JC Leroy (as Terence put it)

Does JT live in NYC now??? I remember it was such a big deal when he moved to San Francisco. Well, it was a big deal for about a week. It seemed like an interview with him was in every magazine, and he would always refused to be photographed for the interviews. And he would show up for the interview wearing a wig and a disguise, so people were wondering if it was really him every time. He would go on and on in the interviews about how he's a very self-secluded person, but would go into detail about where he liked to hang out, and when he was usually there. If the interview was in a gay magazine or paper, he would talk endlessly about his girlfriend and a supposed baby he has with her. If it was in a regular publication, he would talk about a mysterious band that he was in, and that he was tired of writing novels. If he moved to NYC, it's most likely because people got sick of him back in San Francisco. I know a few people that got caught up in the hype and were on endless quests to try and meet him, but I never bothered to read his work and thought he was a publicity stunt. I heard that he didn't write his first novel, he was just some guy brought in by the publisher to say it was his autobiography. But if Madonna and Courtney Love are big fans, there has to be something to him....

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Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I'll be here all weekend. Don't forget to please tip your servers.

Daddy--
Thanks for voicing the "Why the Coral Room on a Saturday night?" question that the rest of us had suppressed-- yech... And I could quote what Gary Indiana said upon leaving (regarding the iron fist of the VIP area gatekeeper), but I am a lady, and I try not to curse in polite company.

I'm just so intrigued by this guy.
Is it all a joke?

I can say from first-hand experience that posting anything about Gary Indiana will get you hexed and you'll lose everything....

If you axe me, I think JT Leroy is an author with a brilliant publicity-generating mind. I like a few authors who are supposedly publicity shy, and if you don't like publicity you don't do things and stunts like JT Leroy. I think he learned a lot from Madonna when he met her --- he makes the press come to him while he pretends to despise the attention.

Speaking of not liking attention, I better get ready to go to CM and avoid everyone.

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Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

When I lived in San Francisco, the hottest celeb guest to have at your party was the mayor. Which wasn't hard to do. At that time he was Mayor Alioto, with whom I shared a lawyer, as well as many moments with, in the law office's lounge, so it wouldn't have been hard at all. I remember thinking, "But why would I ever want to?" Who wants a mayor at your party?
I also remember when Yoko Ono came to SF and announced she was moving there. Oh, the furor that ensued; finally a real life celebrity in town to gossip about! That lasted for about a week. Then she announced she would NOT be moving there. The disppointment and depression lasted for months!
I guess my point here is that San Francisco is a very very small pond. Adore it as I do, I also adore it for what it is not, It is not a glittering glitzy fashionable place full of the latest celebrities-du-jours. It is not even the epicenter of Old California money. That is, almost unbelievably, Sacramento.
But perhaps Mr. Leroy is the clever one. It is easier to test the waters in a small pond like SF before flipping to one of the bigger ones like NY. If that is the case, I will bet his next pond will be the really big scummy one-- Los Angeles. And that he will never write a single word again!

J.(C.)T. and Mrs. Plop.

Your query:
And why was Gary Indiana shouting, "J.T. Leroy is a fraud!" outside the club????

Because Gary is a good editor.

Miss Fluff please relate the evil bon mots.
Someone should start a Gary Indiana topic to
record all the genius dis. Then venture in who would dare.

It was Miss Chivity who dubbed her "JC" not me. And as she said, So what if she's a presswhore, if it gets the masses interested in writers it
gets our approval.

And "for some reason" incest sells even more than regular sex, viz Lord Byron. So fuck your mother and tell all.

I will go look at the Le Roi thread.

Terence

[This message was edited by S'tan on 09-19-03 at 01:05 PM.]

oof I'm in the Le Roi thread.

I loved the flourish, Hattie of "And he will never write another word again!" Not that I
wish that on anyone. But read T. Capote as the
paradigm of excess publicity/socialite approval =
equals writer's block.

I got the book anyhow.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 09-19-03 at 10:07 PM.]

