JT LeRoy
Biographical Information
He's been called "enigmatic" and "precocious" and has been compared to Mark Twain and Charles Dickens and the Brothers Grimm. He gives no face-to-face interviews or public readings, though others do perform public readings of his works. His only real contact with the world at large is through his personal website, www.jtLeRoy.com. What is known of his short life (he's only in his early 20s and he prefers to talk about his work, not himself) makes most people cringe in horror or pity. In fact, so little is known about him (he does most interviews by telephone and refuses to be photographed) that it has been rumored that JT LeRoy is not a person at all, but rather a creation of novelist Dennis Cooper. Despite all that, his first novel reached Number 10 on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and has received superb reviews in publications from the New York Times Book Review to Spin. He has what one reviewer called a "support supergroup of celebs," including Mary Gaitskill, Sharon Olds and Dorothy Allision, who have encouraged and mentored him, some have even done readings of his work.
No matter how it is read, J. T. LeRoy's story is an amazing one. Himself the son of a "lot lizard" (truck stop prostitute), young J.T. followed his mother as she moved from truck stop to truck stop, beginning in rural West Virginia and moving throughout the South. Along the way, the shy, blonde young boy learned the tricks of the trade, doing what was necessary to survive - "I liked hearing I was beautiful, getting touched, getting attention," he explained frankly to one interviewer. "Some of the stuff hurt. Some of it was bad, physically and mentally, but you just close that off and live off the good parts, the parts you need to survive." At fourteen, LeRoy and his mother separated in San Francisco, and LeRoy continued life on the street, using drugs to "close off" the horrors. A therapist turned him on to writing, and LeRoy discovered a better escape than drugs. He began publishing at sixteen under the pseudonym Terminator, his work appearing in the New York Press and on the website Nerve even as he continued to work the streets. His work reflected both the dark brutality and graphic sexuality of his life and his romantic nature, a compelling juxtaposition of "hardcore street savvy" and "wide open helplessness".
Sarah, LeRoy's first novel and a work of autobiographical fiction, is a masterpiece of innocence within brutality and of the struggle to survive -- physically and emotionally -- in a world of hostility and perversity. LeRoy himself described Sarah as "a metaphor for the way the world is insane but you don't know any better and life just continues on." Some of the darkness of his earlier work is lightened here; the androgynous narrator of Sarah speaks with a child-like innocence that is far removed from his life as a child prostitute. Even as the story darkens and Cherry Vanilla aka Sarah is abused and slips into drug addiction, his world retains a dream-like quality that separates him from the ugliness of his circumstances. That is J. T. LeRoy's great gift, to be able to describe "a sordid lifestyle and potentially revolting subculture with both cold-eyed documentary realism and whimsical fancy" (Michael Shannon Friedman, Sunday Gazette Mail).
His second book, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, published in 2001, is a compilation of earlier writings (some written when LeRoy was still in his teens), many of them stories that gained the then-unknown writer a cult following in San Francisco. Included in this new collection is "Baby Doll." This story, first published in Laurie Stone's Close to the Bone anthology (1998), helped LeRoy to land his first book deal.
JT LeRoy is currently working on several projects, including a new book, an original HBO production with Gus Van Sant, and a television series called House Arrest. Sarah is being made into a movie by Gus Van Sant, who has also optioned some of the stories from The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
****Editor's Note:
The above biography was written based on information available in the press and other sources shortly after the publication of Sarah. Since that time, JT LeRoy has been revealed as a literary hoax perpetuated by Laura Albert, who actually wrote the Leroy books, with the aid of her partner Geoffrey Knoop and his half-sister Savannah Knoop, who appeared as LeRoy at public appearences.
For more information about the Albert-LeRoy scheme, see the following articles:
Beachy, Stephen. Who Is the Real JT LeRoy? New York Magazine. October 17, 2005.
Boulware, Jack. She Is JT LeRoy. Salon.Com, March 2006.
St. John, Warren. The Unmasking of JT Leroy. The New York Times, January 9, 2006.
White, Dave. The Ballad of JT Liar. The Advocate. February, 28, 2006.
Critical Responses
From the moment Sarah rolled off the presses, critics rushed to comment on this new literary phenomenon. Critic Michael Shannon Friedman, writing in the Charleston (WV) Sunday Gazette wrote that "Sarah will most likely garner more attention for its subject matter (prostitution, much of it by teenage boys at West Virginia truck stops) and precocious author (JT LeRoy is only 20) than for its sinuous prose and insightful, resilient philosophy, which is a bit of a shame." And while many critics did focus on the contrast of the author's relative youth and the harsh maturity of his subject, others noted the power of LeRoy's literary voice - somehow innocent and pure despite the horror of the circumstances of his protagonist. Friedman described it as the "juxtaposition of LeRoy's hardcore street savvy and raw, wide-open helplessness." David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle remarked on "the masterful tension between the surreal world of truck-stop life and the hope-filled naiveté of the boy." LeRoy knows how to use the language to suit his purposes - to create characters who are real and three-dimensional and to set scenes that are fully credible despite their often frightening unreality. Wigand remarked, "we (the reader) can visualize the seedy truck stops and almost hear the overheated dialogue of the Southern-fried lot lizards and their customers."
His second book, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, is a collection of earlier writings, many of them written while LeRoy was still a teenager on the streets. A critic for Village Voice described the stories on The Heart is Deceitful as "uneven and unrelenting; sometimes raw as nerve brushing bone; other times emotionally manipulative, eliciting almost involuntary twinges of empathy," and as "alternately evocative and detached." The New York Times Book Review commented, "JT LeRoy is astonishingly confident. His language turns the tawdriness of hustling into a world of lyrical and grotesque beauty..."
Works Published
- Sarah
- The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
- Harold's End
JT LeRoy has and continues to publish in various periodical publications. Some of these are available at www.jtleroy.com Please consult a librarian for assistance in finding others.
Selected Bibliography
Bahr, David. Sarah's Young Creator. The Advocate, June 20, 2000. pp. 139.
Carbon, Chris. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (book review). The Advocate, July 17, 2001. pp.66.
Giles, Jeff. Hustler Chic: A World Where It's Hard to Tell Who's Zooming Whom. Newsweek, July 2, 2001. pp.56.
Hennessy, Christopher. One Boy's Life of Drugs, Rape, and Incest. Lambda Book Report, Jan. 2002. pp.27.
Miller, D. Quentin. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Review). The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 2001. pp.207.
Waits, Tom. Strange Innocence. Vanity Fair, July 2001. pp.99.
Withers, James. Son of Sarah. The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, March 2002. pp.38.
Ziegler, R. Identity and Imposture in JT LeRoy's Sarah. Notes on Contemporary Literature. 31(5), 2001. pp.3-5.
Author Website
JT Leroy