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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Books "I snap my fingers frantically in her face, the way you bring back the hypnosis victim that won't turn back from a chicken."

Posted by on Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:24 PM

Laura Albert, the writer behind the JT LeRoy hoax, has a work of fiction titled "Jo-Jo" being serialized over here.

"...I raise the rectangular flap and gaze at the trays. They sit ensconced in their hermit-like dignity, aluminum sleighs with a forest of snow gilding their edges. They pay no mind to the taunts of the Light N' Lively, to the pork chops delimited by their skating rink of frozen blood. The dual trays, with their interior compartments of metal, know they are the trusted guardians of the hidden, the unspeakable, the magical. The Illegal. I glide them out respectfully. Even the popsicles, stiff with reconstituted orange juice, lean forward to gaze at the cubes' glory..."

I've got to say, it's certainly vivid. There are some awkward phrasings here ("They sit ensconced in their hermit-like dignity," for example) but I'm going to keep reading it, to be sure. I wasn't crazy about LeRoy's work—everyone who told me to read a LeRoy book would try to convince me by telling me the author biography, which is frankly not that interesting to me when I'm considering reading fiction—but I can appreciate this as a striking piece of writing.

 

Comments (3) RSS

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1
I really couldn't stand that JT LeRoy stuff. It's the apotheosis of the "woe is me, I have (supposedly) suffered the tortures of the damned, therefore I am interesting" brand of pop-culture bullshit that was so big a few years back. Yuck.

The article about how it all fell apart that was in Rolling Stone a year or so ago was pretty fascinating, though.
Posted by Jason Eckelman on March 3, 2009 at 3:04 PM
2
How come no one is postin on this? Huh?
Posted by unpaid intern on March 3, 2009 at 5:08 PM
3
Whatever name she writes under, Laura Albert is a major American artist. Keep reading -- you might finally get hip to what she's doing!
Posted by Nicole V. Gagne on March 6, 2009 at 9:54 AM

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