S'tan--
The conversation went as follows:

VIP GARY INDIANA: "When you see JT, tell him to (expletive deleted) off!"
NON-VIP LADY FLUFF: "I don't imagine that I will see JT, as I am not a VIP (Iron-fisted gatekeeper had made this shortcoming painfully clear to Lady Fluff)."
VIP GARY INDIANA: "Well, I AM a VIP, but I am not allowed to bring my BLACK boyfriend into the VIP area, so we are leaving. This is (expletive deleted, again and again)"...

I'm afraid that's a bit anticlimactic, but I dare not risk embellishment for fear of voodoo repurcussions... Anyway, further research leads Lady Fluff to believe that much more sinister forces were at work. I mean, if Courtney Love needs a spot to sit, it doesn't matter who you are, she is evidently still more important than you are. Yikes!

Why did Courtney need to sit? Is she preggers again? Was she tipsy? Or was she wearing 8 inch stilettos? Those would be the only reasons I would let old Courts cop a squat on my stool. Kembra is just too nice. What could they have done if she had refused? Thrown her out?

And St'an, though I do think Truman's "Answered Prayers" debacle was brilliantly mad and tragic, I would never wish the cursed Block upon anyone either. But those back pages of Interview have been littered with photos of similar cases for some time now. Though sadly none as major as Mr. C.

[This message was edited by hatches on 09-20-03 at 12:06 AM.]

Around page 50-something I started to doze off,
there was too much argot, hootin' and hollerin', and the magic realism wasn't holding intact.
Neither was the vaunted "incest" stuff so awfully shocking to me. Anyone who does sex work implicitly is "permitted" to do so by their Mother or Father. Big wow.

But as I read on and found myself in a somewhat overstimulated state.
I started writing like crazy in my diary and realized...
I had been seeded. My mind was racing (and still is) - the effect was fermentive... Perhaps this effect is what must be making everyone so alert over the writing.

The central perfect image of this book is the boy transformed: a hermaphrodite glory, lying on a fresh bed, locked in a room, blonde, young, eminently desirable, quivering with anticipation, protected by the powers that be.

A very metaphor for the adored Artist.
The focus of all the johns/publishers/flaks,
quivering under tentative blue collar worship,
and not to mention that of not-so-hirsute/intellectual males,
but hey they're all doling out the cash and the homage.

Now every artist dreams of such attentions: to be a Maestro by virtue of one's syntax.
Over-worshipped, yet the thing worshipped remains untouched.

This again seems a metaphor for where JC is now in the media eye. Like his protagonist, he escaped the hermetic seal.
Once the perfect artist, alone under the colored lights...
now subject to every kind of vile caress by crass lovers.
He has earned his "bone." But there is that inevitable vitiation after the drugs (i.e. adulation) wear off.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 09-24-03 at 01:06 AM.]

Certainly the detailing of the permutations in the sex trade are right on the money, not only accurate but emotionally correct. Beautiful imagery, great argot, fantastical Americana...

This book has done what it was meant to: has elevated its writer out of a pretty bad life. So was he really a lot-lizard?

A book that attempts to get one out of an underground imposes yet another fate on the writer: one discovers one may be
damned by one's subject matter; and ironically cannot ever avoid the resumption of the metaphors one would so love to escape...

But as the public demands more more and scurrilous details - and the further away you
get from the actual experience...
The organism that created the work is altered
forever. It may continue to evolve and
become more powerful. Or it may become its own travesty.

Anyhow his new pimps have entrapped him.
He's a lot-lizard of another ilk.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 09-24-03 at 01:08 AM.]

Despite the attention he has willingly or unwillingly gotten, I for one love his books. I compare him on some levels with Hubert Selby Jr, for his knack of depicting the lowest depths of humanity with some sort of beauty. Personally I have witnessed similar creatures growing up in the midwest with southern roots and alot of white trash on one side of my family. I am able to "smell" the carpeting in the motel rooms and feel the grimy toys he drags from new home to new home. Sarah to me was a much too short journey with alot of flaws, but we are also looking at a writer that had barely finished high school. The guy is YOUNG!!! I find it very strange that we as a culture have to constantly pick at artists to see whats underneath. Myself included, I am fascinated by a young man whose imagination could create such despicable characters and yet make them somehow redeemable at the same time. Its wonderful to find rich characters that are painted on the surface as so evil, and then when the crust comes off the top, you peek in to see what made them so. If you seperate Leroy the "presswhore" and Leroy the young writer who has a whole lifetime ahead of him to create, maybe you could get lost in his work a little better. GOD I want to play a TV lot lizard if Gus vanZandt does Sarah as a movie. I have the perrrrfect cowl neck mini sweater dress and high heeled moccossin boots.

