StarryShine: In rehab, James Frey was a pussy

Famous (in her own mind) blogger StarryShine can testify about her experience with James Frey in rehab:

I'm having a hard time giving him props for being quel badassy because every single recollection I have of him when we were in treatment together involves me kicking his ass. ... mere moments after we sat down to work out our differences and try to come to a mutually respectful agreement, he said something stupid and i ended up beating him and the counselor upside the head with this inspirational sign that was hanging on the wall.

Just as I expected. I saw the same look in his eyes on Oprah: "This bitch is about to go for my throat."

James Frey, Oprah

High-profile agent's favorite new client has 'no persona'

Stung by recent literary hoaxes, fakes, and general wool-pulling, agents and publishers are a little gun-shy, AP writer Hillel Italie reports. The story quotes JT Leroy's erstwhile agent as speaking in favorable tones of a new client:

I have a nice relationship with him, I like the work and he's not telling me that he's an HIV positive, drug-addicted prostitute. There's no persona. He's just an average person not pretending to be anything.

See? Boring is the new interesting.

The piece makes an interesting point: They have fact checkers at The New Republic and the NYT, and that didn't stop Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass from making stuff up.

hoaxes, agents, literary hoaxes, JT Leroy

My American identity ·

No interest whatsoever in:

State of the Union. What could Bush possibly say of interest? Is there anything the Republicans can come with that isn't evil? Tell you what, put Bush on Oprah -- let her ask him about those WMDs he said existed... Let her ask him why he feels the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to him. Now that I'd watch.

The Super Bowl. I have a hard time even remembering who's playing, and an impossible one remembering why. I think the NFL jumped the shark several years ago when it started awarding teams to fourth-rate places like Jacksonville, Charlotte and Indianapolis. The only other time you hear those cities mentioned is in some air travel nightmare -- "The plane couldn't land in Chicago, so you know where we had to go? Indianapolis!"

I do care about the Supreme Court and the fact that Alito got in. But why does everybody keep saying he's getting sworn in "just in time to attend the State of the Union" -- like it's a birthday party.

This week's dream job

Spend 24 hours a day for 90 days flat on your back as a subject in a study of how humans might do on Mars flights. No word on whether they're fed Mars bars.

Second best job: the study's coordinator, described as NASA's "bed-rest project scientist."

NASA, goofing off, science, Mars flight

Dept. of fakes

In an interview on Book Standard, a Vanity Fair photographer who took a picture of "JT LeRoy" (i.e. Savannah Knoop who, it has been revealed, merely played the non-existent author in public) says she knew it was a girl all the time, and furthermore could tell the person she was photographing was not the product of the troubled background as told in the "LeRoy" bio.

In other fakery, the publisher of an upcoming children's book will not release the book after all, since early readers discovered the author lifted the title and part of the text from a 1983 book. Strangest thing? The author and publisher are the same person.

JT Leroy, Savannah Knoop, hoaxes, fakes, plagarism

What Are You Working On? : author Stephen Elliott

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, novelist and essayist Stephen Elliott, whose last novel Happy Baby garnered a lot of attention.

Elliott is also the organizer of the Progressive Reading Series in SF, which I visited last month.

writers, Stephen Elliott, memoirs

Bull: 'It's a good day to die'

Holy fucking shit! A bull in a Mexican bullring, figuring he had nothing to lose, vaults gracefully into the stands (that's a 9.5 right there) and wreaks havoc [video] as spectators scatter. The rampage lasts about 45 seconds before the picadors finally get off their high horses, jump into the stands themselves, and dispatch the beast.

This footage will no doubt be shown for years... That bull's jump into the bleachers is amazing all on its own.

Print story: here and here.

Dominatrix acquitted in client's cardiodeath

A Massachusetts woman who worked as a dominatrix was acquitted Monday on manslaughter charges in the heart attack death of a 53-year-old 275-pound man whom she had tied up.

The trial offered this bit of entertainment:

During his closing argument to the jury, prosecutor Robert Nelson put on a black leather mask with a zippered mouth opening and re-enacted the bondage session. With both hands, he reached back and clutched the top of a blackboard as if strapped to the rack. Then he hung his head as if dead.

Asher's lawyer objected, and the judge agreed.

"That's enough Mr. Nelson," Judge Charles Grabau said. "Thank you for your demonstration."

Almost as if he had personal experience!

Braverman profiled in Chronicle

San Francisco residents turned to the entertainment section of the Chronicle this morning to find a friendly profile of writer Kate Braverman, whose new book Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles -- subtitled "An accidental memoir" -- characterizes her childhood hometown as "a gulag with palm trees" and a "city of subtle psychological apartheid, of them and us." The SF Weekly reviewed the book last week, strangely drawing the opposite conclusion about its opinion about culture and L.A.

Braverman has been much visible in SF lit circles in the last couple of years, appearing at many readings and starting her own monthly salon, Fusion City, which I visited in November.

She will have a book release party Thursday, Feb. 2 at City Lights in SF, and will be at the B&N on 6th Ave. near 21st St. in NYC on Feb. 9.

Kate Braverman, Fusion City, writers, memoir

Today's fake: Publisher of books "by Nasdijj" to stop shipments

Following revelations in the LA Weekly a couple weeks ago that award winning "Navajo author" Nasdijj was really a white guy and former leather queen named Tim Barrus with no native American connections whatsoever, Ballantine, the publisher of the books, said it would no longer ship orders for the utter bullshit.

Previously: Friday's Galleycat roundup; posting on Ballantine action; and today on Galleycat, genuine Indian Sherman Alexie speaks out on the scandal.

Nasdijj, Galleycat, LA Weekly, Sherman Alexie, hoaxes

Year of the droogs

Things that don't bode well:

Wonkette launches a new look and a new first string duo of bloggers: two apparent wack jobs. I'm not sure how this advances the cause of freedom and democracy. It was one thing to have a persona who was constantly drunk, in a sort of Dean Martin-ish way, and obsessed with anal sex; it's another to have two guys who look like they were pulled out of a line for Madonna tickets in 1991. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt -- they've only fucked up twice so far (one "update" making nice about Janet Reno, one Latin correction).

Worse is making such a big deal about the Janet Reno video, which was featured on Countdown last week, and besides, it's just not that funny. Old news -- not even news -- old silliness. Maybe next they'll feature the Star Wars Kid.

And what's up with this thing where ABC's recently appointed co-anchor got himself blown up in Iraq? You're an anchor, man -- you're supposed to leave that shit to the youngsters. Latest: part of skull removed to relieve brain swelling. I guess we'll have to save all those jokes about him getting a big head!

Meanwhile, in what was perhaps merely an unfortunate coincidence, former anchor Dan Rather said in a speech that American journalism needs a spine transplant and we need it quickly." Ouch!

