So it turns out that literary darling JT Leroy* isn’t a former teenage cross-dressing hustler from the South turned transgendered San Francisco reclusive author. Nope, he is the work of Laura Albert, a middle class writer from San Francisco (with her husband’s half sister playing the rare public appearances). A fairly full account of the hoax can be found in New York Magazine.

Faithful Bloggernacle Times readers will recall that Leroy got a mention in the March 7 edition of Bloggernacle A&E.

Here’s what I wrote at that time (the link to the original post doesn’t work and I can’t seem to fix it):

“Literary darling J.T. Leroy writes what I think is a review of the new Zwan album for a hip New Zealand mag. Apparently the album was recorded in Salt Lake City — or at least it was in Leroy’s fictitious account/possibly a review.

According to Leroy, “the Mormons knew something majestic was afoot and camped outside of the newly acquired double-wide practice space that floated in the lake much like the car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Mormons threw coke cans at the double-wide, which they perceived in their righteousness as a marker of rebellious redemption.” [WARNING: the review(?) contains harsh language and is not entirely intelligible].”

Right. So who cares? Minor footnote. Turns out Leroy is a fraud. Whatever.

Yes.

But at the same time, I was suprised to find the tiniest bit of outrage creep out as I read the details of the hoax.

Whether authors intend it or not (and with JT Leroy it was clearly a big part of the intention), readers adjust their readerly expectations based on their perceptions of the author. When authors trade on those perceptions (esp. as strongly as Leroy did), then readers deserve a reasonable measure of authenticity in the transaction. This especially holds true when an author use the materials of a reader’s people/ethnicity/community as grist for his or her work.

Although Mormons don’t have cause to speak as strongly (and rightly) as Armistead Maupin did in a Jan. 10 San Francisco Chronicle article on the hoax — “A lot of people argue that such frauds cause no harm and are a great joke played on the literary establishment … But in fact there’s something very callous about using AIDS and an abusive childhood as a way of getting sympathy and support…” — my (admittedly small) outrage isn’t completely off base.

Or to put it bluntly — I can swallow the use of tired Mormon tropes from someone with Leroy’s bio, but not from some smug, bougie San Francisco wannabe-edgie, middle-aged author (of course, I’m a smug, wannabe-bougie, thirtysomething Oakland blogger, fwiw).

So here’s my challenge to Laura Albert:

You cop to being Leroy, and I’ll happily provide free manuscript reviews of any of your future writings that feature Mormonism for the rest of your career.

* NOTE: This is an instance where Wikipedia clearly shows its value as a community-created resource.

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