NEW YORK, NY--
It is a troubling indictment of our times that the great
fraud artists of our day are not celebrated but are hectored and attacked. This has been an expecially bad week for some master creative deceivers, who have transformed themselves into canvas and the world into their gallery, so to speak.
Who is to say that JT Leroy is not a teenaged homeless drug addict from the streets of San Francisco saved by a loving couple who allowed his literary talents to flourish and him to become friends with Courtney Love, Dennis Cooper, and Billy Corgan? What authority do business records, New York Times expense records, and Disneyland Paris employees that all say that Leroy's words are written by his supposed foster mother Laura Albert and that he has been portrayed by Albert's sister-in-law Suvannah Knoop have versus the compelling story of a transgendered Boy George-Michael Jackson lovechild lookalike whose stories have inspired multiple movies and are sold in over twenty countries?
What kind of truth do you prefer?
James T. Frey has made millions of dollars as a dangerous drug addict who has done hard time before becoming the Oprah-list author of the searing memoir "A Million Little Pieces" and "My Friend Leonard", with the mantra "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal." He retells his sordid life: involved in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students; crack-fueled, he runs down a cop in a small Ohio town and a wild melee ensues, becoming the chief target in an FBI probe into drug activity at Denison University; spending a week in jail after setting a county Breathalyzer record following a 1988 drunk driving bust; getting off easy on felony charges due to his jailtime friendship of a dangerous mobster; suffering from the nightmare of shitting blood daily.
Should we not believe the inspirational story of his turnaround just because The Smoking Gun may have looked at court records, talked to the cops Frey says he fought with and the judges he claims to have been incarcerated by, asked the parents of the dead teenagers their memory of the events, and interviewed former fraternity brothers, and found no evidence for anything other than a few minor drunk driving offenses and an ugly chicken-pox mug shot?
I think not.
Frey wrote "A Million Little Pieces" to "memorialize my dead friends." Because the people in the book didn't exist or weren't his friends, does that make his tribute any less meaningful, if his fraudulent words have brought forth honest tears?
Assuredly not.
However, there is a silver lining, a glint of sun in the dark clouds gathering over the proud, the few, the frauds. In a victory for those of us proud practitioners of fraud art, "truthiness" was voted word of year for 2005.
--The Cunctator,
January 10, 2006
