Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. Or Not.

The publishing world was rocked this January with the revelation that bestselling memoirist James Frey, author of Oprah pick A Million Little Pieces, was less than truthful in the gritty story of his alcohol and drug addiction. Not only did he apparently compress and slightly rearrange some of the details of his life of debauchery—techniques officially allowable in
memoir—but he actually falsified the reasons for being arrested, his treatment by the police and his jail time—a technique many would view as cheating or at least reclassify the book as a work of fiction.


Ironically, Frey’s factual indiscretions would probably have gone unnoticed had he not gained the attention of the person whose influence can make an unknown author’s career skyrocket literally overnight. I’m speaking of course of Oprah. Oprah departed from her current theme of reading
classics—the February pick is Night by Eli Weisel—to anoint Frey, bringing him on the show and praising him for his amazing courage and fortitude to turn his life around. Thanks to Oprah, Million Little Pieces has sold more than 2 million copies. I may be the only person who hasn’t read it.


Frey says that he first intended the book to be fiction and was turned down by nearly twenty publishers before Doubleday’s prestigious publisher Nan Talese bought it. Frey says Talese said she would only publish it as a work of nonfiction. Au contraire says Nan Talese. Had she known
about the problematic arrest scenes, she would have excised them. Meanwhile, Random House, which owns Doubleday, is officially telling people to return the book to their bookstore for a full refund if they feel, well, lied to. But “misspeakments” are so acceptable these days that no only
has no one returned the book to this bookstore thus far, but the book is still selling nearly 120,000 copies a week!


Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, another author of what has been billed as extremely autobiographical fiction turns out to not even exist. Until recently, JT Leroy, author of Sarah, and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, was understood to be a very young writer with a very hot literary reputation among such heavyweights as authors Dennis Cooper, Sharon
Olds, Bruce Benderson, and Mary Gaitskill. Courtney Love and Madonna have sung his praises. Gus Van Sant makes his movies. He has purportedly been writing since the age of 16 from his own life as a cross dressing child prostitute, former drug addict and HIV positive person. His reviews are lavish in their praise, comparing him to A. M. Homes, Genet and Flannery O’Connor, to name a few. Recently he has been saying he is transgender and is under hormone therapy to transition to female.


Problem is, almost no one, not these many high profile writers and musicians, not even his editor and original agent, had ever actually met Leroy in person. He quickly earned a reputation for being notoriously shy. A woman he said was Emily, who, with her husband, had taken him
into their home, most often spoke for him in public appearances. Royalty checks are sent to a corporation in Nevada. He doesn’t even give his own readings, but rather gets his well known literary friends to read for him. Eventually, he began to show up in public in a blonde wig, hat and dark glasses.


Then in October, writer Stephen Beachy wrote a lengthy expose in New York Magazine, pointing the finger at 40 year old rock musician Laura Albert as the creative mind behind these “brilliant” books. It was her sister in law, Savannah Knoop, who donned the wig, glasses and hat to play Leroy in public. Leroy’s website, updated as this newsletter goes to press, openly mocks the notion that he doesn’t exist, questions whether it even matters and plays with visitors by directing them to a page called “Laura Ingalls Gets Wilder” which, among other things, depicts
JT Leroy as a large hamster.


Literary hoaxes are not new. Jerzy Kozinsky wrote an “autobiographical novel” of his supposed childhood in Poland during the Holocaust, The Painted Bird”, which, like Leroy’s work, was hailed as a masterpiece but which also turned out to be fabricated. Later, Binjamin Wilkomirski wrote his Holocaust remembrance, Fragments, as a memoir, again widely celebrated and
again, completely fabricated. At least Wilkomirski himself was not a composite character.
What’s a reader to do? We expect memoir to be truthful. When key facts are invented, we feel duped. As for Leroy, his entire identity is a fabrication, one that pulls on the heartstrings of well meaning people who could have been offering their support to real victims of sexual abuse. Nan
Talese, Dennis Cooper, Frey and Leroy’s agents, all have to be embarrassed, to say the least.
But the fact of the matter is this: both Frey’s and Leroy’s (or Albert’s) books are popular. They sell well in their respective markets. They have subsequent books out, movie and publishing deals. Testimonials abound from people who say they have been helped by Frey’s book.
And while Albert’s darkly graphic fiction is not everyone’s cup of tea, both her books and her invented persona have been able to hold their own in the literary scene. For most readers, that’s probably good enough. But the question remains, now that we are unwilling to “pay no attention to the men behind the curtain”, will their magic seem as special?

