Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
By Dave
July 24th, 2008 | Leave a comment
Lee Israel’s memoir, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger,” tells of how, in a period of desperation, she published a series of letters that she presented as written by famous writers (they weren’t — well she was fairly famous, but that’s beside the point).
Running counter to the recent trend of memoirs being billed as truthful but turning out to be lies, this one is being billed as the truthful recounting of the author’s outright lies about supposedly true letters, which, (ironically?) seems rather believable. She says they were typed in 1991 and ‘92, and she took care to use only the oldest typewriters to ensure their appearance of authenticity.
Says Very Short List : “Israel recounts her astonishingly rapid descent from best-selling biographer (of Talullah Bankhead and Dorothy Kilgallen) to flat-broke striver, typing counterfeit correspondence in her Upper West Side apartment and selling it to dealers. Whether she’s writing about being banned from the Strand bookstore or stealing authentic letters from university libraries, she does so with honesty and a rapier wit. And in an age of promiscuous apology for the slightest wrongdoing, the fact that Israel never fully apologizes for her crimes is actually part of the charm of her memoir.”
A brief excerpt:
“Noël Coward’s soi-disant letters were typed by me on what I remember was a 1950ish Olympia manual, solid as a rock, bigger than a bread box, not so much portable as luggable. (Noël’s Olympia was the one I would have the most trouble schlepping when the FBI was about to come calling.) For the nonce, I was content, researching my Tallulah bio — just me, my cat, and my contract, in my cozy, rent-controlled room-with-no-view.”
Can’t wait? Well, you have to. The book comes out in early August.
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