Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy was a pseudonym created by American writer Laura Albert. The name was used from 1996 on for publication in magazines such as Nerve and Shout NY.[1] After his first novel Sarah was published, "LeRoy" started making public appearances. In a January 2006 article in The New York Times, LeRoy's agent, manager, movie producer, as well as several journalists, declared that the person acting as LeRoy in public was Savannah Knoop, the half-sister of Albert's then partner, Geoffrey Knoop.
LeRoy was supposedly born October 31, 1980 in West Virginia. His backstory was one of prostitution, drug addiction and vagrancy in California, prior to the publication of his first novel in 1999. However, an exposé in October 2005 revealed that JT LeRoy was Laura Albert. In a February 2006 interview with The New York Times, Geoffrey Knoop stated that Laura Albert was the author of the LeRoy books, which Albert later confirmed.[2][3]
Albert described LeRoy as a "veil" rather than a "hoax", and claimed that she was able to write things as LeRoy that she could not have said as Laura Albert. In 2007 Albert was convicted of fraud and ordered to pay reparations for having signed legal papers in the name of her fictional character. Elements of the JT LeRoy hoax inspired "Sweetie", a 2008 episode of Law & Order.
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Albert originally published as Terminator and later JT LeRoy.[4]
LeRoy's work was also published in literary journals such as Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Memorious, and Oxford American magazine's Seventh Annual Music Issue. LeRoy is listed as a contributing editor to BlackBook magazine, i-D and 7x7 magazines, and is credited with writing reviews all of which include the character Justin Wayne Dennis, articles and interviews for The New York Times, The Times of London, Spin, Film Comment, Filmmaker, Flaunt, Shout NY, Index Magazine, Interview, and Vogue, among others.
LeRoy's work has also appeared in such anthologies as The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003, MTV's Lit Riffs, XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits, Nadav Kander's Beauty's Nothing, and The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes. LeRoy is also listed as guest editor for Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2005.[9]
Additionally, LeRoy was credited with liner notes and biographies for musicians Billy Corgan, Liz Phair, Conor Oberst, Ash, Bryan Adams, Marilyn Manson, Nancy Sinatra and Courtney Love and profiled award-winner Juergen Teller.
The original screenplay for Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) was credited to LeRoy. Van Sant began making Gerry, a largely improvisational, non-narrative film. He decided to continue that approach with Elephant while retaining some of LeRoy's contributions. LeRoy was also listed as that film's associate producer.
LeRoy was credited as associate producer for the 2004 film adaptation of The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, directed by and starring Asia Argento. It was released in spring 2006. LeRoy made a few appearances at promotional events.
Antidote Films and producers Jeff Levy-Hinte (Thirteen, Laurel Canyon) announced plans for a film adaptation of Sarah to be directed by Steven Shainberg (Secretary) from a screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson and short story by Mary Gaitskill. In June 2007 Laura Albert was sued by Antidote Films for fraud; the firm claimed that the contract signed by JT LeRoy to make a feature film was null and void, as the person LeRoy does not exist. On June 22, 2007, Albert was found guilty of fraud by a Manhattan jury, and ordered to pay reparations and damages.[10]
LeRoy was rumoured to be a contributing writer to the upcoming movie House of Boys, a love story set in Amsterdam in 1984. Layke Anderson, Stephen Fry and Udo Kier are starring. The film is produced by Delux Productions (Girl with a Pearl Earring) with shooting scheduled in Luxembourg and Morocco in December 2008.
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.[11] 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."
The controversial subject matter in LeRoy's work created substantial critical interest in the author, and various reporters and book critics sought out his identity. LeRoy, citing extreme shyness, refused to appear in public without being disguised in a wig, hat, and sunglasses.[12] LeRoy would rarely speak in public and regularly hide under tables during his own book readings.
