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