Woodruff, Wonkette, Janet Reno

Lit up

In case you missed it, the NYT's Edward Wyatt turned his focus Saturday on James Frey's editor and agent. Neither of them spoke to the reporter, but that didn't keep several other publishing figures from wondering what they knew and when they knew it. And today Wyatt does a feature on Martha Sherrill's The Ruins of California, examining the author's decision to take what started as a memoir -- she had already received a hefty advance based on a proposal for a memoir -- and make it a novel. (The title, by the way, refers to the fact that the family in the novel is named the Ruins. Sheesh.) Writing in approving tones, Wyatt says:

At a time when the publishing business is struggling with the meaning of truth and memoir, Ms. Sherrill, 47, is in a way the anti-James Frey: an author who turned her back on a lucrative memoir not because she could not handle the truth, but perhaps because the truth was too important to let go.

After that it gets pretty confusing what "truth" we're talking about, so you can read it for yourself.

And in Salon, there's an excerpt from a Valentin's Day-themed book about sex and love by Ann Marlowe, author of a previous memoir about heroin.

You know, if there's anything the Frey imbroglio has taught us, it's this: A junkie always lies.

Breaking: NYT to move Frey's book from nonfiction to fiction list

writers, memoir, Martha Sherrill, Edward Wyatt, truthiness, Ann Marlowe

What are you working on? : writer Rachel Kramer Bussel

Just posted in my What Are You Working On? series of interviews with writers, author and anthologist Rachel Kramer Bussel.

I've often linked to Rachel's blog and listed readings she's in or has organized; I also enjoy her interviews on Mediabistro (like this one ) and her Village Voice columns, especially I'm Pro-Choice and I Fuck.

And in case you weren't paying attention, on Saturday I posted an WAYWO interview with Eric Rofes, author and queer activist.

This is fun!

writers, Rachel Kramer Bussel

Year of the dog

A major counterfeit ring was smashed when one of the counterfieters tried paying for a lap dance with bills that literally smelled funny. Feds told reporters that the counterfieters doused the bills, which were printed in Mexico, with vinegar to fool contraband-sniffing dogs.

Man, they have dogs trained to sniff out phony money? What can't they do!

Assignment

Write a paragraph that ends with this phrase: ... as if suddenly waking from sleep.

Finally in the middle of the afternoon after about six errands and a period of getting short with each other, she was telling me about having gotten the car fixed, and one of her spoonerisms leapt out. "And I also had them fix the Hello Button," she said. After a few seconds pause I turned my head to look at her when we stopped at a stop sign, and she mutely pointed to the passenger side door lock button, the thing that has not worked automatically for months. You're supposed to be able to hit a button on the driver's side and the passenger door unlocks itself and this button shoots up -- this is what she called the Hello Button. She cast me a sidelong glance and then we were both laughing like crazy, we were lovers again understanding each other and loving each other, as if suddenly waking from sleep.

Suburbs OK gay shepherds

Nice article in today's SF Chronicle by C.W. Nevius about the acceptance of Bareback Brokeback Mountain in the burbs, including upscale senior-dominated communities. Men of the baby boomer generation, reasoned a distributor, are comfortable enough with their sexuality to be able to see the film, and as for the seniors:

"The thing about the senior crowd is that they go to a lot of movies, and they like good movies," says Foley. "By the third weekend, we were in Scottsdale (Ariz.), West Palm Beach (Fla.) and La Jolla (San Diego County) -- urban, well-to-do and a tremendous senior crowd."

The film has legs and the number of screens is still expanding, the article says.

Brokeback Mountain, film distribution, movies, entertainment industry

What Are You Working On? : author Eric Rofes

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, author and activist Eric Rofes, author or editor of more than a dozen books on education and on queer culture and professor of education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.

The state of the satire union

Jon Stewart may be hosting the Oscars, but Stephen Colbert has been picked to host the annual White House Corresponents' Association Dinner. For media types, this makes Colbert -- who, of course, became famous on Stewart's Daily Show -- instantly twice as cool, while it makes Stewart look mainstream, establishmentarian, and possibly past his peak.

Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

First (Courtesy Rachel Kramer Bussel) , some hot librarian type with glasses finds Moby Dick highly erotic:

I'm going to make a bold statement here: a bunch of dudes on a whaling boat is even sexier than a bunch of pirates on a pirate ship. ... I mean, pirates are awesome and wear rad outfits and are swashbucklingly violent and all, but whaling dudes are all butch, they get filthy, their skin gets all tough and leathery, and they thrust their harpoons into the whale again and again, in and out, until its hot quivering flesh is still. See what I mean?

I think my semester will be a hell of a lot more interesting if I can spin erotic fantasies around all of my assigned reading. I mean, I'm interested in the reading already, but if I can masturbate to it I can reduce my porn-viewing time and increase my time spent on reading. Everybody wins! Especially Herman Melville!

Now she would be a good subject for my What Are You Working On series. I don't believe her name is really Audacia, though. It sounds like one of those spambot names I was talking about yesterday.

And, also courtesy Rachel K-B, A Million Little Penises. Worth it for the graphic.

You know, about that whole Oprah-Frey episode we've just lived through -- could there be anything possibly more satisfying? Not only is a too-full-of-himself, falsely humble millionaire author humiliated on national television and in the national media, but he's practically emasculated (as Virginia Heffnan put it in today's NYT) -- and by a black woman. Imagine her taking Abramoff apart on that off-white couch. Imagine Cheney under "her whip hand," as Heffernan -- obviously worked up by the whole thing -- also put it.

More fakes: As the sun sets on James Frey, it's rising on the less well-known but possibly even more heinous "Nasdijj" (that's two j's if you're keeping score at home). Galleycat has the latest, including links to proof that the self-described Navajo writer is really a white bisexual leatherman named Tim Barrus who wrote several gay male porn books. Badger, a Bay Area blogger with friends in the leather community, explains why the PEN award-winning author's cultural appropriation is even more shameful than the wool-pulling perpetrated by Frey and the JT Leroy scammers.

james Frey, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Moby Dick, Audacia Ray, Chris Genoa, Oprah, Virginia Heffernan

What Are You Working On? : author Regina Marler

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, author Regina Marler, editor of Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America On to Sex (Cleis Press) and two books about Bloomsbury.

writers, Regina Marler, Bloomsbury, Beats, Beat+Generation, authors

Need pseudonyms? Look no farther than your spam email bin

Among the alleged senders of spam to me in the last few days were characters who identified themselves as:

Francisco Bouchard
Oxidize E. Destructivene
Sirloins H. Smirching
Doyens A. Connoting
Console H. Cyrano
Exultant H. Cenotaphs
Prefabrication T. Edison

Yow! I would love to have a correspondent named Sirloins H. Smirching or Exultant H. Cenotaphs. (Why so many middle initial H's, and do they all have the same middle name as Jesus Christ?)