... is the title of his/her second book which has already been panned.
I see in "Paper" that Asia Argento, Dario Argento's
daughter, has been picked to do the
screenplay/produce the film of same name...

She is quoted as saying "The casting has been a nightmare",
so get going Sweetie and make it happen.

Loved "Sarah" . Been there. Done that. I wish I had written about it first. But I am very impressed with that little things ability to weave a realistic tale about such a life and make us all wonder if he lived it or not. I say good for him.

It will be interesting to see where he goes from here.
Even Augustine Borroughs followed up "Running With Scissors" with more of his own life story in " Dry". Now that was a scary book. Reminded me of all our lives in this generation.

Bobby,
There is still time for your tales
of lot-lizardry... I guess you'd just have to
feel the imperative.
More interesting would be your travels
through the coils of religious fantasmagoria.
I still believe in the psychedelic powers of
that dust from the Nepalese burial grounds.
I mean my take on the erst-while wizard Allan L. would make a truly sick short story.

I would not call "Sarah" 'realistic' in any
way, shape or form. What about that diner that
served up gourmet delicacy? (I think that was an extended metaphor for NYC/SF chic restaurants as just another version of the truck stop, where all sorts of other delectable trade may be had...)

Or every one of the truckers in lingerie...?
Or a hermaphroditic hooker lying
unviolated under artistic lighting... or her pimp
never fucking her.... etc. etc.
They call that "magic realism"...

xxxx

PS: Now I have even more books to buy.
My inclination to never buy new fiction is
being undermined.

Well at the very least Miss Leroy has helped to break my own writer's block. I seem to be spitting out some new work since I devoured her book.

And as far as the religous ramblings of my experiences, I think you may be onto something, It's always about finding the right angle for me.

And Al L. would indeed be a ferocious story for you to tell.

Can't believe I'll miss you when I hit town on the 8th..BooHoo

S'tan-- Just catching up on this topic, and I very much enjoyed your analysis of the book on 9/20. It's one of the best I've read yet, and I really am keen on your feeling that the book has a "fermentive" effect. It's a great descriptor... Because, though I've read the book just once, I've played so many parts of it over and over in my mind (in a way somehow different than any other book I've read)...I do feel that the acrid sights, sounds, tastes and odors have, and continue to, ferment in my mind...and increase my amazement of the story.

And Sweetie-- if we're not being "Mrs. Plopped" by Mr. Leroy, I find his youth and apparent brilliance immensely alluring, too.

"The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" is equally wonderful...it's set before "Sarah" – and is so rewarding (reading it after getting so much from "Sarah")"”it answers a lot of questions.

[This message was edited by Michael Madison on 09-28-03 at 09:46 PM.]

Now reading it a SECOND time to
try to pinpoint where I start percolating... this
uncanny effect it has, you too Bobby?
Hoping to see if
its illusions will take deeper hold, if its luxurious syntax is truth.
Not sleeping and mentally overstimulated...!
Is it the sexual frisson? (But for me the eroticism isn't the whoring as much as les images de pimpage.)

Thanx for the insight in re the second book Cher M. Madison
by Wednesday we should be all boned up, homework done, ready to blather on literarily into the wee hours cross banquette, bar and sidewalk.
xxxxxx

What the fuck have I done to my eyes but read every single one of the articles on "JC" Leroy at

http://www.jtleroy.com/press/articles/Atheywrote.htm

[For the uninitiate: 'JC' instead of 'JT' in our argot signifies "Just Come Out" as in 'somewhat clueless,' as in 'Just a Child,' as in 'Not Quite Hip Enough.']

