NEWS: JT LeRoy Unmasked at Last

I like you. Like, a lot.

Best defence ever.

Completely agree. I take everything back. Seriously.

In the best case scenario, the author can make him / herself as much a part of the story as any of their other charcters.

I just don't get why, after the books were published (and very successful) they had to then claim that s/he was "dying of AIDS." That just seems like a really, really shitty thing to do to people.

That's the thing that'll ensure I never read a JT LeRoy book. I'm not interested in the kind of fuckhead mystery author who'll claim to have AIDS for no good reason. That's not cricket.

That is my one problem with this whole thing.

To be fair, noted "mystery author" Ellery Queen used to say the same thing all the time.

Well, a (qualified) thanks..............only because I don't know who to believe anymore!

In the great tradition of pranks, tricks, and hoaxes that stretches back through human history.. the piltdown man, selling london bridge, etc.. this is a good one. The sheer uproar has made me chuckle from the start, and it makes a point, which is a prerequisite of a good hoax. That point being: who cares who wrote the book? it's the words themselves that are the art, not the artist. Loki Laufeyjarson would be very pleased.

If only there were some sort of device, a "computron," let's say, that could could hook up to a group of other computrons where information could be found and shared on an "Intarweb," if you will. Then we could just look up things we don't know and find out all about them! Someday, someday. . .

Fooling people who think they have a connection to you into thinking that you're dying of AIDS is pretty shitty. To me, there's nothing funny about some kid with a tough life of prostitution dying of AIDS--that's something that really happens all the time, and using it (after the hoax has already worked) for whatever reason is needlessly cruel to people who really do have that life, as well as to the people who have done nothing but support you and your art.

Bingo.

Besides, artists have never been completely removed from the art they produced, and so it should be. If Edward Munch painted his Self Portrait In Hell or The Scream but was actually a pretty charming, happy-go-lucky guy, the works would lose some of their impact. If Joseph Heller was actually pro-war, but decided to write Catch-22 in a cheap attempt to appeal to left-wingers, it'd devalue the book.

If I had been less exuberantly vindictive, that would have been my first point.

After I relaxed, I learned to enjoy the exuberant vindictiveness.

This does not amuse me.

Why bother with all that when I can have other people do it for me?