from The Sunday Times - Style
June 27, 2004Hip lit fiction's fashion moment: Forget the latest trainers. These days, it’s what you read that counts, says Paul Flynn
By the time the hip-lit hero JT LeRoy emerged in America, a couple of years back, literature was more than ready for its own radical underground pop star, a role he played out note by note. Bedecked in blond wig and permanent shades, LeRoy looked for all the world like Courtney Love’s 12-year-old niece — or, as was memorably noted in i-D magazine, “ET emerging from the dressing-up closet”. His books documented in intimate detail his childhood trauma — he was pimped out on a trailer-trash parking lot by his own mother. His lyrical angst and exposition outweighed both Kurt Cobain’s and Eminem’s. The style press devoured him, culminating in a 12-page fashion shoot in Pop magazine, shot by the former Louis Vuitton campaign maestro Steven Meisel.