Frauds and fakes

I saw a play last night - kinda sorta about the JT Leroy thing, and the James Frey thing, and the Stephen Glass thing and a thing I hadn't heard of - the Nasdijj thing.

All literary fraud things. Fakes. Hoaxes, really. But...

I remember learning that George Eliot was really a woman who submitted her work as a man because she knew it wouldn't be considered for publication otherwise. And George Sand was a woman too - a Baroness, in fact. Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. (Alright, that's not exactly the same thing, but I wanted to throw it in there anyway, because I happen to remember his full real name.)

I'll grant you that they then wrote fiction that didn't depend quite so, er, significantly on their assumed persona as a teenage gay hustler (JT LeRoy); a recovered alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal (James Frey); a Native American raising a son with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (Nadijj); or a journalist reporting the news, supposedly (Stephen Glass).

Still.

Seems to me that these days, every week is a new episode of "Which Lie Did I Tell?" (thank you William Goldman), offering a strong lead-in to the latest and greatest reality show we're all watching, "Fess Up or Keep Lying?" which could re-use the Jetsons' theme (sing with me now): "Meet Bill Clinton... his wife Hill'ry. Congressman Craig. Gov Spitzer. Fess up or keep lyin'?"

Political fraud, literary hoaxes. Fiction doesn't hold a candle to the outpourings of courageous and valiant individuals who have suffered and survived, and who, by the way, know how to string a sentence together and have a tantalizing background story. And I'm not talking about the Bush twins.


(Note: Those aren't pictures of Britney - those are pictures of the girl who posed as the boy who was supposed to be JT LeRoy, who turned out to be a 40 year old woman named Laura. No kidding.)