[New-Poetry] Drop that nom de plume

Sat Jun 23 11:23:12 EDT 2007

Oh, it's just the sort of pickle Lynda and her students
like to get into sometimes.

Hal

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away,
  for expedients, and by parts."
		--Edmund Burke

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 23, 2007, at 9:47 AM, James Cervantes wrote:

> Why should you have guessed?
>
> - Jim-Nothing-Like-Blunt-Questions-Cervantes
>
> On 6/23/07, Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 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
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
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>>
>>
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>
> -- 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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