JT LeRoy - Supporters

Supporters

Literary supporters

In 1994, LeRoy got in touch with novelist Dennis Cooper by faxing a request through Cooper’s agent, Ira Silverberg. He struck up a telephone friendship with Cooper, who introduced him to the writer Bruce Benderson, through whom he contacted novelist Joel Rose, writer Laurie Stone, editor Karen Rinaldi, and agent Henry Dunow. He also got in touch with poet Sharon Olds, Mary Karr and Mary Gaitskill, among others.

LeRoy thus built a core of literary supporters, engaging in lengthy, intimate phone conversations and correspondence with them. His biography seemed tailor-made for their interests. Like Olds, he had a strict family background; like Cooper’s characters, he was a boy who had fantasies of being beaten up; like Benderson’s characters, he was a hustler; like Gaitskill’s characters, he was involved in S&M and prostitution.

In 2000, writer Brian Pera, who had traveled the country on his own book tour, said he had met other writers who were in contact with LeRoy by e-mail and phone; LeRoy had bonded via extensive, often contradictory revelations, but was never able to meet these carefully cultivated confidants in public or in private. Throughout the 1990s, LeRoy rarely appeared in public. Then in 2001, a person claiming to be LeRoy began appearing in public, usually decked out in wig and sunglasses.

Peter Carlson wrote in The Washington Post, "The San Francisco Chronicle called the LeRoy affair 'the greatest literary hoax in a generation'. But this fascinating interview reveals that the real story was far more complex and interesting." In Lemon Magazine, head writer Robert Bundy wrote an editorial entitled "Yes Virginia, There Is A JT LeRoy," in the style of Francis P. Church's classic 1897 newspaper editorial defending the belief in Santa Claus. Bundy argued that LeRoy exists "because a touching expression of longing, suffering, love, and endurance is not disqualified simply because it issues from a construct. He exists because if words and stories resonate and move the reader, then it matters not that the hand writing them signed another's name."

Celebrity supporters

In early 2001, Garbage singer Shirley Manson mentioned reading Sarah in her band's online journal. Manson then received LeRoy's manuscript for The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things and they became friends. At the time, Manson was writing and recording the band's third album, beautifulgarbage, and wrote a song about LeRoy called "Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)". Manson later referenced LeRoy and his friend Speedie in the title song from the band's fourth effort, Bleed Like Me. Shirley Manson wrote JT LeRoy and said "I can assure you, our little bug is really our little bug. I have held hands with him, I know he's for real."

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