Customer Reviews

Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Savannah Knoop's well written account of her experience as the body [or wig and glasses] of J. T. LeRoy, the famed but fictitious truckstop-boy-turned-author, is rivetting even if you've never read a LeRoy book or seen the movie. Simply put, the experience of seeing how people react to her when they think she's not just a he but also a victim and a celebrity is a fascinating exposure of the projections people make and of celebrity culture. Knoop captures both the humor and pathos of never being sure what people are seeing or reacting to when they believe her to be JT. Also, it is surprisingly easy to sympathize with Knoop, as she was not the mastermind of the hoax but in many ways simply a conveniently aimless and exploited sister-in-law. Her vexed relation to Laura Albert, equal parts admiration and resentment [and a sorority of shared eating disorders], is uncomfortable but very believable. Finally, this book interests not because it or the JT hoax is important in its own right but because of what it reveals about our insecurities, our self presentations, and our acute desires to be the sort of person, with the sort of experiences, others find desirable or charismatic -- to be, in short, the people we wish to be and are not.

I could not put this book down. Savannah's insecurities, her unsureness, and her honesty about her time spent as JT LeRoy makes for an amazing story. I related deeply to her personal struggles and the confusion of finding herself, and was fascinated by how she described going from an insecure teenager to a worldwide superstar. She is not a monster or a manipulator like so many have made her out to be. I saw none of that in this story. What i saw was a really beautiful person on a journey to find herself.

This book... and the writer itself, is a good representation of a sign of the times...people's obsession with celebrity and how they will do anything to get in the limelight.

As is, the initial writer of the J.T. Leroy books, ought to be ashamed of herself. How can she feel no guilt? Most of her initial fans were people who identified with the horrific events described in her book. They related, identified and came to love the character...loved J.T. Leroy...for having suffered and overcome TRUE horrors in life. Thus, putting him/her on a pedestal. A pedestal she would never have been put on if those same fans knew that he/she had not actually gone through ANY of the books detailed events. Does she have the slightest clue what it feels like to be raped? To be abused? To be abandoned? To be sold as meat? How can she receive the accolades of one who has suffered and overcame when she has not done either?

It wasn't enough to profit off of a lie. now THIS book? explaining or trying to justify her actions and involvement in the whole scandal? to pawn off deceit as talent?

Who would care about the drivel that spews forth now?

When the story broke that JT Leroy didn't exist in the way he'd been said to exist, a lot of people on the periphery of this phenomena wanted to know more. Savannah Knoop provides not a typical insider's bitter wail but rather a heartfelt and clear-eyed tale of how the public face of a hip and cool author was created and thrived for a while. She's a good writer and is able to capture some of the manic, slap-dash nature of the enterprise that was JT Leroy and make it a good story.

In telling her part in this created life (her own life is compelling without JT in it) she displays a remarkable sense of having come to terms with being part of an invention that among many things "punked" a whole lot of people who don't care to be punked. But rather than providing more fuel to the fire of those who felt betrayed, Knoop gives a human face to the affair, one that is well-told and provides a sense of how these things are sometimes less than deliberate and more the product of often ingenious invention based on a startlingly clever reading of what people want to hear and in this case, see.

For those who feel betrayed or confused by what some call a hoax, this book goes some way to humanizing the people who put it all together and provide a sense of empathy if not compassion for them. For someone looking for a good read about post-modernist identity, the nature of who we are and especially how most people often see what they wish to see, this would be a good book to get as it is told by someone simply telling their story without pretense. GirlBoyGirl a candid account of the face of a remarkable event in modern publishing and entertainment.

Entertaining but painfully egotistic at the same time. She clearly loves attention, exploiting herself and money. To each their own.

J.D. Salinger said, "A serious writer should put in the time to locate
her own voice before she goes singing to the balcony."
Problem is there is NO voice and serious isn't possible to someone who betrays everyone to sell clothes and try to disguise that they are little more then a pathetic obsessed Asia Argento stalker.