US: Two of the best-selling books in the US are part of a hoax controversy, writes Denis Staunton
They were the most engaging of literary celebrities, one a former drug addict who turned the story of his downfall and rehabilitation into a non-fiction best seller, the other an HIV-positive ex-teenage prostitute who wrote novels about his life on the street.
James Frey's account of his addiction, A Million Little Pieces, sold two million copies after Oprah Winfrey endorsed it and novelist JT LeRoy's famous friends included Madonna, Courtney Love and Lou Reed.
Americans learned this week, however, that Frey may have invented or embellished some of the most harrowing events in his memoir and that LeRoy may not exist at all.
The Smoking Gun, an investigative website, claims that police records and witnesses say Frey invented a story about hitting a policeman while drunk and serving three months in jail. The website says Frey also imagined his role in the suicide of a teenage girl in the Michigan town he lived in as a teenager.
"This is the latest investigation into my past, and the latest attempt to discredit me . . . Let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won't dignify this with any sort of further response," Frey said on his website.
Frey has said in the past that he originally tried to sell his story as a novel but found publishers more responsive to the idea of a non-fiction memoir. The future of the film version of A Million Little Pieces is now in doubt because top Hollywood stars may be reluctant to appear in a biopic if the facts are disputed. Plans to film JT LeRoy's novel, Sarah, could also be shelved, partly because of copyright concerns but also on account of the reluctance of investors to become involved.
Sarah is about an androgynous 12-year-old boy who idolises his mother, a truck-stop prostitute, and decides to adopt her identity, becoming a prostitute himself. LeRoy told interviewers that he was himself the child of a prostitute in West Virginia who became a teenage hustler in San Francisco and became infected with HIV.
He said he was rescued from the streets of San Francisco by a couple named Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, who encouraged him to write. Moved by the tale of LeRoy's adversity, celebrated writers and musicians offered financial and emotional support and he became a best-selling author at 21.
The shy author seldom appeared in public, conducting interviews by telephone in a high-pitched West Virginia drawl and sending celebrity surrogates to give readings on his behalf. When he did appear in public, he was usually hidden beneath a blonde wig and behind dark glasses.
Investigations by New York magazine and the New York Times have now discovered that the figure who appeared as LeRoy was Knoop's sister and that LeRoy's royalties were paid to Albert's sister and to a company run by her mother.
When LeRoy wrote a travel story for the New York Times on a visit to Disneyland in Paris, he said he travelled with a couple and their young son. But receipts from Disneyland and the hotel suggest that only three people were there and hotel employees told the paper that a woman resembling Albert said she was JT LeRoy, explaining that she had a sex change three years previously.
Stephen Beachy, who wrote the New York article exposing the hoax, suggested that Albert (40) and Knoop (39) were frustrated rock musicians who invented JT LeRoy to gain access to celebrities.
"There is no longer any doubt that JT LeRoy is a fake identity created by Laura Albert and her husband, Geoffrey Knoop, maintained with the help of Geoffrey's sister, Savannah," he told the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday. Mr Beachy said that, although he did not admire LeRoy's books, he found Albert fascinating.
"The hoax was brilliant and complex, and her understanding of human nature is obviously intense. The hoax needed to be revealed in order for us to ask the really important questions - about what we want to believe and why, what we project onto 'outsiders', and the magical aura we grant celebrities," he said.
San Francisco writer Armistead Maupin was surprised that so many people were fooled for so long but has nothing but contempt for the hoaxers. "There's something very callous about using Aids and an abusive childhood as a way of getting sympathy and support," he told the San Francisco Chronicle.