Then again, I just selected a pseudonym from the list of long-dead cast members of The Big Sleep. Endless lists of forgotten Hollywood bit players are great sources for names for characters in your novels and so forth.

Nyoka the Jungle Girl!

I have no excuse whatsoever for posting this fabulous picture, which I got from this page, where I came from this page -- and it all has to do with nothing, but how amazing this whole mid-century thing about archeologists discovering "La séduisante Nyoka Cordon est une star de l'athlétisme qui quitte le collège pour retrouver son père mystérieusement disparu dans les jungles de la ténébreuse Afrique."

Nyoka turns out to be the work of Bernard Krigstein, whose comix work is archived along with Krigstein's more serious painting and illustration.

Fake update: Oprah agonistes

Probably deciding it's time to cash in on all the negative publicity, Oprah today features disgraced author James Frey, publisher Nan Talese, and "journalists familiar with the allegations" that Frey's "memoir" is really a pile of bullshit.

And at the end of the show, they all get BRAND NEW CARS!! Well, maybe not.

UPDATE: NYT already has a story up about the show in which Oprah said Frey "betrayed millions of readers":

Today, Ms. Winfrey, alternately fighting back tears and displaying vivid anger, berated Mr. Frey for duping her and her audience.

And the Chicago Tribune has verbatim excerpts.

Meanwhile, a little slow on the draw but eager to capitalize on its rival's errors, the SF Bay Guardian crows about SF Weekly's hoaxer double-cross, in which it was revealed by bloggers that SFW's "Infiltrator" hoaxer actually didn't even perform the hoax he said he did. SFBG's added value is printing writer Harmon Leon's side of the story.

Which is a lesson for all you journalism students: If you're going to write about lying, tell the truth.

Previously:
Jig is up for 'The Infiltrator'

Oprah, hoaxes, literary hoaxes, James Frey, Nan Talese, Infiltrator, harmon Leon, SF Weekly

Adjectives that appear only in book reviews

Lustrous -- Laura Miller, Salon, on Kathryn Davis' "The Thin Place"

Luminous -- Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, The Hindu, on Alan Hollinhurst's "The Line of Beauty"

What Are You Working On? : writer and filmmaker Dan Roentsch

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, an interview with Dan Roentsch (pronounced "wrench"), a writer and filmmaker in New York.

By the way, when I Googled "What Are You Working On?" to discover whether or not the interviews were being picked up in searches, I stumbled across this site giving online lessons in the Cree language, in which "What are you working on?" is said ke'kwa'n~iw no'cihta'cik.

writers, Dan Roentsch, filmmakers

While you were goofing off

A New Jersey high school banned students from wearing shorts to school. But it didn't ban skirts, a student pointed out. "Then wear a skirt," the principal grumped.

Dude -- never dare a high school student. After wearing skirts and kilts to school for several days, Michael Coviello was sent home yet again. With the help of the ACLU, he got the school to compromise. He can wear skirts as much as he wants. But he still can't wear shorts from October to April 15.

In other cross-dressing news, Michael Jackson wore a head-to-toe, veiled black robe to visit a Bahrain shopping center. "The veil, abaya and gloves were of a style typically worn by conservative Bahraini women."

George Clooney made Jack Abramoff's daughter cry by using the disgraced former lobbyist's name in an "off-color joke" during the Golden Globes ceremony. Outraged was Abramoff's father; Clooney's own father replied that he understood what it was like to have a famous son be the target of criticism, "but the difference here" was that while Clooney was trying to do something positive, Abramoff is a convicted felon.

New Pope: "Love is not free." Especially when 45-year-old former altar boys come back to sue for millions of dollars.

Today's Big Fake: Nasdijj

Not content with the James Frey and JT LeRoy imbroglios or the firing of SF Weekly's 'The Infiltrator', LA Weekly has uncovered -- the right word, since the book was published in 2000 -- another memoir hoax. Courtesy Mediabistro.

This one's about a supposedly Navajo writer who called himself Nasdijj and got Houghton Mifflin to publish a book called The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams. That ring any bells? Didn't think so. Nevertheless, it shows how eager publishers and readers are for stories of struggle, suffering and redemption.

More bang for the buck (ouch!): In the SF Chronicle today, cartoonist Don Asmussen suggests JT Leroy was actually Carol Channing.

hoaxes, literary hoaxes

What Are You Working On? : novelist Stacey Levine

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their works in progress, novelist Stacey Levine, author of the entrancing Frances Johnson.

I gave the book a mini-review a few days ago. All you literary-type writers, you should eat this book up. Get it.

writers, Stacey Levine

Winter shminter

It's 62 degrees and sunny out there, folks. It's been utterly gorgeous since Saturday. It's colder indoors than out.

Watch for more "What Are You Working On?" interviews tonight and tomorrow. Otherwise, nothin' much goin' on.

Uh, if I have a choice I'll choose the stem cells

Here's Dr. Richard Houghten, president and director of the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies:

"You can already grow a human ear in the intestinal tissue of a mouse. Your heart in a beaker -- that's going to happen. The question is whether it's your heart tissue or whether it can be stem cells. ... There's been some cool work with baby teeth recently...

"That's been a driving force -- mortality, time, the ticking clock —- for my whole career. We're going to die, Steve! And what's going to keep us from maybe not dying? 'Cause you and me, we're not going to heaven, way up there in the clouds." He's laughing again. "What is the one thing that might not make that happen? Science. ...

"In the end what's going to happen is, we are going to live as long as we want to, until we get bored. 'I'm bored,'" Houghten shrugs, pretending to be about 200 years older than he is. "'I'm bored with it all -- I want out.'" He laughs.

What a cheerful guy. We're all going to die! But we don't have to die -- until we're bored to death!

stem cell research, biotech

Forward into the 21st Century

In a Dallas suburb, officials built a 4000-foot long, 6-foot tall fence around Duncanville High School, at a cost of a third of a million dollars, to "deter fights" and "have better control of the access points." The security fence is an addition to other security measures including uniforms and ID badges for students.

Annie Proulx on her famous short story and how it grew

Check out this AP interview with Annie Proulx about her 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain."

I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person. ...

After the story was published in the New Yorker:

(I received) letters from individuals, gay people, some of them absolutely heartbreaking. And over the years, those letters have continued and certainly are continuing now. Some of them are extremely fine, people who write and say, 'This is my story. This is why I left Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa.' Perhaps the most touching ones are from fathers, who say, 'Now I understand the kind of hell my son went through.'

Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain, parents of gay children

Upcoming LeRoy film 'based on a true story'

Leroy redux: upcoming film 'based on a true story'?

Perhaps the people most unhappy about the uncovering of the J.T. Leroy hoax -- an event which has reached sufficient infamy as to no longer require a referential hyperlink, just as you don't have to hyperlink a general reference to 9/11, the 2000 Florida recount, or other infamous events -- is the company which is about to release a film based on the "Leroy" novel 'The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things' -- and hey, wasn't that title, in retrospect, really just a cry for help?

