I found this article while surfing about the author JT Leroy. Well… more like who they think is REALLY writing the stories authored by JT Leroy.
Apparently, JT Leroy who has been portrayed as an approximately 25 year old young man who was a truck stop prositute, eventual drug addict, and now afflicted with the AIDS virus… may very well be a 40 something year old woman. I won’t get into the details here… you can click on the link for that… but deep down in my gut my response is “YOU BASTARDS!!!”
Why would I say such a thing? Because I feel that Pen Names are very important for a variety of reasons. I think of books Stephen King wrote as Richard Bachman, Primary Colors originally written by Anonymous, or all of Dean Koontz’s aliases. These books made the grade, without the stigma of being by a certain author. Pen names have also been used to protect the author, from both breaking either the genre they were associated or from getting bones broken by those they wrote about.
By using JT Leroy as a Pen Name, and making up this fictional background in what looks like an attempt to gain notoriety for the work… well that’s just wrong. While the work should be able to stand on its own… and not on the shoulders of a Pen Name with a past more fictional than the books that are written under it… especially using something such as AIDS to forward the agenda.
Apparently, JT Leroy who has been portrayed as an approximately 25 year old young man who was a truck stop prositute, eventual drug addict, and now afflicted with the AIDS virus… may very well be a 40 something year old woman. I won’t get into the details here… you can click on the link for that… but deep down in my gut my response is “YOU BASTARDS!!!”
Why would I say such a thing? Because I feel that Pen Names are very important for a variety of reasons. I think of books Stephen King wrote as Richard Bachman, Primary Colors originally written by Anonymous, or all of Dean Koontz’s aliases. These books made the grade, without the stigma of being by a certain author. Pen names have also been used to protect the author, from both breaking either the genre they were associated or from getting bones broken by those they wrote about.
By using JT Leroy as a Pen Name, and making up this fictional background in what looks like an attempt to gain notoriety for the work… well that’s just wrong. While the work should be able to stand on its own… and not on the shoulders of a Pen Name with a past more fictional than the books that are written under it… especially using something such as AIDS to forward the agenda.
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