Ep 223: J.T. LeRoy, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

Book Fight

This week we resume our Spring of Scandal by diving into the strange story of "J.T. LeRoy," the early-aughts It Boy of the literary scene, who attracted celebrity fans including Bono, Madonna, and Winona Ryder before being unmasked, in 2006, as a fraud, the creation of a thirty-something Brooklyn woman named Laura Albert, who'd enlisted her sister-in-law to "play" LeRoy in public.

We recount the ins and outs of the story, and discuss whether we should view the whole episode as a scam, performance art, or something in between. We also talk about the work itself, and how it holds up, independent of the false premise at the heart of its creation--or whether it's even possible, or desirable, to separate the art from the author, when the two were presented as so inextricably linked.

If all that sounds like pretty heady stuff, don't worry, we also talk about raccoons.

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