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SAN FRANCISCO - One of publishing's most bizarre mysteries appears to finally have been solved.

The writer penning the novels of "JT LeRoy," a purported 25-year-old former male prostitute and drug addict, has been unmasked as a 40-year-old woman who allegedly undertook the ruse to get her work recognized.

LeRoy never existed and Laura Albert authored the books, her estranged partner, Geoffrey Knoop, told The New York Times in a story published Monday on its Web site. Knoop, who apologized for playing a role in the hoax, said the stress of keeping it secret had become too much to bear. The couple split in December after 16 years and were fighting over custody of their young son.

As in this case a few weeks ago, the bogus memoirs describe a degrading life of addiction and misanthropic sex, researched by watching reruns of the Sally Jesse Raphael show, evidently.

I used to think the problem was that editors wanted to believe these stories, and to flatter themselves with the idea that their discerning eyes had plucked a genius from squalor.

I now think the problem must be that book editors are lazy imbeciles. It's a theory that explains a lot.

But, consider: in both of these recent cases, the perpetrators were Wonder Bread-types accustomed to suburban comforts. How, then, did they produce that "gritty authenticity" so beloved of the literary pointy-heads?

They didn't, and the critics didn't know they were getting conned because they use the same datum as the frauds for understanding reality: the crap broadcast on television. It's a sort of echo chamber. Some Hollywood studio produces a drama characterized by relentless degradation, some aspiring writer sickens it up a bit and produces a "memoir," and then some jackass book editor gasps that it's so, so, so ... real — just like TV!

No democracy can ever be healthier than its media, and ours has a severe reality problem.

Bob Felton
www.CivilCommotion.com
The Intersection of Religion, Law, and Politics