October 7, 2008

Option this: the real JT Leroy

The guy underneath literary hoaxer JT Leroy's preposterous wig and glasses turned out to be a girl—fashion designer Savannah Knoop—and she's reading from her mind-bending autobiography "Girl Boy Girl" tonight at Book Soup, at 7:00 p.m..
If you can't make it to the reading, you can purchase the book online here, and learn how Savannah, a soft-spoken twenty-something artist from San Francisco, found herself hob-nobbing (and occasionally sleeping with) Hollywood's friendly gullibles (Winona Ryder, Carrie Fisher and Asia Argento were all intrigued with JT for a time), all while pretending to be a male former truckstop prostitute named JT Leroy who had penned two best-selling novels ("Sarah", "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things").
Knoop's wide-eyed "did I really just do that?" take lends a poetic, fairy tale spin to the story, as she leads the reader through various landmark JT moments, most of which that trembled on the edge of farce (a surreal dinner date with Gus Van Sant) and fantasy (making love to Asia Argento). She poetically demonstrates how the fantasy of JT became so much a part of the Savannah reality, it became impossible to distinguish the two.
After New York magazine unveiled the hoax, the woman who actually wrote the books, Laura Albert (the ex of Savannah's half-brother), was sued by the film company that had bought the rights to "Sarah". (Albert has written for the show "Deadwood".)
Savannah, whose avant garde clothing line Tinc reflects her continuing

fascination with gender boundaries, will be putting on a fashion show at the Linc gallery in San Francisco October 25, where she will showcase a padded underwear collection called Tranc.
Savannah Knoop reads from her book "Girl Boy Girl" at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood CA 90069, tonight (Tuesday October 7) at 7:00 p.m.

October 7, 2008 in LOS ANGELES | Permalink

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