And all I can say is: Why BOTHER over whether JC will produce again, or not? One writer even worried the artist was on the "Truman Capote Highway". Wasn't that the first dark example that came to mind here,though?

What is wrong with writing a few books and having done with it? How many writers can keep on writing and keep on being great? It rarely happens.

Capote's first book "Other Voices Other Rooms" shocked with subtle implications of gay sex and incest. It was based on childhood experiences... He titivated the literary world with sensuous diva-like photos of himself lounging, an obvious homosexualist. But what made him classical was "Breakfast," drawing himself as the struggling writer in NYC, spying on that glamourous WHORE Holly Golighty!

The heterosexed/cleaned-up movie gave him world-wide credibility...

But - curse of the subject matter - you can't tell me any actress playing SARAH will ever compete with Holly.

Capote's absolute artistic downfall was high society, and all the drinking that went with keeping up the role as entertainer, wit, arm-doily, court jester, confidante, etc. Very close to the role JC is enacting now. This world became his material, and Capote did not completely understand that WRITING about these women would effectively destroy his relationship with them.

So he dallied between fawning on them and slashing them to the bone, as his brain required. Beautiful, precious, moneyed, leisured women. Wives of enormously wealthy men who bought one-of a-kind couture, and one-of-a-kind artists. Ladies who didn't want to have their secrets told.

Le Roi's 'Sisterhood' are all Hollywood high-profile divas. Photographed into extinction, if you believe in that Amish idea of your photo stealing your soul. (I do.) Very beautiful, artists in their own right, but an altogether more vulgar and rapacious gang.

How forgiving will they be when they discover, as they MUST... if the writer is to LIVE... that all these heartfelt loving conversations li'l sweet cornpone babydoll JC has with them all night long... will be turning up in one of the books... if not the NEXT book... as MATERIAL?

[This message was edited by S'tan on 10-22-03 at 11:11 AM.]

quote:

---

Capote's absolute artistic downfall was high society, and all the drinking that went with keeping up the role as entertainer, wit, arm-doily, court jester, confidante, etc. Very close to the role JC is enacting now.

---

Stanley,
I trust your literary wisdom totally.
but...
I've always thought that Truman was just way ahead of his time with the roman à clef stuff. Today these women would be THRILLED to be imortalized with scandal.
I think "JC" (short for "just come out" -for all you lurkers) is not a very good name for J.T. As a granddaughter of Truman he really seems to be in touch with the early 21st century. The one Truman & Andy Warhol saw coming.

Just what we need... another enigma.

Thanks for the dialogue!
Roman a clef always has been with us. 'Liaisons Dangereuses' is a great example. That book was a total scandal and banned when it appeared. The author was forced to write a book on the Joys of Marriage or some such drivel to clear his name. (That book was NOT a best seller...)

In any event, what happened with Truman is he
wrote in a 'fiction' (Answered Prayers) the details of a murder of a high society gent, by his wife, one of the grandes dames... The lady had gotten her name cleared, but Truman basically blew the whistle on her. When she learned 'her story' was the material for his book, she killed herself.

She might have killed herself anyhow from guilt. In any event, Truman broke confidence as they say and no one forgave him for it.

JT's divas might be thrilled, but then again may also turn against him should he ever use them for material. All I was saying is that with all the chatter about whether he is going to burn out, or not, etc., it makes sense that he will use what he now is learning about and involved with for material. And that these dames probably aren't too aware of that possibility.

Or he could continue to mine the whore thang from now until the TV series.

Anyhow this is WH Auden's quote that's used to such good effect in the Capote bio:

"No writer is a gentleman."

In other words, all is fair game with one of us
Recording Angels.

Iceberg LeRoi, moving up and out from flat-backing, to turning out a gaggle of truly highclass ho's. The success is enviable and
I am sure his shrink is thrilled with the abreaction, i.e. the transformation of painful material into something of value.

quote:

---

"No writer is a gentleman."

---

Especially if the writer is a lady.

Time for Terence Sellers to grace us with a short story!!!!!!

Please Please Please

As I was waking up this AM I was thinking the quote was
"A writer is not a gentleman."
That is more elegant.

