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USF Writer Walks the Line Between Truth and Fiction
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| USF creative writing instructor Stephen Beachy teaches long fiction writing
and contemporary experiments in fiction in the spring. |
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Fiction writer Stephen Beachy doesn't do mysteries, so the notoriety
that came from months of interviews and pieced-together clues to
produce a New York Magazine article that exposed critically acclaimed
author JT LeRoy as San Francisco resident Laura Albert isn't always a
comfortable fit for the University of San Francisco creative writing
instructor.
It's
not that Beachy flinches from the national attention that solving the
LeRoy conundrum produced; it certainly helped bring his name to a wider
audience, he admits. But, for Beachy the article was about getting at
the truth behind someone who had attached himself to many in his
literary community through e-mail and telephone conversations,
including his friends and acquaintances, but had never been seen in
person.
Beachy's article was the first in a series to add up
the circumstantial evidence - including LeRoy's disguised public
appearances and payments to Albert's sister and mother for LeRoy's work
- only to concluded that Albert, a woman, was the voice behind the
reclusive, 20-something, male author known as JT LeRoy.
"I was
intrigued that so many people believed (LeRoy) was who he said he was,
even though no one had shown up in public," said Beachy, an adjunct
professor in USF's graduate creative writing program since 1999.
LeRoy
first exploded onto the American literary scene with his first novel
Sarah (2000), about an androgynous 12-year-old boy who idolizes his
mother, a truck-stop prostitute, and disguises himself as a girl before
setting out on a hitchhiking quest through West Virginia to become
famous. Celebrities, critics, and authors from across the country,
including writer Dave Eggers, praised the book's author, some
exchanging e-mails, telephone calls, and offering to write promotional
blurbs for LeRoy, whose life many believed was the basis for Sarah.
Albert's
charade as LeRoy continued for years through the publication of two
more books, in spite of numerous clues that LeRoy was hiding something
by hiring others to appear at public for book signings and interviews
wearing a wig and large sunglasses. That is until a well-placed source
provided Beachy with a tip.
Beachy, whose work shares some of
the same themes of prostitution, mental illness, drug addiction, sexual
confusion, and victimization as LeRoy's, says exposing LeRoy gave him a
deeper understanding of the interplay between truth and fiction in the
literary world. "Literary success is often tied to the ability of the
author to market the identity behind the life," Beachy said.
Marketing
aside, Beachy believes that by perpetuating a false identity with real
life people LeRoy crossed a line, "staining" those around him. "It was
a con to fame and fortune," Beachy said. "(LeRoy) was conscious of it
as a way to get published, promote (himself), and make money."
Beachy,
author of the recently published twin novellas Some Phantom/No Time
Flat, grew up the grandson of old order Amish grandparents. His father
left the Amish Church before his son was born. Beachy was raised in Des
Moines, Iowa by his pacifist, Mennonite parents. His family maintained
regular ties with his father's parents, who lived two hours away, but
his upbringing, overall, might be considered typical, if conservative,
Beachy said.
Even so, the role of the Amish Church - its
patriarchic structure, and institutional repression - bubbles just
under the surface of Beachy's troubled characters, many of who rebel
against martyrdom, conformity, and traditional sexual roles. "I have
sympathy for the outsider position and people who work to form
communities outside the mainstream, which is why LeRoy originally
intrigued me," Beachy said.
Beachy, whose USF spring course
lineup includes long fiction writing and contemporary experiments in
fiction, said the LeRoy affair directly influenced the novel he is
currently working on - which goes further than his past writing toward
blurring the line between truth and fiction.
"Within the fiction
I reference both real writers and fictional writers, actual books and
books I've made up, characters based on real people and completely
imaginary ones," Beachy said. The illusion of reality has been quite
effective, Beachy said, explaining how fans who have attended readings
of his latest material have engaged him with their theories on who the
real people are.
It may come as no surprise then that his
contemporary experiments in fiction course will have students tackling
some of the same issues of truth and fiction/reality and fantasy in
their own writing. "It lets us, me and the students, as writers, break
free of some of the conventions of storytelling - which are really just
one fairly limited way of art imitating life - and examine other ways
to get at the complexity of the world," Beachy said.
For him,
language not only represents reality, it creates reality (as with
LeRoy) and he enjoys examining the work of writers who are interested
in charting new paths through language, as long as they're not trying
to pass themselves off as someone they're not, Beachy said.
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