Interviewers were rarely left alone with "LeRoy"; his 'family' never left him alone for interview, claiming that they were "protecting" him from the temptations from his former life as a drug user. In an interview with The Guardian on January 4, 2006, "LeRoy" noted that he was "Twenty-three, er ... 24," when he would have been 25 years old, and was caught out when asked what Wiffleball was, although claiming in author's bios that he enjoyed playing it. The writer of the article, Laura Barton, quickly received an email from the LeRoy camp attempting to cover up the slip-up.[13]
The exposure of Laura Albert's fiction developed during 2005 and 2006 as a series of journalist-published accounts that cast doubt on the credibility of the author's claims.
Author Stephen Beachy wrote in the October 10, 2005 issue of New York magazine suggesting that LeRoy and his associate, Speedie, were personas adopted by musician Laura Albert.[14] Beachy, like several commentators since 1999, speculated on parallels to the case of Anthony Godby Johnson, who was also eventually proven not to exist.
On November 11, 2005, Women's Wear Daily wrote that the editors of The New York Times Magazine killed an article LeRoy had written after Beachy's article questioning his identity was published. In the WWD article, LeRoy was quoted as saying, "They asked me for my passport, my social security card....I've always played with identity and gender. I understand what [the Times] is saying, but they entered into working with me knowing that....Just because the Washington Post came after them, why should I be forced to prove who I am? They knew exactly what they were getting when they dealt with me."[15]
The Washington Post's David Segal picked up the New York magazine story and wrote, "[LeRoy] appears to be one of the great literary hoaxes of our day, and it fooled a whole lot of people as well as the media, including the New York Times, which last year ran a lengthy profile of LeRoy".[16]
Hans Eisenbeis, in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul newspaper The Rake, wrote, "I don't know what all the fuss is about. In the business, it's called a pseudonym, and the fact that J.T. LeRoy has been writing and publishing under that name for more than a decade ought to be track record enough to establish his (or her) credentials... It's an interesting mystery, but seems to me sort of irrelevant to whether the work written by that person is publishable or not."
On January 6, 2006 JT LeRoy posted a blog entry titled "the Hoax edition"[17] which cited an article in The Guardian that took a kind stance over the hoax issue stating that "identity is irrelevant". Also included were T-shirt prints which made light of the hoax, reading "I am the real JT LeRoy" and including an artistic image of the author's blonde wig and sunglasses. Also on the blog entry were promotional references to the film The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, DVD cover art and opening dates, and a Sundance Film Festival viewing.
Three days after the blog entry, a New York Times article by Warren St. John, published on January 9, 2006, gave evidence that the person appearing in public as JT LeRoy was Savannah Knoop, half-sister of Geoffrey Knoop.[18]
St. John's follow-up article, published by the Times on February 7, 2006, carried the headline, "Figure In JT LeRoy Case Says Partner Is Culprit," an investigative interview with Geoffrey Knoop. In this article, Knoop stated of Albert, "For her, it's very personal. It's not a hoax. It's a part of her." He further stated that he and Albert had separated in December 2005 and were then involved in a custody dispute over their son; however, their case has never entered the courts and no request has been filed by Knoop for sole custody. Knoop also expressed his belief that Albert would never publicly admit to writing as LeRoy.
In a January 10, 2006 National Public Radio interview, Beachy noted that Laura Albert's work as a phone sex operator honed her skill at creating elaborate stories about sexual acts and abuse, which Albert would use to elicit sympathy from other writers and editors who might help her get published. Beachy said he felt the hoax "was really about ambition and self-promotion."
The November 29, 2007 Rolling Stone (#1040) featured an article about JT LeRoy by Guy Lawson in which it was stated that the guitarist Billy Corgan had been privy to the deceit since 2002 and that this felt to him "...like being inside the Magic Kingdom."
In 2008, Savannah Knoop published Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy, a memoir about the six years she spent as LeRoy.[19]
While many authors have taken pen names for various reasons (anonymity, protection of privacy), the persona that Albert and her friends created raised criticism from those who took her novels to be autobiographical, though the works were published as fiction.