That WWD article says Palm Pictures is the film's distributor, but I can't find any reference to the film on their website, though the film does have its own site (somewhat NSFW graphic there); there "MUSE Productions" is listed as the producer. There the film appears on its annoying Flash-created website.

Well, this is all going to be an excellent test of the dictum "There is no such thing as bad publicity." Though they might want to change the poster's tagline BASED ON A TRUE STORY. As BlackBook says, "How about 'based on a complete and utter lie?'"

BlackBook, JT Leroy, Muse productions, Palm Pictures, hoaxes

The first hour of Martin Scorsese's New York, New York

Continuing my occasional visits to the films of my youth -- my movie-soaked college and post-college years -- I watched, or tried to watch, New York, New York (NYT review, free reg. req.).

Nearly thirty years after the film's release, it looks like a near-masterpiece, a stunning exercise in filmmaking, with genuinely funny moments between Robert DeNiro and Liza Minnelli during the first forty minutes, an amazing mise-en-scene*, and a terrific amount of heart -- no matter how difficult and echt-1970s the shooting itself was. (That's the great thing about looking back at the 70s -- for all its excesses, what we're left with are these great films.)

And it's great to see adult material that didn't make sense to me back when I was 20 or 25 years old and understand it better now -- just the whole adult give-and-take that seemed alien when I was still an adolescent.

But the same thing that almost ruined the picture for me back then truly ruined it for me today: the DeNiro character is such an asshole. He is bullying, passive-aggressive, dismissive, at times positively abusive. He's genuinely mean to the Minnelli character, even when he's doing something like proposing marriage. While I respect the depth and well-roundedness of this characterization and the brilliance of DeNiro in embodying him, I dislike the character so much that I can't watch the movie. I literally had to turn it off after a little more than an hour.

This is my familiar problem of cringing at characters, especially male characters, who are negative in certain bullying ways. Maybe it's that I have never resolved the bullying I endured as a child, or maybe it's that I have a hard time facing and resolving the bullying, mean aspects of my own character. But after a certain point, I can't watch it on the screen. I cringe and turn it off.

* That's a fancy film crit term meaning, roughly, the (ideally) wholly realized world created by the director, cast and crew within the bounds of the frame.

Martin Scorsese, New York, New York (film), Robert DeNiro, film

The usual suspects

I keep sending you to these people. Why haven't you bookmarked them yourselves? :

At midnight, a cruel wind comes up on the desert, and jackadandy goes out to gather in the laundry. Which is not the same thing as "the wash" -- where she lives, a wash is a gully where water flows after a downpour.

Speaking of painters, courtesy Badger, a fantastic post on stretching canvas.

There's this guy Slactivist who is reading the foamer classic Left Behind very carefully and seriously and explaining why it is completely full of shit. For this he deserves, at least, combat pay. In his latest post he discusses the fear that drives fundamentalists.

I wish all my friends and the people I admire had blogs, so I could read their clever jottings and send you to them. Sometimes the internets is like a party where I get to introduce this wondrous friend to that one.

A part of me believes that if all the cool people I knew just knew each other, something fantastic would suddenly be created. That's sort of what it was like in teacher school, come to think of it. The 20 people in our class -- a one-year program that gave its participants, all college graduates in some other discipline, a teaching credential -- were all so smart and inventive, we wanted to form our own school. That would have been a great school! Instead we all dispersed into various local high schools and middle schools and, after five years, there were probably only three or four people still teaching, if that. It was the mid-80s and teaching jobs were hard to come by. I had to go to Japan to teach.

But anyway, I'm having a party this year where I really do introduce everyone to everyone else.

The sixth rejection

Having gotten rejection numero seis for my novel Make Nice, my agent writes: "It seems we've been missing by just the smallest of margins, so I'm very hopeful someone will see its commercial and artistic value soon."

Me too. And hey, you can join in that process. Just take a look at the chapter I posted from that page.

Perhaps Miss Snark can help with a post that speaks to the matter. What does it mean when an editor says they like your writing but your submission doesn't pass muster?

Sadly, it's a fact of life. And as things go, it's probably better than "you suck, go develop an interest in the aerodynamics of kites."

Funny she should say that. The Kite Runner was one of 2005's top 5 fiction books, in terms of sales.

The jig is up for 'The Infiltrator'

"Infiltrator" Harmon Leon sure picked the wrong week to fudge a few details in his latest SF Weekly article. (The piece has been removed from the Weekly's website; that link is to the Google cache).

After readers familiar with the porn industry noticed discrepancies in his piece on attending the Adult Video News awards "in Los Angeles" -- whoops, the even took place in Las Vegas -- Leon admitted that he had based his piece on a visit several years ago to an entirely different porn industry event.

Taken to task by Violet Blue in Fleshbot and Jackson West in SFist, the SF Weekly fired Leon, as announced in an Editor's Note published in yesterday's edition. Here's Jackson West's SFist followup.

Previously: Second Fake of the Day

Harmon Leon, Infiltrator, SF Weekly, Jackson West, hoaxes

Google shows backbone, refuses to comply with feds' fishing expedition

In an astonishing case of a corporation showing some backbone, Google is refusing to comply with a federal subpoena of its search engine logs by feds who want to know what Google users -- that's everybody -- are searching for.

I'll let you read that story for yourself, but check out this tool (Courtesy BoingBoing) that anonymizes your Google cookie.

Google, subpoena, privacy, First Amendment

Still open for submissions: 'Best Sex Writing 2006'

I got this from my publishers at Cleis Press:

Call for submissions: Best Sex Writing 2006
edited by Felice Newman and Frederique Delacoste
Publication date: May 1, 2006
Deadline for submissions: February 15, 2006

Cleis Press is the publisher of Best Sex Writing, the new series featuring exciting, arousing, and most importantly, intelligent nonfiction sex writing. We are looking for personal essays and reportage for inclusion in the 2006 edition, which will hit stores in May 2006.

As of January 2006, the 2006 edition features an impressing (and growing) roster of authors: Stephen Elliott, David Amsden, Shalom Auslander, Susannah Breslin, Susie Bright, Emily DePrang, Virginia Vitzthum, Mark Pritchard, Eli Sanders, and Paul Festa, among others.

Best Sex Writing 2006 will be edited by Cleis Press publishers Felice Newman (author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book) and Frederique Delacoste (editor of Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry). This is the first book to be co-edited by the two publishers since 1980.

We invite your submissions for Best Sex Writing 2006:
LENGTH: Up to 7000 words; please include bio note and information on
previous publication. SEND: Paste text into the body of an email (no attachments and no snail mail submissions) EMAIL: fnewman at cleispress com and fdelacoste at cleispress com. SUBJECT LINE: BSW06 . DEADLINE: February 15, 2006

What Are You Working On? : writer Pauline Millard

Today's addition to the What Are You Working On? series of interviews with writers is Pauline Millard, an AP entertainment editor in New York and fledgling novelist.

