Stop the insanity

Here we go again. In keeping with the current trend, yet another author has been unmaked as a fraud. This time, it's JT LeRoy and it's not the work that's at issue, it's the author him, or should I say her, self. Apparently, the twenty-five year old male prostitute-turned-author is actually a forty-year-old woman who lied about her identity in order to get her work noticed. The best part is, this has been going on for years and no one questioned it until her partner went public. (By the way, he's signed a movie deal to tell his side of the story.)

I just don't understand how people get away with this, especially not when there are writers out there who are doing legitimate work and can't get published. And why aren't the publishers doing their research? Hopefully, this will get publishers to take more an interest in the work they put out beyond what's at stake financially. It's people like this who ruin the book world for the rest of us, both as readers and writers.