Nasdijj

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nasdijj (occasionally Yinishye Nasdijj) is the name taken by the author of three books published between 2000 and 2004. In 2006, investigative reporting revealed that "Nasdijj" was actually a pseudonym and false identity of writer Timothy Patrick Barrus.

Contents

Publication and recognition

The books published under Nasdijj's name are: The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams (2000), The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping (2003) , and Geronimo's Bones : A Memoir of My Brother and Me (2004). Each, published as non-fiction, recounted various aspects of the author's life, including his Navajo heritage, his self-destructive and abusive parents, his unhappy childhood as a migrant worker, his dysfunctional relationships with other family members, and, eventually, his growing up to become the nurturing father of first an adopted child with fetal alcohol syndrome and then one who is HIV-positive.

Nasdijj received widespread recognition as a writer on the Native American experience. His essay, "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams," was published in Esquire in 1999 and was a finalist in the National Magazine Awards for the year.[1] He was a 2004 winner of the PEN American Center's Beyond Margins award (for The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping).[2]

In a 2002 PEN Forum asking authors to describe their "literary lineage," Nasdijj responded, "My literary lineage is Athabaskan. I hear Changing Woman in my head. I listen to trees, rocks, deserts, crows, and the tongues of wind. I am Navajo and the European things you relate so closely to often simply seem alien and remote. I do not know them." [3]

A hoax?

In January 2006, LA Weekly published a story, "Navahoax," that made an apparently strong case that Nasdijj was in fact a non-Native American named Timothy Patrick "Tim" Barrus, twice-married and the biological father of at least one daughter, who was previously best known as the author of fiction relating to gay sado-masochism.[4]

In media coverage that followed the story's publication, a former literary agent for Nasdijj, while not confirming the truth of the article, called it "well researched and highly persuasive." [5] The Raleigh, North Carolina, News & Observer, a newspaper that had published some of Nasdijj's work, confirmed that it had on file a social security number that, based on a search of publicly available records, matched that of Tim Barrus, while Esquire magazine revealed that it had paid for a 1999 Nasdijj article with a check made out to "Tim Nasdijj Barrus". [6] Jim Cypher, Barrus' agent in 1997 and '98, also came forward to say that Barrus had started using the name Nasdijj as a middle name while working with him.[7]

A further LA Weekly story, "Nasdijj Shops Tell-All," noted these developments, also quoting an e-mail from Nasdijj to an editor at Penguin Books indicating that Nasdijj was offering a novel for publication called Year of the Hyena: The Story of Nasdijj.[8] The article presented excerpts from Nasdijj's blog (http://nasdijj.typepad.com), headlined "Deserving Death for Evil Deeds, by Tim Barrus," and saying, "What you want to believe you want to believe. If I am the devil incarnate then I am the devil incarnate." Subsequently, Nasdijj's blog was deleted from its host, TypePad.

Some genuinely Native American authors, such as Sherman Alexie, questioned his work. In an article for the February 6, 2006 issue of Time magazine, Alexie wrote, "So why should we be concerned about his lies? His lies matter because he has cynically co-opted as a literary style the very real suffering endured by generations of very real Indians because of very real injustices caused by very real American aggression that destroyed very real tribes." [9]

At least one author familiar with Barrus's previous fiction recognized similarities between it and writing by Nasdijj. Lars Eighner, who told LA Weekly he had been a correspondent of Barrus's and was Barrus's contemporary in the field of gay erotica, wrote that he was "entirely certain that Barrus and Nasdijj were one and the same person." [10]

Coverage of the hoax's exposure was heightened by near-simultaneous revelations concerning the authenticity, or lack thereof, of works published by James Frey and in the name of JT LeRoy.[11] One commentator noted that "the convergence of all three scandals at once had the feel of a Triple Crown of hoaxery, with the grand losers being accuracy, truth, and literature itself."[12]

After "Nasdijj"

Writing in the weeks after the publication of "Navahoax," the News & Observer's book-review editor, who had published some of Nasdijj's work and promoted his writing to others in publishing, reflected, "I felt no sense of betrayal. I knew it wasn't personal. Barrus hadn't conned me; I had just drifted into the black hole of his life, which sucked the trust out of everything within reach."[13]

In May 2006, Esquire carried an article, titled simply "Nasdijj," for which author Andrew Chaikivsky interviewed Barrus, his second wife, his daughter, and others. The article describes a man whose "shifting emotional temperature" veers between "meticulousness and careful good manners" and "a full roar." Speaking of his imposture, Barrus is quoted as saying both, "I understand that a trust was violated. I'm not defending it," and "It was a good run." Chaikivsky writes that in the course of their interviews, Barrus's claims included acquaintance with Robert Mapplethorpe, that he was encouraged to write by Tennessee Williams, and that he and his first wife had in fact briefly adopted a developmentally challenged child during the mid 1970s. The adoption appears, according to Chaikivsky, to be verifiable by sealed court records. The article notes that Barrus was at the time of the interviews at work on a new book described as "a sprawling, novelized account with chapters credited to Barrus, Nasdijj, and several HIV-positive teenage boys who claim to have lived in a shelter run by Nasdijj."[14]

In May 2007, Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times's "Screens" blog reported that Nasdijj had "found a home on YouTube", where he was posting "Nuyorican beat-style stuff" that she described as "irritable, pretty, autodidactic, engrossing."[15]

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ PEN American Center - Beyond Margins Award Winners
  3. ^ PEN American Center - Forum
  4. ^ LA Weekly - General - Navahoax
  5. ^ ABC News: ABC News
  6. ^ newsobserver.com | Navajo life, or just pale-faced lie?
  7. ^ The Book Standard is closed
  8. ^ LA Weekly - General - Nasdijj Shops Tell-All
  9. ^ When the Story Stolen Is Your Own - Time
  10. ^ Nasdijj is Tim Barrus
  11. ^ Examining publishing’s culture of trust - BOOKS - msnbc.com
  12. ^ The credibility of books is in a million little pieces. The Web is stealing readers. But publishers are fighting back - US News and World Report
  13. ^ newsobserver.com | Bluff ran like a river through his schemes
  14. ^ Nasdijj - Esquire
  15. ^ Give Us Your Snakecharmers, Your Fakirs, Your Frauds - Screens - Arts - New York Times Blog

Periodicals and news coverage

Nasdijj in his own words

Books by Nasdijj