[New-Poetry] Drop that nom de plume

Sat Jun 23 12:44:43 EDT 2007

What a story!
She will never be able to pay, the guy will lay claim on her books, and that 
is how she might become famous. Quite the harsh way round, but then, are 
there any simpler ways?

From: "Halvard Johnson" <halvard at earthlink.net>
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2007 4:44 PM

>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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