A short story - HERE? But Daddy wouldn't that be TOO LONG??? heheheheh
One can go to my website. You might like "Reluctantly Betrothed to Stan" as to how I got the name.

PS to Bobby: I am definitely senile. I already
wrote the Allan L. story, called "A Case of Moral
Insanity." I will send it to you, since
with 47.5 brain cells left I doubt in my lifetime it will get it scanned and online.

"Once upon a time there was a young hairdresser,
and when he was good he was very very ..."

[This message was edited by S'tan on 09-30-03 at 03:46 PM.]

What brand are his sunglasses? And is that lipstick? If so, what shade? Does he prefer coffee, or tea?

oooh now we have a face to go with
all the frou-frou-ha-ha-ha...

from the articles:

"In public, LeRoy maintains a Warhol-like mystique. He wears wigs, female apparel, and oversize sunglasses, and he seldom says a word. And yet he can give better phone than Warren Beatty, drawing powerful women into his world with his raspy, girlish drawl."

"Dennis Cooper, his mentor responds: 'The question is, What is he going to write about in the future ? He can't keep talking on the phone to Tatum O'Neal and Shirley Manson. Writing is difficult. He doesn't like being alone, and he has so many fans.

"Says Mary Gaitskill [authoress]: "One of the first things [JT] ever said to me was, 'I feel like this is just another hustle, like maybe I'm hustling the literary world.' I said, 'If your writing is good, it doesn't matter.' "

Gag! Of course it matters whether you hustle, or not. That's JT's entire issue. Selling yourself can be virulent to your entire bloodie organism. Only a white-bread vanilla poptart would have the depth to say it's 'okay' to hustle.

The wiggage needs work.

"Only a white-bread vanilla poptart would have the depth to say it's 'okay' to hustle."

this is why you rule s'tan!

I wish that Romy Ashby would join in on this topic. She gets quite inflamed about the subject.

You all sound so Hopelessly Devoted!

Devoted to vitriol...Ever since I read Mary Gaitskill's
awful long long wrenchingly detailed
'short story' about her childhood masturbations with a toothbrush
I have loathed her.

Does Romy get vitriolic? Hear hear.

I am finally going out to purchase the damn book in person today!
As to JC's Aileen Wuornos meets Sharon Gless attire... well, as they say, it's a look.

You better read ha' before you trash her...
Don't hate ha' before you knows ha'....

Well I was harrassed by Mlle. Madison last Wednesday, whether I had done my HOMEWORK...
egads I love the rigor! Beat me with red pencil! And no I hadn't, no - I had NOT yet read "SARAH" the second time.

So honey I STARTED... 90 pages last night, and so far -
she holds up beautifully! It is orgasmic, luscious, well for me all the material is SO real.
For the white-bread Vanillas - I see why they are creaming! I personally would not have put it ALL so bluntly, but she could, and did, very prettily...

It is dirty, and magnificent.

Hoax:
(I admit I signed a contract to mention JT in every single one of my posts from now on the M'Boards. Hmph! Yeah, I's just another 'ho in the 'Sistah-hood'... But is there degradation in worshipping a true Master/Mistress?)

WHAT IS THE NAME OF HER EDITOR???

My own penny-dreadful edit will be coming soon... She is not bad at all, the second read is definitivement BETTER than the first...

but sorry, did find a few too many cliches that slipped through!

Sidebar: Wonderbar has LOVELY cocktails, feature the "Pineapple Cheesecake" which really is divine.

I just had my birthday, so am not rigourous enough at the moment to edify further.
Tomorrow?
Definitivement avant Paris.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 10-06-03 at 03:22 PM.]

[This message was edited by S'tan on 10-22-03 at 08:46 AM.]

Msr. SELLERS:

Beginning Heart/Deceitful for second read tonight. We'll have much to discuss on your return. Bon Voyage! And Joyeux Anniversaire!

Dear Handsome,
I just got Heart/Deceitful in the mail from faithful #166, but should I configure Paris under the toils of LeRoy? Standing out on the sidewalks of St-Denis, will be enjoying my own slew of tricks. Why read about it when you can live it.

