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Next week's New York features a shocking expose of reclusive author JT LeRoy (NB: Like Michael Jackson and "king of pop," journalists are contractually obligated to preface mention of JT LeRoy with the phrase "reclusive author"): he might be a fraud:

Literary darling JT LeRoy - enigmatic, troubled, sexually ambiguous - is said to be haunted into reclusiveness by his dark past. But a mounting body of evidence raises the possibility that the real reason he's so reclusive is he doesn't exist.

Well, "JT LeRoy" has, despite reclusivity, made the occasional public appearance, so we're guessing they don't mean the David Manning kind of non-existence, but the Meet John Doe type. Still — LeRoy's utter fakeness has come up before:

Sarah, J.T. in tow, would perform Lynn songs at Nashville open-mike nights, her face daubed in charcoal to simulate coal dust. Later, she fashioned a Coal Miner's Daughter outfit from materials purloined from the Salvation Army, and she and LeRoy would shoplift food and liquor from Publix stores

Wait a minute, I suddenly thought. What the hell is a Publix store? Like I said, I lived in Nashville before, during and after that period, and I had never heard of such an animal. I guessed that it was a supermarket, and I knew that to this day, liquor was unobtainable at Tennessee grocery stores[...]LeRoy did manage to screw up one of the only specific places he mentioned.

If New York does prove a level of fakeness beyond lack of knowledge of one's own autobiographical geography, we won't be too shocked (we're so jaded). But while LeRoy may be a fraud, it's unfortunately too late for his Flannery O'Connor-as-gay hustler writing not to exist either.

In New York Magazine Next Week [PRNewsvire via Yahoo]
Coal Miner Mother of a Mess [HoustonPress]