Another Day, Another 77 Cents

January 2006


When I was 18 I needed a job. My mother had moved to Boston to work as a consult-ant for corporate and municipal clients. It was 1971. I had read Sisterhood Is Powerful and Dialectics of Sex. I wanted a job that paid well, which meant I refused to look at secretarial positions. I applied to drive a delivery van for some widget company. It was the small kind of van, not unlike the minivans driven by soccer moms today. The owner refused on the spot to consider me, saying I was too weak as a female to carry his widgets around. I walked back to the car where my girlfriend was waiting. It was a VW bug and the only way it started was if you popped the clutch. It was my turn to push.
A year or two later, I landed a job on the line at the Chrysler plant in Fenton. Building Dodge vans. I made about $10.00 an hour. It wasn’t easy to get that job. It took the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a major class action lawsuit against Chrysler to keep my application out of the trash. Many thanks are due to the women and men who fought those battles.
By 1974, I had begun work at Left Bank Books, which I would co-own by 1978. Ironically, it would take me until the 21st century to match my men’s union-scale wages at Chrysler. When I deliver my 30-to-50 pound boxes of books, it’s in my station wagon. Owning a bookstore (or even working in one), is the surest way to keep your salary at some quaint, retro level in comparison with the rest of the workforce. The male workforce, that is. Because apparently, nothing much has changed since I was job-hunting back in the stone ages.
Evelyn Murphy, author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men—and What to Do About it, visits our store January 10th. Among the many disturbing facts in her book is this one: in the 1960s, women earned 59 cents for every dollar earned by men. Since the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women have managed to close the distance by a whopping 18 cents! According to statistics presented by Evelyn, 42 years after Title VII was enacted, women earn only 77 cents to every man’s dollar.
I believe Evelyn Murphy when she tells me the wage gap persists. She’s an economist. She was the first woman to be elected to a statewide office—Lieutenant Governor—in Massachusetts. She is founder and president of the WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project, Inc. But on a more personal note, she was also a colleague and for a time, business partner of my mother’s in her consulting work. It’s great to be able to catch up with her again, if only to compare unlevel playing fields.
I’ve been thinking a lot about unlevel playing fields. It strikes me that booksellers have much in common with the female labor force. Not only do women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men for paid labor, they contribute an incalculable amount to the health of our economy and culture.
As do bookstores. As small businesses, bookstores are part of the sector of the economy responsible for the greatest amount of job creation in this country. As locally-owned businesses, we also reinvest in the local economy an estimated three times over what our mega-box store competitors contribute. We also don our superhero suits and fight to preserve Civil Rights, such as those threatened by certain provisions of the Patriot Act.
As if that isn’t enough, as "Main Street" retailers, booksellers also collect and pay sales tax which finances key aspects of state and local public services. Our largest e-tail competitor— the one that wears the scarlet A—pays no sales tax to St. Louis or the state of Missouri for the business it takes out of our state. Not only does this give them an unfair competitive advantage, it costs the state millions in lost revenue. Revenue that might have been spent on childcare, education, and antipoverty initiatives.
That’s why I was delighted to note in Congress’s pre-holiday recess activities, that a Republican Senator from Wyoming had introduced legislation that would level the sales tax playing field by establishing a method for remote e-tailers and catalogue companies to pay the same sales tax Main Street retailers do. While I haven’t yet seen the details of Senator Michael Enzi’s bill, I’m hopeful. Only 19 states— and Missouri is not one of them—have enacted fair tax legislation. Enzi’s bill would create a uniform system by which all states would benefit. This is possibly the most exciting thing to happen in my retail life since the development of independent local business alliances.
Fabulous advocates like my mother and Evelyn Murphy, still have work to do to level the playing field. Booksellers do too. Many days I feel like I’m still pushing that VW Bug around. Difference is, I don’t feel like I’m doing it alone anymore.

