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extreme_velocity

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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:19 pm

I recently discovered two authors, one a well know (or so I read) glbt author and another just a well know author. One wrote memiors and apparently much of the information wasn't true while the other wrote books that were based on fiction. Only thing

Patrick Letellier

r"]
Young? HIV-positive? Transgender? LeRoy, it turns out, is none of those things. In a revelation that has rocked the literary world, he doesn't even exist. The painfully shy 20-something writer who rose out of truck-stop child prostitution and heroin addiction in West Virginia to become a best-selling novelist and voice of the downtrodden is a persona created and perpetuated, for an astounding 11 years, by one Laura Albert, a 40-year-old middle-class white woman from Brooklyn, N.Y.

I don't know. I find it interesting that people actually go through the trouble to fake these books. I guess it reaches a different group of people if sold as non-fiction.

Quote:

"Rehab stories provide a way for pampered trust-fund brats like Frey to claim victim status. These swine already have money, security and position and now want to corner the market in suffering and scars, the consolation prizes of the truly lost. It's a fitting literary metonymy for the Bush era: The rich have decided to steal it all, even the tears of the losers."

A quote from an article I can no longer find, but it seems true none-the-less.

Okay, I guess I don't have much of a real point in posting this. But I do wonder if you think it's okay to fake a memior or your reactions or what not. I'm curious ^_^

The first link's for the NYTimes so I dunno if everyone can read it. I don't know how that works. sweatdrop
His So-Called Life

JT LeRoy hoax angers LGBT fans, writers

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 4:06 pm

:[ That's disgusting.

There's no harm in writing about it, but making money off of a ruse like that--and not giving back to the community she's taking advantage of--is simply revolting.

kageling

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extreme_velocity

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Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 5:02 pm

kageling

:[ That's disgusting.

There's no harm in writing about it, but making money off of a ruse like that--and not giving back to the community she's taking advantage of--is simply revolting.

Heh, I was going to buy one of the books too the other day, but I didn't have money enough. It's interesting. I don't think I can form a good opinion on the subject at this point in time though. But it's really interesting to me for some bizarre reason.

It reminds me of the anti-smoking commericals where a cigarette (excuse poor spelling) company donated $125,000 in food and spend $6 million telling people about it. Those figures might not be perfect in their validity but they're very close.

Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 7:15 pm

I think its almost irritating. People hold on to the fact that non-fiction is really non-fiction so that when they are inspired by the strength of a charatcer in a non-fiction book they can have strength in the idea that its a real person who really does exist. I don't know...... its almost like a rich white woman writing from the point of view of a illegal latin woman and calling it non-fiction. Its just..... wrong somehow.

Seralunarin

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extreme_velocity

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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 4:44 pm

Seralunarin

I think its almost irritating. People hold on to the fact that non-fiction is really non-fiction so that when they are inspired by the strength of a charatcer in a non-fiction book they can have strength in the idea that its a real person who really does exist. I don't know...... its almost like a rich white woman writing from the point of view of a illegal latin woman and calling it non-fiction. Its just..... wrong somehow.

I know what you mean. It's like, you get inspired by a character in a fiction book and strive to be like them, but if you fail, it's okay, because they're not real.

But if you fail when striving to be like a character in a non-fiction book you don't have to give up. You have the thoguht, 'if they did it, so can I'. And to find out that's false. It does seem a bit wrong.

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