Empress told me when she was unhappily at JT's last reading, someone tried to lay a racoon penis bone necklace on her! And it wasn't from Pimp Daddy Glad, though, but a publicist! Oh sorry same thing.

How can you take an image like that, and turn it into a product. I forgot to ask if it was real, or plastic, well it's all plastic!

Anyhow yes more interesting conversation will be ours in a few weeks. Almost done the second reading of "Sarah." What strikes me now is how very well she describes the minutiae of emotion. She is indeed one of the psychic lot-lizards that way.

Thinking lately of Jean Genet and how he continued to live as he always had, in little hotels in Paris... Furtive, downplaying the self, probably still finding young thieves to blow...

You have to be true to your subject matter, so it doesn't curse you. Giving away replicas of a sacred talisman for publicity purposes is a boner.

Okay, I confess. I've been meaning to read J.T. Leroy for some time now and I'd just never gotten around to it. When this forum started however, it became critical! Yes, yes, 'tis true ... J.T. had never popped my cherry! Go figure.

So I rushed out to St. Marks Books. They were sold out of Sarah but I picked up The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

Harrowing. Brilliantly written, but really horrible stuff. The abuse of this boy never ends. I really wanted to kill that bitch mother of his, I mean really SLAP THE SHIT OUT OF HER. That is until the part where he hooks up with Grandfather. Yikes!

I'm still not finished. But frankly as great as it is, I'm not sure if this is the type of fare I can re-read again and again. Kind of like watching "Frances" with Jessica Lange. It was astounding, but so hurtful. I could only watch it once. Maybe I'm just a big crybaby.

I agree it is painful to read. But his style is the triumph, don't you think... Apparently the subject matter of Heart/Deceitful is much less stylized. (Now I am definitely not taking it on my trip...!)

On a related note, I rec'd the film "The Piano Teacher" for my birthday, and it's enough to put any tourist off S&M... Total candor - that being a 'true sadomasochist' is not actually much fun, OR glamourous. No pop cool there at all, no groovy fashions, or spooky techno equipment. Just the urge: its horrifying need, subject to (often vile) power play.

This is what offends about the brou-ha-ha around JT - that somehow it's COOL to be or have been in degradation.All the more offensive his fan base of privileged women, for whom real sucking-and-fucking whoring isn't an 'option' in any of their contracts.

But JT'll never go back to the truck stop again... Tell your tales of mayhem and heartbreak, only to realize they're not so much caring about you as getting OFF on it. The very people who bring you out of it - now, on the way up, they're jacking off on you. STILL!

He has a fan-base of more protective caring types, who raged about the "I Fucked JT Leroy" t-shirts. (That was one of the articles in the earlier link here.)

Bye for now... Carry on!

S'tan-- yeah, I'd say leave Heart/Deceitful stateside. But then, I leave most books home when I travel. I find reading books when I'm away from home is either pointless, because I'm too distracted, or counterproductive because I feel I'm getting something skewed thanks to strange surroundings. I prefer the familiarity New York, and esp. of home or the subway for reading books. Prefer newspapers and mags when away. But that's just me? Anyhow, Lex, I wish you'd borrowed my Sarah first before digging into the other! i just so enjoyed getting the backstory afterwards with heart/deceitful. Prob no matter tho.

Where will JT take us next? Further down the highway to the next truckstop...or someplace different altogether? Could there still be another prequel?

and read "Heart/Deceitful" on the way to Paris, and then the second time all the way back...

'COAL' assuredly is one of the most heinous things ever put to paper! How is the kid still living after that? And not a scrap of self-pity, moralizing, or whining through any of it. Too great.

And the cigarette lighter torture? The mother should be in jail (if it's true)... but (as my father said as he lit another cigarette) "all great writers have terrible childhoods." So don't ask me to be good, because my evil is transforming you, darling! What a killer.

I am very disappointed you guys didn't keep
ragging on JT. You went and let the end of his penis get cold...

Somehow JT and the boy-king Louis IX (crowned at the age of 12) became one in my mind, whilst rummaging in the ancient dungeons of the Louvre.

more later. I have jet lag.

[This message was edited by S'tan on 10-18-03 at 08:44 AM.]