Knoop's personal appearances presented LeRoy's public with a glimpse of the object of their interest. Albert has been criticized for allegedly calling for attention to JT LeRoy by associating the character with HIV, but there is no evidence that HIV was significant in LeRoy's public persona. As Knoop explained, the ongoing HIV-positive storyline was deleted at the time that she entered the picture as a physical LeRoy-impersonator. In a September, 2008 interview, Knoop recalled the change in storyline to Gavin Gavin Browning of the Village Voice:
Browning: "There were inconsistencies. In the late '90s, HIV was part of JT's story. But that got dropped. Were you ever challenged about that?" Knoop: "No. I think that HIV was dropped right around the time I started impersonating him. HIV wasn't part of the story that I was playing, but there were little details. I would wear long sleeves, and there were scars. HIV was part of the trajectory, and then it was just dropped."[20]
Although Laura Albert initially maintained her silence about her own personal history, a negative backlash nevertheless tarnished LeRoy's reputation early in 2006. The attacks focused on Albert's credibility to speak on the issues which had supposedly impacted LeRoy, such as being transgender, a victim of child abuse, a prostitute, and formerly homeless.
Albert gave a lengthy interview to The Paris Review in Fall 2006, detailing her own troubled history and her alleged personal experiences with abuse, abandonment, sex work, gender identity, and her need, since childhood, to create alternate personae (chiefly over the telephone) as a psychological survival mechanism, through which she could articulate her own ideas and feelings.[21]
Dr. Terrence Owens, a therapist at the McAuley Adolescent Unit of St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, was credited by LeRoy for motivating him to write. LeRoy claimed Owens encouraged writing between sessions to maintain continuity of thought, saying that LeRoy's accounts would help to train a class of prospective social workers. Those writings eventually made their way into the collection of short stories in 1998.
Owens has refused to confirm his involvement with any of the real or fictitious characters in the case, citing ethical considerations. But in an article in the New York Times, he said that he did not know Knoop. Not until Laura Albert's interview in The Paris Review did she reveal that in fact she herself has been a regular patient of Owens's for many years. That cannot be confirmed.
The LeRoy case has been frequently compared with the coincident controversy involving the author James Frey, despite the difference that Frey's work was published as a memoir while Albert's work under the pseudonym JT LeRoy was published as fiction. Considering that her work was always labeled and marketed as fiction, the case of French novelist Romain Gary (1914–1980) is more pertinent to JT’s trajectory than any correlation with authors who published under memoir, such as Armistead Maupin's The Night Listener, who were revealed to be different than their book's personas.[22]
Laura Albert is not the first female author to use a male or gender-neutral pseudonym. The three Bronte sisters initially wrote their books under Christian male pseudonyms, and Mary Ann Evans wrote as "George Eliot."[23] Alice Sheldon wrote science fiction to great acclaim as "James Tiptree Jr."
In June 2007, Albert was sued by Antidote International Films Inc. for fraud, which claimed that a contract signed with JT LeRoy to make a feature film of Sarah was null and void.[3] On June 22, 2007, Laura Albert was found guilty of fraud by a Manhattan jury because she had signed her nom de plume to the movie contract. She was ordered to pay $110,000 to Antidote, as well as an extra $6,500 in punitive damages[24] -- with the total she was ordered to pay amounting to "$350,000 in legal fees," according to the New York Times.[25]
In August 2008, the Authors Guild released an amicus brief in regards to the trial verdict, supporting Laura and opposing the jury’s decision, stating that the decision “will have negative repercussions extending into the future for many authors. The right to free speech, and the right to speak and write anonymously are rights protected by our Constitution, and the district court's decision which holds that Laura Albert's use of pseudonym breached the Option and Purchase Agreement, is one that will have a chilling effect upon authors wishing to exercise their right to write anonymously.”[26] They went on to request that the court reverse the decision in regards to a breach of contract.
