J.T Leroy
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
(Vntage)
Synopsis
In his second book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, J.T. LeRoy takes a journey into the dark heart of the American road trip. A series of connected autobiographical stories, it describes the disturbing relationship between a mother and her adolescent son as she moves from lover to lover, dressing him as a girl and forcing him to shoplift. These are shocking stories of abusive love and dysfunctional sexuality, of heartbreak and of innocence lost.
Biography
Born in West Virginia in 1980, J.T. Leroy embarked upon a roadtrip across
America at the age of thirteen with his mother. She abandoned him when
they reached San Francisco and J.T. descended into a spiral of drug abuse
and prostitution. At fifteen, J.T.’s psychiatrist encouraged him
to start writing as a form of therapy.
J.T. Leroy was first published at the age of sixteen and has written articles
for Spin, Nerve, and NY Press. His critically acclaimed first novel Sarah
was semi-autobiographical and is being made into a film by Gus Van Sant.
J.T. Leroy lives in San Francisco.
Contributors Testimonials
Jeremiah
is a modern-day Oliver Twist who gets dragged round America on a twisted
road trip by his fantastically fucked-up mother. The style veers towards
magical realism but not in that other-worldly South American way. This
is real grotesque stuff - but refreshingly grotesque, like slime-coated
innocence. The dumpster dining scenes are often more revealing than the
hard core sexual abuse ones. At one point, Leroy writes: ‘Fries,
soft creamy buns, cups with soda still in them, I cram it all into my
mouth so fast I can hardly breathe..’
I like that Jeremiah never defines himself as ‘gay’ as such.
His upbringing merely makes him part of a community of ‘freaks’-
and you can have hetero or homo freaks- all of whom are outsiders in a
much more profound way than some nicely educated Alan Hollinghurst-type
fag.
Stephanie Theobald