Rachel K-B on running an 'erotic reading series'

Here's an interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel on her In The Flesh reading series in NYC -- which is on tonight, by the way.

I'm hoping to feature Rachel soon in my own interview series What Are You Working On?

Rachel Kramer Bussel, In The Flesh

'Chili finger' case closed

A judge in San Jose today sentenced a couple to nine years (her) and 12 years (him) in the case of the severed finger that was planted in a serving of Wendy's chili.

So ends one of last year's best stories. Aside from that Abramoff thing, of course.

Look at my friends

Yesterday was such a blogging orgy for me I may not get a lot of new material today, but I wanted to point to these three.

First there is the utterly great post by Chr from Monday on genderific performance art and dance. I love Chr's writing, and she has perversely chosen painting as her vocation. But her paintings are so beautiful, and furthermore, they express what can't be expressed in words, so they are perhaps even more needful.

Then there's Badger, who gets more done in a day than most people in a month. I swear she must be one of those JT LeRoy-type collectives, because I don't know how it is humanly possible to do all that, think all that, write all that, talk all that AND BE JUST ONE PERSON. And yet she is. I bow in her direction daily.

Finally, Marilyn, who writes:

I continue to make good progress here in catching up on just about everything! Soon, I will have to do one of those barricade-type thingies, where I shut out the world and get a huge chunk of writing done. All I need are some new typing fingers, some new prescription bifocals, and a new halogen lamp. Then I will conquer the world!

Better-published writer: Frey fraud = WMD fraud

Some guy in the New York Observer is suggesting today that people are so angry about the James Frey imbroglio (I love typing that word!) because it's the same kind of shell game as Bush's WMD hoax. Which is just what I implied a week ago.

Yeah, I'm so smart, look at me blogging.

Meanwhile, in the same publication, Frey's erstwhile editor Nan Talese says Frey never said A Million Little Pieces was fiction, contrary to previous reports that Frey had originally shopped the book as a novel.

James Frey, Nan Talese, Frey fraud

Stacey Levine's Frances Johnson

I recently finished reading Francis Johnson by Stacey Levine, a strange little novel that I enjoyed very much.

The book is set in a sort of small-town dreamland, like the TV series "Twin Peaks" -- a place where everyone and everything is just a little off. The characters are either sonambulistic (this includes the title character, a woman in her late 30s who suddenly finds herself at an existential turning point) or sort of spastic. They speak in aphorisms or in slightly stilted Nancy Drew-style dialogue that enhances the impression they live in a sort of time warp, and more than that -- a sort of sense warp as well.

Where they really live is a place called Munson, Florida, a seaside town that resembles no place I've ever been in Florida; it felt to me more like the lost coast of northern California. For one thing, there's a pet volcano; for another, fog commonly blankets the action. Unless it's a metaphorical fog; I think it is.

The man scooted forward. "Frances, what if I were to ask you to help me with an errand?"

"Errand? What errand?"

"I'm no competer," Palmer began with controlled excitement. "But like most professionals, I've long been drawing up elaborate plans in my bedroom at night. I may have mentioned my experiments before... you see, I've been tinkering with a wax-and-oil compound for quite a while. The project excites me terribly, Frances. To be exact, I'm trying to invent a special balm."

She listened with absorption, watching the man's chin and its movements.

"I hope that one day, this balm will stand up to criticism, and maybe even help people far away. Does that sound silly?" The man stared ahead, pushing his glasses up his nose, resting his forearms on lean knees. "Well, you see, there's a particular ingredient I need to finish the project, but lack. The stuff isn't available in Munson--"

"You're not like anyone," she observed.

"... and which is not exotic, by any means. It is, however, an unusual, semihardened oil with some far-reaching, healthful properties I've long admired. I want my balm to have pizzazz! Searching for far-flung ingredients is not my forte, however, and I can't take time to travel, not with my responsibilities in town. Frances -- can you help? If you find the oil for me, I think it would help us both. Besides, travel makes me queasy. I need the darned oil --"

"What sort of oil?"

"Chicken-beak oil," he replied, "and lots of it. Can the stuff be found in this state? Christ, no! ..."

Frances is tormented by the expectations of the townspeople, who seem uneasy that she hasn't mated with anyone, ignoring her longtime boyfriend Ray, an inert man who is about as much company as a chifferobe. Frances seems to prefer the company of Nancy, an older woman who wants help cleaning out her car -- she is disturbed by the specter of a forgotten raisin on the floorboards -- but everyone wants her to marry the new doctor in town.

The characters seem to consume little except coffee and crackers; they travel by foot or bicycle; they attend a town dance in a pavilion in the trees, a pavilion which has a translucent dance floor you can lie underneath to watch the colorfully vague shapes of dancers twirling above.

Nothing is resolved in the end, except everyone decides the new doctor is "a real crumb-bum." Frances does not go in search of chicken-beak oil, nor ever, as far as we know, leave town. I was annoyed at this non-resolution, a weakness that plagues many novels with literary pretensions. But I liked Frances a lot and I loved the weird town and its weird otherness.

The novel is an edition from Clear Cut Press, a recently launched house that publishes pocket-sized books available through subscription only. You subscribe for a year and you take what you get. The first year included volumes by Robert Gluck and Charles D'Ambrosio. But this was the first book of theirs I really got into.

Update: Stacey Levine herself emailed me to let me know the novel is available individually from Clear Cut at the above link, or from Amazon or other online bookseller.

Frances Johnson, Stacey Levine, Clear Cut Press

Why I love this city

Check out this call for applications for scholarships for strippers, funded by the settlement in a lawsuit against Centerfolds, a local strip joint.

Notice you don't have to quit dancing to be eligible. I love this city.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
SCHOLARSHIPS FOR EXOTIC DANCERS!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The St. James Infirmary is the first peer-based occupational health and safety clinic for erotic service providers and sex workers in the U.S.

We are offering 10 scholarships in the amount of $1,000 to current or former exotic dancers (all genders) to be used towards community college, certification programs, or technical training (i.e. administrative/clerical support, computers, cosmetology, massage, etc.). We are offering 10 scholarships in the amount of $2,500 to current or former exotic dancers (all genders) to be used towards 4-year college/university programs.

ELIGIBILITY
• Worked as an exotic dancer in San Francisco within the past 7 years
• Have proof of work experience (stage fee receipt; work contract; print ad’s, etc.)
• Have proof of admission for your designated school/training program

HOW TO APPLY

Send a written request (1 page minimum) to SJI at the above address, Attention: Scholarship Committee. Please include:
1) Your name, contact information, and social security number or student ID number,
2) The time period that you worked as an exotic dancer,
3) Proof of work experience as an exotic dancer (i.e. stage fee receipts, letter from employer, advertisements, etc.),
4) Your area of interest and goals related to school and/or training programs, and your commitment to your educational plans,
5) Which school or training institution you plan to attend and what time period, and
6) Proof of admission.

