Oh darn you guys beat me to the posting!!
Seven you have Times Select? Cunt!
I personally love hoaxes. To have pretended to be a young and brilliant hustler, 'reformed,' with a literary genius (and I do think "JT" is a major talent, whoever they turn out to be) was a beautiful idea. I mean the biography was utterly compelling.
Bobby, as per why, just imagine: a 25-year-old girl (if she is indeed the 'real' JT) presenting a story about a sex-abused boy-child with a prostitute Mom, raping Grand-dad, etc. Now a man can write "Story of a Geisha" and everyone ooohs and aahs how he was able to get into a young woman's mind. But "how on earth" could a twenty-something GIRL simulate a gay teenage hustler's mentality? How could she KNOW about sex-abuse, S&M, etc... Well, she did it. A big HA HA to the lit powers-that-be.
When I wrote "The Correct Sadist" I was slammed by gay male critics who said no young woman could really know what S&M was all about. I was trashed by women who thought since I was a sex-worker, I couldn't even be a writer. All kinds of trash is flung at you and I'm not 100% sure it's because you're a female. Youth and social status are also held against you.
If you'd like to know about yet further torments I underwent, see
http://www.terencesellers.com/pdf/famous.pdf
Some jolly members of the literary gay Mafia figure largely in that story of my 1978 S&M literary attempts!!!
It will be fascinating to find out what the "Underdogs" motivations were, to be certain.
What I just love is that JT tricked all those hotshot writers and movie stars... and her own agent. Not that I. Silverberg reads anyone he represents or anything like that.
There was one old article (maybe linked earlier on this thread) about how Dennis Cooper talked to "her" every day for weeks and weeks. Helped her with her writing. I wonder how the hell he feels now. Raped!
Pretending to have AIDS. That was unnecessary... That shows these hoaxers are more scam-artists than artists. ... On second thought, though, maybe that was going to be their way out. JT was gonna die, or commit suicide from despair? I mean how much longer could it have gone on?
Maybe that too is 'why' the third book sucked. The hoax ran out of steam... I kept thinking it was fake. A group of sex-workers who play with their pets while street-walking? Whaaa?
Still, that one short story where JT allegedly went to see a Master to get his rocks off... after being beaten by both his mother and her boyfriends for years... some of the best S&M writing I've ever read and I am assuredly jaded on that score.
btw thank you for all the votes of confidence. All I need now is an agent for the three unpublished novels. xoxoxoxooxoxox