Been a while. No doubt.

Have been working on something for publication about hoaxes and authorship, specifically JT LeRoy.

In the process have been reading all about one of the other recent hoaxes involving Peggy Seltzer (what a great name for a hoaxster, huh?). Nancy Rommelmann did an excellent interview with Laura Albert a while back and has blogged about the New York publishing industry's gullibility when it comes to memoirs which seem to be a stitched together bag of cliches (which Seltzer's surely was). Anyone who's only been as close to gangland life as an episode or two of The Wire would certainly be a little suspicious about the claims in Love and Consequences. Starting to think there's really quite a large project in here about 'Otherness' and the need for people adopt these personas of victimhood in order to get attention (for themselves, for good causes like drug rehab, protection of children or women, poverty, etc). Telling (made up) stories as first hand truth. Anthony Godby Johnson is another (much older) example. The talkshows salivate at the stories of kids being fucked and beaten and then coming through the ordeal to write a book about it. WTF? Like a book is the highest pinnacle of being "over it" or "moving on". This is weird right? What does a book symbolise about recovery? About normalness - recuperation into the sphere of "Us" not "Other." Is it something to do with literacy, privledge, authority - I'm thinking Frederick Douglass style empancipation via writing (not just telling) own story.

Ok - low battery (literal, not metaphorical).