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The Laura Albert / JT Leroy fraud case might be over, but I figure Albert’s arguments as far as Leroy’s “existence” will become an unsolved artistic mystery to be debated for the ages. Albert claims that the abused, tortured young Leroy was an aesthetic tool created to allow her freedom to write down all those things she couldn’t bring herself to face. (The story goes that much of what LeRoy writes, Albert experienced.) The claim isn’t all that incredible considering the same thing apparently happens when writers use the “Anonymous” nom de plume—just ask Nikki Gemmell. Albert, though, might have gotten away with her method had she not signed tax cheques in LeRoy’s name. She also went so far as to have friend Savannah Knoop dress up as LeRoy to attend interviews and parties.
From BBC News:
She denied the character was a hoax, saying she believed LeRoy was inside her. “It was my respirator,” she told the court in New York. “If you take JT, you take my other and I die.”
Then what’s Knoop? Apparently Knoop was as attached to LeRoy—her reasons, though, are yet to be substantially argued. Whatever the case, Albert has lost this round. Antidote Films, which was slated to make a film from LeRoy’s book, Sarah, sued the author for fraud. They called the LeRoy situation “one of the biggest literary hoaxes of all time”. Albert now owes Antidote $350,000. The New York Times has a piece here.
This piece in the The Independent digs right to the bone of the issue and presents several of Albert’s artistic ideals as clearly as to (almost) make them believable. Still, it’s rather coincidental that LeRoy is officially “out” of Albert now that no one is able to witness the character’s “taking over” of the author. Albert sure recovered quickly from her psychological quibbles (so big they required this level of public deception). And is anyone really questioning the author’s right to a pseudonym? Not really. The problem here is the heavily disguised waif-like being who pretended to be LeRoy on the arms of Winona Ryder and Courtney Love.
James Stafford, a friend of Albert’s, reveals in The Independent the lengths to which the Albert group went in perpetuating their hoax. What kind of aesthetic tool needs to be calmed at an interview with “a Bible and a Barbie doll” only to end up jumping on a couch playing with a fairy wand? Again, Albert’s story could have seemed credible if not for some of that other wildness.
What a mess.
LeRoy might be unpublishable, but he’s apparently still a bankable product. The IMDb lists an Untitled JT LeRoy Project scheduled for 2008.
