If the word "authentic" is never used again, to describe anyone, anywhere, it would be the greatest boon of the whole JT affair.

The fact that the NY Times was duped, like everybody else, has never been the issue for me in this case. The more interesting questions are about why the literary establishment embraced JT’s cliched and melodramatic writing, and why hundreds, if not thousands of people, accepted the ridiculous lies and hokey, maudlin abuse narratives as "authentic". The stereotypes that exist about white trash, fundamentalist preachers, homeless kids, hustlers, and victims of child abuse have all been perpetuated in a way that is damaging to the complexity of our imagination and of our lived experiences. This is as much the fault of the literary establishment as it is of Laura Albert.

While I am not a fan of JT’s work, Laura’s is more interesting. The hoax was brilliant and complex, and her understanding of human nature is obviously intense. While there are certainly ethical issues with the way "JT" has manipulated people, my primary ethical issue with Laura’s behavior is that she worked so hard at maintaining her fiction. Her story is so much more interesting than JT’s, and the hoax needed to be revealed in order for the rest of us to ask the really important questions about what we want to believe and why, what we project onto "outsiders", and the magical aura we grant celebrities. Laura has simply taken the values of the literary world, the entertainment industry, and America as a whole, and lived them deeply.

JT is my evil twin. JT/Laura is the evil twin of every writer, wannabe writer, and probably many of the rest of us too, which is probably why she could carry her lies so far, and why her lies could carry her so far. She is like a caricature of of our own monstrous ambitions, megalomania, and secret desire to hobnob with celebrities. Carl Jung would have suggested that there's only one thing to do with your evil twin: learn from it. Jung was kind of a Nazi, so he had a lot to learn about his own evil twin, Hitler. The JT hoax was not just a bunch of harmless shenanigans, as some would have it. On the other hand, Laura's relentless self promotion depended entirely on the willful self-delusion, ambition, and fascination with celebrity that the rest of us secretly harbor, but have the sense not to exercise so blatantly in public.