Incomplete applications will not be considered. Previous scholarship recipients are not eligible; previous applicants who did not receive scholarships may re-apply. All awards will be made payable directly to the school or training institution in February 2006.

DEADLINE FOR ALL REQUESTS: January 31, 2006

Funding provided by San Francisco Superior Court grant RE: Siefred v. Centerfolds, et. al. Case No. 305470

St. James Infirmary • Office: 1372 Mission Street • San Francisco, CA 94103 • Ph: 1-415-554-8494 • FAX: 1-415-554-8444
Clinic: Tuesdays, 12pm-3pm, Wednesdays, 6pm-9pm, Thursdays, 6pm-9pm
www.stjamesinfirmary.org

strippers, Centerfolds, feminism

What Are You Working On? : writer M. Christian

Just posted to my ongoing series of interviews with writers, an interview with M. Christian, prolific and well-established writer of erotica and queer lit.

The first guy, too! All right, fellas! Represent!

M. Christian, writers, erotica+writers

Voter support for DeLay evaporating

Only half of those who voted for Tom DeLay in 2004 support him now, according to the Houston Chronicle (courtesy Wonkette). So those who read at last week's San Francisco benefit for DeLay's Democratic opponent Nick Lampson will be cheered.

I care not only because DeLay is satanic but because I went to high school in his district. Of course, it wasn't his district then, but I can claim some connection.

Tom DeLay, Clear Lake, Texas 22, Nick Lampson

Pundits, critics continue chiming in on Frey imbroglio

Today Michiko Kakutani in the NYT registered her opinion on the issue of whether a "non-fiction memoir" must actually be "true." It raises most of the good points and may be considered a definitive run-down of the issues. My favorite passage was this:

If the memoir form once prized authenticity above all else -- regarding testimony as an act of paying witness to history -- it has been evolving, in the hands of some writers, into something very different. In fact, Mr. Frey's embellishments and fabrications in many ways represent the logical if absurd culmination of several trends that have been percolating away for years. His distortions serve as an illustration of a depressing remark once made by the literary theorist Stanley Fish -- that the death of objectivity "relieves me of the obligation to be right"; it "demands only that I be interesting."

Nice quotation, cited in many places on the web. What's interesting is if you click on that last link -- a Google search on the string "demands only that I be interesting" -- you see that various people quoting Fish have taken the subject of his statement to be, variously: deconstruction; deconstructionism; modern literary criticism; critical theory; the death of objectivity; postmodern critical theory. And that's just the first page of results.

But finally toward the bottom of that page you get to a link to a paper that, at least, cites the source of Fish's statement: an article entitled "Interpreting 'Interpreting the Variorum'".

I can't find that paper online anywhere -- I found one excerpt but it doesn't contain the quotation in question, so I'll accept Kakutani's use of his bon mot and leave it to others to figure out exactly what the subject of Fish's sentence was. But I did find this interesting piece by Fish himself in the NYT, written in response to another literary hoax: Professor Skokal's Bad Joke, published 21 May 1996. (Free NYT reg. req.) This is about that guy who intentionally made up a paper full of fine-sounding nonsense about literary theory and submitted it to an academic journal which published it enthusiastically; Skokal's goal was to show the bankruptcy of postmodern critical vocabulary and discourse.

In what now seems a sad comment, Fish suggests that Alan Skokal's point -- that truth is not, must not be, utterly subjective -- is obvious and that "none of his targets would ever make such statements... (statements which) no sane person would credit." By enacting his hoax, Fish says, Skokal eroded the sense of trust upon which academic discourse depends; such pranks have a corrosive effect.

Skokal's "targets" were academics; Fish and Skokal were arguing about objectivity and subjectivity in the academic realm. This was before Clinton's famous statement about "the definition of 'is'" and before the neo-Orwellian assaults on journalism and the concept of objectivity by the Fox News Channel and the Bush Administration. The year 1996, when only ivory-tower academics argued about such things as truth and objectivity -- it all seems so quaint now!

James Frey, Michiko Kakutani, Stanley Fish, postmodernism, hoaxes

Texting ushering new era of telegraphese?

Take a look at this message from a tribe.net "Psy trance" forum (don't ask me what I was doing there):

hey
m frm mumbai ma frds jus came bk frm goa ystrday.
they went 4 sum gd trance parties n got alot of As frm there.
everythgs still the same in goa.
dnt wry newyrs gonab the same
boom
btw if u knw ne gals interestd in planin wd goa wd me on 29-12-05 leme knw.
all ma guy frds wilb meetin me there.

Here is my translation, as far as I can:

Hey, I'm from Mumbai. My friends just came back from Goa yesterday. They went for some good trance parties and got a lot of As (?) from there. Everything's still the same in Goa. Don't worry, New Year's gonna be the same. Boom. (?) By the way, if you know any gals interested in planning __?__ Goa with me on 29 December let me knmow. All my guy friends will be meeting me there.

I presume the poster wrote the message like that from a phone or Blackberry rather than just to be cool. But I was particularly interested in the practice of ending words with "b" as in "gonab" for "gonna be" or "wilb" for "will be." Is texting ushering in a new era of telegraphese?

Nagin has shark-jump moment

Finally succumbing to the stress of having his dysfunctional, corrupt city destroyed by federal neglect and a category 4 hurricane, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin claimed today that his city was destroyed because "God is mad at America."

Why? Because "he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

Nagin also said God wanted New Orleans to be a "majority African American" city again, using the adjective "chocolate" to describe his (or God's) vision.

In addition, Nagin also described an imaginary conversation with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday Nagin and other city leaders were marking. He said King would have been dismayed at the prominence of black-on-black crime and the way "young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood."

Previously:
Mayor: 'What kind of request' are feds waiting for?

New Orleans, Ray Nagin, Hurricane Katrina

Second fake of the day

Actually this should have been the fake of Friday, but I was too lazy to blog it until Violet Blue posted a followup to her Friday post, in which she charged Harmon Leon, a writer for SF Weekly, with faking his "Infiltrator" story about attending the Adult Video News awards. One big tipoff: the awards this year were held in Las Vegas, not L.A. as Leon had it.

Now SFist says the Weekly will issue a correction. Leon attended something called the FOXE Awards, and they were held in L.A. -- but "a few years back.... The copy editor got it wrong." Oh.

