[New-Poetry] Drop that nom de plume

Sat Jun 23 10:44:37 EDT 2007

I should have guessed, but have learned since posting this NYT
article, that Laura Albert was once (back when she was in her
early 20s) a student of my wife's at the New School.

Hal

"Please stand clear of the closing doors."

Halvard Johnson
================
halvard at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html

On Jun 22, 2007, at 10:00 PM, Halvard Johnson wrote:

> Drop that nom de plume before it takes on a life
> of its own.
>
> NYT
>
> June 23, 2007
>
> Jury Finds Writer’s Alias Was Fraud
>
> By ALAN FEUER
> JT LeRoy, the authorial “other” whom the writer Laura Albert  
> employed as her alter ego and self-protective proxy in the world,  
> was found yesterday by a jury in Manhattan to be not just a  
> fictional creation, but a fraud.
>
> Ms. Albert, 41, was found by the jury in Federal District Court to  
> have strayed beyond the normal limits of pseudonymous invention, in  
> part by signing a movie contract using her nom de plume. After the  
> verdict was announced, she stood with friends in the courtroom,  
> saying she had somehow known hours before that the jury’s decision  
> would not fall her way.
>
> “I knew it this morning,” Ms. Albert said, wearing at her neck a  
> tiny typewriter pendant with a legend that read “Write Hard, Die  
> Free.” “I already went through it.”
>
> As part of its verdict in the civil case, the jury ordered Ms.  
> Albert to pay $116,500 to Antidote International Films, which, in  
> 2003, signed an option contract with JT LeRoy to make a feature  
> film of his novel “Sarah,” a tale of filial love and prostitution  
> set among the “lot lizards” of a West Virginia truck stop.
>
> When Antidote learned last year that the book had, in fact, been  
> written by Ms. Albert, its president, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, sued for  
> fraud and breach of contract, saying he had been duped and was  
> seeking not only the option money back, but damages and lawyers’  
> fees as well.
>
> Long before this somewhat narrow legal matter reached the courts,  
> the broader story of JT LeRoy, with its agitprop allure and  
> celebrity aroma, played out on the larger and much more garish  
> canvas of the press. After “Sarah” thrust the writer into stardom  
> in 2000, JT LeRoy became the damaged darling of the art house set,  
> a street waif and supposed son of a truck stop prostitute who,  
> usually by way of telephone or e-mail (he was “famously  
> reclusive”), befriended the likes of Courtney Love and Winona Ryder  
> — at least until his startling existence as a fiction was revealed.
>
> All the while, of course, it was Ms. Albert, a mother and otherwise  
> obscure novelist from Brooklyn Heights, who was spinning gritty  
> fantasies of drug addiction and Appalachian misery for the rich and  
> famous names at the other end of the keyboard or the line. She gave  
> interviews in a twangy accent to Terry Gross on NPR and sometimes  
> paid her former boyfriend’s half-sister to appear in disguise as JT  
> LeRoy in the rarefied air of literary readings or the international  
> film festival at Cannes.
>
> It was deceptions like these that Antidote’s lawyers said  
> constituted her fraud. Yet even though the company’s lawyers  
> assailed her in court as a trickster and wily master of self- 
> promotion, they — and their client, Mr. Levy-Hinte — admitted a  
> grudging admiration for her writing talents, and for her performance.
>
> They also evinced a quiet sympathy for Ms. Albert, for it was soon  
> apparent that the eight-day trial would include testimony about her  
> rather gruesome history — a litany of adolescent trauma that  
> included sexual abuse, institutionalization and 13 years of  
> telephone therapy in which she spoke to her psychiatrist in the  
> adopted persona of a teenage boy. That boy, whom she took to  
> calling Jeremy or Jeremiah, was a sort of early incarnation of the  
> full-blown alter ego that would eventually evolve into JT LeRoy.
>
> Among the various battles waged at the trial — art versus commerce,  
> truth versus fiction, reality versus the imagination — it was  
> perhaps the battle over JT LeRoy’s purpose in the world that was  
> most in dispute. Before his identity (or, rather, nonidentity) was  
> revealed last year in a series of newspaper articles, the  
> production team at Antidote considered him that rare commodity in  
> today’s biography-obsessed entertainment world: a gifted writer  
> with a titillating past that only enhanced the value of the work.  
> After the revelation, the company took the position that Ms. Albert  
> had used the JT LeRoy “brand” — the same that had attracted them —  
> as a celebrity magnet to draw attention to her books.
>
> Ms. Albert herself, in testimony from the stand, suggested that JT  
> LeRoy was far more than a pseudonym in the classic Mark Twain- 
> Samuel Clemens mold. She offered the idea that JT LeRoy was a sort  
> of “respirator” for her inner life: an imaginary, though necessary,  
> survival apparatus that permitted her to breathe.
>
> The $116,500 judgment against Ms. Albert covers the option contract  
> and damages to Antidote, but not legal fees, which have not yet  
> been determined. If she is ordered to pay those as well, the amount  
> could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
>
> Mr. Levy-Hinte, Antidote’s president, said in an interview  
> yesterday that the lawsuit was less about getting his money back  
> than about sticking up for fair dealing and telling the truth.
>
> “I’m kind of a person of principle,” he said. “Not kind of — I am.  
> I wasn’t willing to simply walk away and take a loss with no  
> apology or reasonable explanation.”
>
> He said he would not seek to make a movie out of “Sarah” as he had  
> wished, calling the project “too sullied and emotionally charged,”  
> although he added, “Somebody could make a good movie out of it, if  
> they wanted.” He went on to say that if Ms. Albert, who never made  
> a fortune from her literary works, could not afford to pay the  
> judgment, he might have to consider laying claim to the rights to  
> her past and future books.
>
> Perhaps surprisingly, he said he had respect for Ms. Albert, who  
> “pulled off something quite startling — all these intelligent  
> people were taken in.”
>
> It was a blessing in disguise, he said. The alter ego was gone.
>
> “She’s liberated, in a way. It’s quite wonderful.”
>
>
> "I don't know what music is."
>   		--Ludvig van Beethoven
>
> Halvard Johnson
> ================
> halvard at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry