bee in my bonnet

I don't know if any of you are familiar with/interested in JT LeRoy--here's an article about him if you don't know him, and here's maybe his main book that he's written. I'm not super-familiar with his work, but I think he's a kind of interesting writer, so I follow article links that mention him when they pop up on bookslut, and so when the article is subtitled, "in which we call bullshit on jt leroy," I am wondering what is up without really having an opinion yet one way or the other--thinking, "maybe he needs bullshit called? I wonder why" and then reading the article.
Well, I've started having an opinion on it, and now I'm actually somewhat angry. I am going to write about it here though maybe no one reading it is going to care one way or the other, because I want to work out why exactly I'm so offended.

I think it starts when the author of this article gives, as one of the first facts about JT Leroy: "Indeed, it is not even certain that LeRoy is male, as he purports."

Why this is a sticking point when considering an author's work, I'm not sure. Certainly blurred or fluid gender identity can influence an author's work, as far as themes, but...then why not focus on the themes first. I just sense a distaste, here, in this writer's words. The repeated use of purportedly, the description of LeRoy's typical subject matter as the "seamiest sort"....by then, I'm kind of thinking, ok, this person is not comfortable with
but then I got kind of stumped. Sex? Reality? The breadth of human experience?
The point of the article is that JT LeRoy makes shit up. That all his supposedly semi-autobiographical work is in fact complete fabrication, and that this is ok as long as it's never said to be at all autobiographical.

Part of his thinking is, "There is no way this stuff can be true, it's too weird, he's too weird to be for real." Oh, I'm sorry: " 'he' is too weird to be for real" might be a more accurate representation of the writer's views. I don't know, I think life can be pretty fucking weird. I have been using "fucking" too much in this blog, I think, it's getting to be a tic like my constant use of "just". But I'm digressing from my point. My point: JT LeRoy may be--probably is--making up a lot of the details of what he writes. Writers do this. "Even in an 'essay'????" gasps our music writer. Yes, sir: even in an essay. What is an essay? The guy even refers to this very definition in his article, but brushes it aside. Because he's got the wrong definition in his head, surely others do too, and so let's treat his erroneous, uneducated idea of the word as the definitive truth. Fact: essays can be fictional; poetry and comics were published, I am thinking it was just a goddamn music issue, not something for the history section of our libraries. Writers combine fiction and nonfiction all the time. It seems that this is a huge part of the writer LeRoy is. This is part of the magic of writing, for him, and for his readers: we can make and remake our reality. There is no obligation for a creative writer to ever---ever--tell the reader where the reality line is drawn. Especially when, in that writer's work, THERE IS NO SUCH LINE.
The power of music, from the plot summary this douche outlines, has a central role in the essay LeRoy gave this music issue of a literary magazine. Why is this guy so angry? He does not like that LeRoy gets the attention he does; he does not like how "preposterous" LeRoy's subject matter is. Here is the first definition good ol' dictionary.com gives for preposterous: "Contrary to nature, reason, or common sense; absurd." Contrary to nature. I think this guy whose name I am not even going to bother learning believes not only JT LeRoy's essay is preposterous--that his subject matter, for all his work is--that, in fact, LeRoy himself is. Because you know what? What a fucking freak, right? I don't think he's even a man!

I am sucking right now at nailing what I feel so strongly is going on in this essay. To spell it out, I think this man's prejudice against gender and sexual fluidity is coming out in a nonsense rant against an essay in a literary magazine. I think it's ugly, and stupid, and I wish someone with possibly more time, a less sleep-deprivation-addled brain, could properly lay the smack down. Fuck him.