Of course, the whole "Infiltrator" shtick is based on hoaxing -- convincing gullible people that the writer is actually a minor German porn actor, a Promise Keeper or a right-wing radio talker, when in fact he is just a clever prankster, relying on people's credulousness -- or maybe just their need to be validated by belonging to groups that others, even strangers of dubious provenance, are interested in joining -- thereby being exposed to the groups' unguarded expressions of insider-dom. (Apparently he has been running this shtick for years. A book of his pieces, The Harmon Chronicles, was published in 2002, and the "Dieter Lietershvantz" persona was also used for this undated piece in which he presents himself as a "celebrity Scientologist.") And such articles do serve a purpose, even if the purpose is merely to expose their targets to mockery. Don't you wish someone had done that early in the crypto-political career of, say, Anita Bryant?

But the whole value of such pieces rests on the assumption by the reader that the exploit actually took place -- that the author managed to insinuate himself into talk shows, trade shows, Scientology spas and Republican confabs. Satirical articles in which the writer posits him- or herself as a member of a group to be made fun of have been around forever. I could, for example, write a piece in which I pretend to have been an intern in Jack Abramoff's office while he and Michael Scanlon were scheming to rip off Indian tribes; I could make fun of the way they mocked their clients and treated congressmen to expensive perks. Such a piece would be funny, but it would lack authority. If, on the other hand, I claim to actually have been present while those hijinks went on, that's another matter. Suddenly I find myself in the middle of a national scandal.

I bring up the Ambramoff affair just by way of example. Leon's pomposity-puncturing capers don't rise to that level -- lucky for him, for wasn't Dan Savage practically crucified for saying he had falsely posed as a Republican voter in an Iowa presidential caucus in 2000? -- but you can see that the power of a written piece is greatly amplified if the writer claims actually to have lived it.

SF Weekly, hoaxes, Harmon Leon, Dan Savage

The iPod is many things, and now it is a lame-ass metaphor

A Baptist preacher in Houston tells people they should be more like the iPod:

"The reason the outside of the iPod is so simple to use and so beautiful to look at is because of the way they designed the inside of the iPod," Metropolitan Baptist Church Pastor Sal Sberna told his congregation Sunday during his second of four sermons on "iPod Theology."

"All you do on the outside is push the little button, drive the wheel and pick what usefulness you want out of your iPod," he said. "And so when Jesus talks to us about simplification, it must start on the inside... When I go to iTunes, I select all that I want. When I go to Jesus Christ, he gives me all that I need. It's that simple."

"I am always looking for something that a majority of people can relate to," he explained.

But the best thing about this whole article is the end. I've been joking for a long time that evangelicals' wide use of the term "personal savior" sounds a lot like "personal stereo." And now:

"That's such a neat thing about the iPod -- it can be intimately yours," Sberna said. "And that is the neat thing about God."

Okay... so the concept of "personal savior" actually is a lot like "personal stereo."

iPod, sermons

Fake of the day

A convicted sex offender who posed as English nobility was revealed as a fake by some high school journalists.

Here's a tip: if you're trying to pass yourself off as a British toff, make up better titles than "the Duke of Cleveland" and "the Earl of Scooby."

fakes, hoaxes, Joshua Adam Gardner, investigative journalism

Ralph Reed: first the praying, then the humping

The Washington Post turns its attention today to former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, whose close association with now-cooties-ridden former lobbyist Jack Abramoff is well documented. The paper describes an email trail that connects the two Republicans:

Similarly damaging has been a torrent of e-mails revealed during the investigation that shows a side of Reed that some former supporters say cannot be reconciled with his professed Christian values.

Among those e-mails was one from Reed to Abramoff in late 1998: "I need to start humping in corporate accounts! ... I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."

"After reading the e-mail, it became pretty obvious he was putting money before God," said Phil Dacosta, a Georgia Christian Coalition member who had initially backed Reed. "We are righteously casting him out."

Emphasis mine. It was either that or the "righteously casting him out" quote.

Even better was the message sent from Abramoff to defrocked acolyte Michael Scanlon, saying Reed was outdoing the cynical lobbyists at their own game: "He is a bad version of us! No more money for him."

Both Abramoff and Scanlon have pled guilty to felonies and are co-operating with federal prosecutors. If I have one prayer today, it's that that hypocritical son of a bitch Ralph Reed gets indicted.

Ralph Reed, Abramoff, fundamentalists, Republicans

A Socialist once again is president of Chile

A female pediatrician -- whose father died at the hands of the Pinochet regime and who was herself jailed and tortured -- was elected president of Chile yesterday.

"Violence ravaged my life," Michelle Bachelet said Sunday night, in an impassioned victory speech to a jubilant crowd gathered on the main downtown avenue here. "I was a victim of hatred, and I have dedicated my life to reversing that hatred."

"What are you working on?" : writer and broadcaster Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers is Jordan E. Rosenfeld, short story writer and host of the KRCB radio program 'Word by Word', who is working on "a novel of future speculation."

And she didn't even mention 'male lesbians'

Hilarious take on self-appointed male 'feminists' on Girlbomb.

I pre-ordered her book, a memoir. I hope it's all true!

"What are you working on?" : poet Daphne Gottlieb

Joining the crew of interesting writers interviewed in the "What Are You Working On?" series this morning is poet Daphne Gottlieb, a fabulous writer and performer whose presence always makes whatever reading she appears in a success.

UPDATE: Link now fixed.

writers, Daphne Gottlieb, poets

This blog's new feature: "What Are You Working On?"

Today I launch a new feature, What Are You Working On? a series of interviews with writers about their works in progress.

Praise the first four participants:
Marilyn Jaye Lewis
Sara Miles
Violet Blue
Alison Tyler

Yes, one of those things is not like the other -- I'll leave it to you to read the interviews and figure out which is which. I will say that Sara and Marilyn are two of my best friends, so it was fitting that I begin with them. I have about seven other people who have already agreed to participate, so watch this space for announcements of more interviewees.

writing

Close but no cigar:

Got another rejection letter forwarded by my agent; I had been told of the rejection several weeks ago before but hadn't gotten the details. This editor had a new approach: he said my book was too similar to the work of another writer he already published. I looked up this other writer, whom I hadn't heard of, and found he had indeed published novels with subjects similar to mine: a book set in Las Vegas in the 1950s (mine is partially set there, in 1960); another set in Hollywood (the other setting of my novel); still another involving the Mafia (and they play a small part in my novel).

Well, let's look on the bright side. When Make Nice is published, I bet I can get a blurb from that other guy.

publishing, rejections, writing

'Other writers latched onto JT Leroy as career move'

I asked a writer acquaintance who also works for Last Gasp, JT Leroy's publisher, for a reaction to the protests by writers and editors who feel ripped off, either psychically or professionally, by the JT Leroy hoax. Without commenting on the question of whether Last Gasp's star author does or does not exist, he responded in part:

If people worked for free for someone else, shame on them. Every minute that I've worked for JT has been on the clock. (...)

Do you think people were really trying to show support to a troubled youth? Maybe 6 years ago, but up until the last October, they were hounding me to get to him. People latched on to him to try to forward their own careers. That's who's really upset.