Building Community, One Gift at a Time

December 2005
Once upon a time many years ago our good friend Mary Engelbreit was looking for some book-related inspiration for a picture she wanted to make. My business partner, Barry Leibman, offered her the phrase she ultimately used, "A Book Is a Present You Can Open Again and Again." That drawing, which she made for us, was reproduced as a poster that was popular nationwide with teachers and librarians for years. The original still hangs in the bookstore. The sentiment it celebrates has special resonance in this, the heaviest gift giving time of the year.
After all, like it or not, the high social expectations of the season are inevitably translated through the lens of commercialism. That lens depicts a dreamy land of fluffy snow, steaming hot chocolate and lots and lots of stuff, stuff we are told will prove our love for our storybook families and friends. Some of that stuff is definitely not worth giving to anyone even once, yet we are all vulnerable to the notion that spiritual fulfillment starts with our wallets.
You may be wondering why, in the middle of the busiest month of the year for our store, I would want to expose the pitfalls of consumerism. After all, Left Bank Books needs the holiday season, not to line the pockets of remote stockholders who care little for how we do it, but for ourselves—booksellers who juggle finances all year in hopes of a healthy holiday season. But we also need the holiday sales for our community—people like you who value the contribution to our city’s culture that an independent bookstore makes.
That is precisely why I wish to expose the Emperor of Greed. He doesn’t live at the North Pole. He doesn’t live in St. Louis. He cares little for what you buy as long as you buy it from a giant chainstore or remote e-tailer. He gives nothing back to the community that wracked up billions of dollars on credit cards for him. He’s been given tax breaks so he won’t be supporting the schools, roads, police or fire districts whose services he uses. He buys many of his operating supplies from out of town locations rather than from your neighbor’s small business. He uses his Wall Street accountants, not a local firm. He sells you a service contract that sends you overseas for support that rarely works. But he doesn’t care, he’s done with you. As a vast, nameless entity, the Emperor of Greed is not actually accountable to you. As well, although Aunt Mabel may like the sweater from T-g-t, your good deal came at the expense of your community’s infrastructure in lost tax revenue. That $9 sweater may actually have cost you an extra $200 in this year’s property taxes. After all, somebody’s got to pay for the storm sewers.
I have lived in St. Louis my whole life and been a bookseller at Left Bank Books for 32 years. Our customers are not wallets, they are our community. They are our neighbors. They have become our friends and even family over the years. We are accountable to them, to you. We pay our taxes, we vote in local elections for school boards and city councils. We have a stake in the quality of our local services, in the re-sources available for the education of our families, friends and neighbors. We love our customers. We know you struggle this time of year as we do, to make conscientious, meaningful decisions about what you buy.
We also know that sometimes your loved ones need something besides the book you discovered at Left Bank Books. That’s why I want to remind you about the benefits of making all of your shopping destinations locally-owned businesses. For about a half a dozen years, I’ve made it a point to stay out of malls in the holiday season. This may seem daunting, but actually I’ve found it to be extremely rewarding. Besides the piles of books everyone gets from me, I’ve stuffed stockings with gift cards from Vintage Vinyl, beautiful one-of-a-kind items from Plowsharing Crafts, MacroSun International or Xen Gallery, racy items from Cheap Trx and Heffalump’s, fabulous toys from Imagination Toys, great pet gifts from Pet Connections or Wolfgang’s Petstop, outstanding candy from Bissinger’s. Often, people know my name in those places. I can ask questions, tailor my purchase to suit my needs, get an unexpected spur of the moment deal. I can talk to the same person I bought it from if it’s broken.
But best of all, I know that just as a book is a present that can be opened again and again, a gift from a locally-owned store is a gift to my whole community. A healthy local economy is built on successful locally-owned businesses. As a board member of BUILD St. Louis, (Businesses United for Independent Local Development), I’ve seen the economic impact studies that have found over and over, that money spent at locally-owned indepen-dent businesses results in two to three times the community reinvestment as compared to the same dollars spent at chainstores.
For more information on the importance of shopping locally and for a list of independent local businesses, please visit www.BUILDstlouis.org.
All of us at Left Bank Books are extremely grateful for your support. We wish you the best of the season. May your many blessings include a community that you can enjoy again and again.
Happy Holidays!