examiner San Francisco