Nothing is True in Literature
The facts are briefly these. J.T.Leroy published his first novel, Sarah, at age 20, about a cross-dressing teenage prostitute at West Virginia truck stops. (Well, until he makes that ill-omened pilgrimage to Holy Jack's Jackalope and things start getting complicated.) His second book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (made into a film by Asia Argento), is a collection of stories, some published when he was 16, generally considered to be inspired by events in his own life. They concern the life of an abused child with a disturbed prostitute mother who is into drugs. Both books are stunning, if distinctly manipulative. Subsequently, he wrote pieces for The Face, Spin, I-D, and a host of hip magazines. He was an Associate Producer of Gus Van Sant's film "Elephant."
The books got great reviews from, among others, The New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Interview, Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzanne Vega, Kelly Osbourne, and Joel Rose, who opined, "Occasionally, very occasionally, a writer comes along who walks with God. I have known J.T. Leroy since he was sixteen years old. Not only does he walk with God, he writes like an angel."
Some people seem somehow upset to have learned last month that J.T. Leroy does not exist. He is the brainchild of Laura Albert, a 40-year-old ex-phone sex worker.
Tell me, what is art? Part of it, at least, is an illusion that achieves a psychic reality in its audience. There is no doubt that J.T.'s writing achieved a psychic reality in its audience, all the way to Number 10 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. The anger seems to be that the illusion extends beyond the art to the creator as a persona. If this logic is extended, you might as well get angry with Norma Jeane Baker for changing her name to Marilyn Monroe or with Walt Disney for publishing Carl Barks's stuff without a byline. Let alone male romance writers who write under women's names. Anybody who read J.T. Leroy's stories, which have never been billed as anything other than fiction, as factual pieces from a real life is either a very inattentive reader or a very naive one.
Literature is literature. It could be viewed as sad that it takes elaborate persona-shifting to get really good writing to be read and appreciated. It's sadder if all of a sudden it seems less like "literature" when discovered it's been created by a different person. This suggests somehow that no one knows how to read and assess what they read, if such a gorgeously clothed emperor can so quickly be vilified as having no clothes.
The Japanese are a bit wiser about this. The styles--and signatures--of famous Japanese woodblock printmakers have been so much forged over the centuries that ambiguity about provenance in a truly stellar print does not take away from its value. The logic seems to be, "If it's ~that~ good, it's ~that~ good."
As long as art is confused with religion, where what is wanted is not a great creation but a great "creator" or at least a great creative persona, disappointment will ensue, human beings being, well, human. A few decades ago, the bad blood at Harvey Comics reached the point of (if I remember correctly) litigation. Does that make Casper the Friendly Ghost less innocent? Should ballet-goers feel ethically wronged that the sylphs who smile and glide so ethereally across the stage are in reality wracked by severe bunions and muscle pain?
What would the Elizabethans, and their literary heirs, have done if they found out Shakespeare's sister wrote all those plays...?
I wonder who ~did~ paint the Mona Lisa. *bg*
The books got great reviews from, among others, The New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Interview, Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzanne Vega, Kelly Osbourne, and Joel Rose, who opined, "Occasionally, very occasionally, a writer comes along who walks with God. I have known J.T. Leroy since he was sixteen years old. Not only does he walk with God, he writes like an angel."
Some people seem somehow upset to have learned last month that J.T. Leroy does not exist. He is the brainchild of Laura Albert, a 40-year-old ex-phone sex worker.
Tell me, what is art? Part of it, at least, is an illusion that achieves a psychic reality in its audience. There is no doubt that J.T.'s writing achieved a psychic reality in its audience, all the way to Number 10 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. The anger seems to be that the illusion extends beyond the art to the creator as a persona. If this logic is extended, you might as well get angry with Norma Jeane Baker for changing her name to Marilyn Monroe or with Walt Disney for publishing Carl Barks's stuff without a byline. Let alone male romance writers who write under women's names. Anybody who read J.T. Leroy's stories, which have never been billed as anything other than fiction, as factual pieces from a real life is either a very inattentive reader or a very naive one.
Literature is literature. It could be viewed as sad that it takes elaborate persona-shifting to get really good writing to be read and appreciated. It's sadder if all of a sudden it seems less like "literature" when discovered it's been created by a different person. This suggests somehow that no one knows how to read and assess what they read, if such a gorgeously clothed emperor can so quickly be vilified as having no clothes.
The Japanese are a bit wiser about this. The styles--and signatures--of famous Japanese woodblock printmakers have been so much forged over the centuries that ambiguity about provenance in a truly stellar print does not take away from its value. The logic seems to be, "If it's ~that~ good, it's ~that~ good."
As long as art is confused with religion, where what is wanted is not a great creation but a great "creator" or at least a great creative persona, disappointment will ensue, human beings being, well, human. A few decades ago, the bad blood at Harvey Comics reached the point of (if I remember correctly) litigation. Does that make Casper the Friendly Ghost less innocent? Should ballet-goers feel ethically wronged that the sylphs who smile and glide so ethereally across the stage are in reality wracked by severe bunions and muscle pain?
What would the Elizabethans, and their literary heirs, have done if they found out Shakespeare's sister wrote all those plays...?
I wonder who ~did~ paint the Mona Lisa. *bg*
posted by frankysbride at 11:02 PM
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