"Last October" is when the article in New York by Stephen Beachy ran, exposing the Leroy hoax.

The reason I asked this guy at Last Gasp is that in November 2004 he invited me and several other writers to participate in one of those readings of Leroy's work -- a book launch in which the author does not show up so local literary figures take turns reading from the book. (Susie Bright described one such event.)

At the time I did not question the concept of an author not appearing at his own book launch and having others read in his stead; my only concern was that I had a prior engagement. My writing group was meeting that night, so I decided to say no. But to be honest, if I had been able to, I would have participated enthusiastically, partly because of the reason my contact cited: to forward my own career by appearing in a reading with other more famous people.

It certainly didn't occur to me to question whether or not the author actually existed -- why would it? If someone emails me and says "We're having a book release for JT LeRoy's Last Gasp book, Harold's End," I have to understand there's a person named JT LeRoy -- there's no other way of understanding the sentence. If someone asks me to come to a potluck birthday party, I can be pretty sure the word "potluck" means everyone is going to bring some food to share, not some nutty meaning you might find in a New Yorker cartoon showing two explorers standing in a cannibal's kettle with one saying to the other "When you said it was potluck I thought you meant...."

JT Leroy, Last Gasp, hoax

Suckers line up

For some reason, people are lining up to say they were suckered by the JT Leroy hoaxers into providing editing or just moral support. Hear from:

Susie Bright, moral support, public reading
Ayelet Waldman, moral support
SF Chronicle books editor David Weigand, editing

Why this rush to declare yourself fooled by the Leroy hoax? I guess it has something to do with catching a ride on the publicity.

Heh heh:

Funny:

Oprah Chooses Bukowski's Entire Oeuvre for Book Club

The Fake Patrol

James Frey's publisher says it don't make no diff'rence whether A Million Little Pieces is "true" or "really happened" or is "full of shit" or "as exaggerated as the CIA's report of WMDs in Iraq."

Know why? Because they have sold over 3.4 million copies of the so-called memoir. Let's do the math. Let's see, 3.4 million copies.... Let's just pretend they sold 3.2 million paperbacks and 200K hardbacks. At $14.95 and $24.95 respectively, times a 25% discount most people probably got on amazon and stuff, that's $4.96  $39.6 million dollars.

So no, they don't give a flying donut hole in hell whether James Frey lived it, made it up, or pulled it out of his ass. They're running with it -- or, as they actually said:

The power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers.

You bet it does -- emphasis on the "millions"!

Does it really matter whether James Frey lived the harrowing life he described in his "non-fiction" book? Does it really matter whether JT Leroy is a 21-year-old diamond in the shit? Isn't the poetry of their work justification enough? Does it really have to be true that that, well, really true way?

Yes -- partly because of those phantom WMDs. The US, the UK, and several other suckers went to war largely over those WMDs, spent billions of dollars, killed tens of thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands, and left Iraq "mildly radioactive" (as the overly serious Christian Parenti put it at last night's reading at the Make Out Room) -- all because it depends on the definition of what "is" is.

There were WMDs in Iraq... or there were not. James Frey did do time and fall in love with a fellow junkie whom he tragically could not save... or he did not. JT Leroy really exists... or s/he doesn't. Scooter Libby did break the law by leaking Valerie Plame's name... or he didn't say anything.

You know, at some point, words must mean something. Not just sound pretty. Not just paint a realistic picture. Words that are labelled non-fiction must be not fiction, they must be fact.

Or would you rather words mean anything, anything at all?

James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, Doubleday, WMDs

Late to the ball:

Finally catching up to the fact that other writers and newspapers have scooped her like a giant steam shovel, the SF Chronicle's Heidi Benson finally does some actual reporting on the J.T. Leroy hoax: she goes to the Larkin St. apartment registered to Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop, the figures reportedly (of course, not by Benson) behind the scam.

This bit of legwork, performed long after the story has been reported -- nay, trampled upon -- by legions of other journalists, elicited the following fascinating interview:

A woman answered but refused to open the door. Conducting a conversation from the landing of the top of the interior stairs, where she could not be seen, the woman, who did not identify herself, told the reporter that Albert and Knoop had moved to Mendocino.

"You should get them, because they must be brought down," the woman said.

Wow, wasn't that great? That really adds to the picture.

It was Chronicle writer Benson who, in December -- long after the original article by Stephen Beachy ran in New York magazine -- published a confusing piece that suggested it was more interesting and somehow more artistic to keep the Leroy mystery a mystery. Strange attitude toward journalism!

Meanwhile, last night at a benefit reading in the Mission District, local author Daniel Handler announced from the stage, "I just want to say: I am JT Leroy," to the laughter of the crowd. Handler, who is six feet tall and weighs at least 250, was perhaps the least likely suspect. The only thing he has in common with the supposed former truck-stop hooker-turned-literary-star is a certain ambiguity around gender issues: he is the nelliest straight man I've seen in a long time.

One reader I really enjoyed at that event -- a benefit for Nick Lampson, a former Texas congressman who is set to run against Tom DeLay this year -- was Suzanne Kleid. She read a story from Other Magazine about sex and betrayal. Everyone was laughing at the rollicking details of the story and Kleid, whose stutter somehow made both the comic and erotic aspects of the piece more intense, suddenly blurted out "vote for Nick Lampson, everybody!" which really cracked everyone up.

JT Leroy, Daniel Handler, Heidi Benson, journalism

Crashing America on 2005 Best list

Congrats to my gorgeous friend Katia, whose novel was chosen by amazon.com's Best Lesbian & Gay Literature of 2005 list!

See her read this Saturday at the city's most felicitous literary event, Writers With Drinks. See listing above.

Bowing to the zeitgeist

Continuing with our Big Ass Fake theme today, we point to the lead article in the NYT's business section: Was Wal-Mart's Anti-Union Image Used as a Shield?

The story is about a now-indicted Wal-Mart executive, Thomas M. Coughlin, whose "union project" -- purportedly an effort to fight unionizing in the chain's stores -- became the target of a federal investigation. But that's not the issue. The issue is that the so-called project never existed -- it was merely a ruse by Coughlin to sponge money from his employer's coffers. Since Wal-Mart was already well-known for its anti-union stance, Coughlin simply exploited this image, and everyone who heard about his so-called project thought it was just another anti-union effort.

Such a scheme "certainly would not be out of character," said Harley Shaiken, a professor on labor issues at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied Wal-Mart for years. "Given Wal-Mart's antipathy for unions and its aggressiveness in fighting them, what Coughlin fabricated appeared to be real."

Coughlin soaked Wal-Mart for approximately half a million dollars. He pled guilty to federal wire fraud and tax evasion charges, and is expected to serve at least two years in jail.

Only two years. I wonder what the average sentence is for some poor asshole who holds up a liquor store for $200?

hoaxes, Wal-Mart, Thomas M. Coughlin