If you’re the type of person who reads books (BOR-ing!), you might remember a little lady by the name of Laura Albert. No? How about JT LeRoy? That one rings a bell, doesn’t it? LeRoy was a former teenage transvestite male prostitute who became a literary sensation by writing about, well, being a former teenage transvestite male prostitute. Except it was all a bunch of horse-leavin’s. Albert (born 1965) concocted the stories under the LeRoy name and hired a young woman named Savannah Knoop to play LeRoy during public appearances. Blonde wig + sunglasses = verisimilitude! Everybody fell for it, until New York Magazine did some digging and revealed that the whole thing was a hoax.
Then it gets weird.
Knoop has now written a book about her experiences called Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy. And guess who’s not happy?
“I am not in any way connected with this book and it disgusts me. Just because you play a writer doesn’t mean you are a writer,” Albert, 42, told Page Six. “I think Savannah is being motivated by money and attention. Now that she’s had to go back to being a civilian, this is her way of getting back to it. It’s sad and it’s sleazy. She’s really stepping on my feelings.”
Yep, the woman who became a success by making up a bunch of stories and saying they were real is now angry at the girl she hired to play the kid who it supposedly happened to, because that girl just wrote a book about how it all really happened. Oh yeah, and Knoop is the sleazy attention whore. Got all that?
Unless… Say, could this be part of the hoax too?
I read it - it was okay and I expect this one will be just okay too. Do these people ever listen to what they say?
I think James Frey has just found his next book idea. He could one-up but good if he goes with the multiple-personality disorder angle.
I know I don’t.
Albert is just hacked off that 1) she was outed as a hoaxer in the first place, so her gravy train is gone, and 2) she’s not making any $$$ off of the new book.
“Yep, the woman who became a success by making up a bunch of stories and saying they were real is now angry at the girl she hired to play the kid who it supposedly happened to, because that girl just wrote a book about how it all really happened. Oh yeah, and Knoop is the sleazy attention whore. Got all that?”
Pot, meet Kettle.
I love the caption for the picture. Neither one looks particularly happy. Which one’s the she-male again?
Yes.