37. Committing Literary Crime
I’m interested in what forgery can teach us as a writing exercise.
For the most part, I was a pretty good kid.
Actually that’s not true at all—I was always up to something. I sometimes think my parents should have just gone ahead and named me Mischief. My machinations were always pretty innocent, but I was extremely convincing. Like the time I longed for a pet mouse, and I told my dad that all my mom wanted for Mother’s Day that year was an interesting new subject that she could use in life drawings—like, say, a mouse. He agreed, and we marched down to the pet store and bought an adorably hideous little gray rodent that I named Ski Patrol.
“Hédi, how could you let an eight-year-old get one over on you?” my mother said furiously when she opened her gift: a second-hand aquarium filled with dirt from the backyard and Ski Patrol scuttling figure eights inside. But it was too late: I had won.
The point is—wait, what was my point? Oh, yes, I’m here to talk about mischief, or more specifically: forgery.
Maybe you’ve heard of Lee Israel, the American journalist and biographer who after her writing career tanked and her cat got sick (not Ski Patrol’s fault) had to figure out a way to pay the vet bill. So began a life of the nerdiest of crimes: Lee faked 400 letters by deceased celebrities and writers like Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward and sold them to literary dealers across the country.
Her work in biography had been excellent preparation for forgery—in particular, her research skills and her “ear,” which allowed her to capture the subject’s voice in an utterly uncanny way. As she later wrote of her forgeries of Noel Coward, "It was very good Coward; it was better Coward than Coward. Coward didn't have to be Coward. I had to be Coward and a half.”
She was eventually caught and convicted of fraud and was sentenced to house arrest, probation, and also barred from a number of libraries. (You know you’ve reached peak badass nerd status when you’re getting barred from libraries.) But beyond the ethical questions about her actions, I’m interested in what forgery can teach us as a writing exercise. For Lee, it was a place where, within certain known parameters, she could fictionalize and she could play. She could be someone else, inhabiting a different voice.
And so today we give you a Lee Israel original of a letter by Dorothy Parker, and a prompt inspired by it. Consider it a study in the art of channeling someone else’s voice. It might just lead you to think about what makes yours unique and how to continue honing it.
Signing off as my alias, at least the one I use at Starbucks,
Susan Jones
– Suleika Jaouad
Prompt:
Write a forged letter. Could be from a favorite celebrity or a fictional character or a historical figure or your ex-mother-in-law. Could be one of Lee Israel’s forgery victims writing her back, or from Lee herself. The point is to inhabit a perspective and channel a voice—and in doing so, to reflect on what makes your own distinct.
(Disclaimer: We do not condone selling your forged letter and take no responsibility for any fallout that may ensue if you send it.)
Abby Alten Schwartz
Location: Lansdale, Pennsylvania
About: Humor is central to my life and my relationships. My husband, daughter and I are always making up bits about the funny characters we love from TV, and we point out the absurdities in life that would fit right into an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld. My forged letter is from Susie Green to Larry David during the early days of quarantine.
Age: 53
*Following is the note Susie Green left on Larry David’s windshield. Rated MA-L for language.
Dear Larry,
STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY HOUSE!!!
In case you didn’t realize, we are in the middle of a global pandemic, you self-centered prick.
Do the words social distancing mean anything to you?
I can’t even visit my poor 94-year-old mother, but you come waltzing into my house just because you’re bored?! Gee, I’m so sorry your private club is closed and you can’t play golf. People are dying, Larry. What the hell are you thinking?
And don’t even try feeding me some line about you being healthy. God only knows who you socialize with when you aren’t here. I’m sure your friend Leon hasn’t stayed in quarantine. The last thing I need is Jeff catching coronavirus from you. Do you think that fat fuck is healthy? He’s got no immune system—the man barely moves! He’d be dead within days if he caught it.
And another thing—don’t think I don’t know what you did. I had four cases of Charmin in my garage and now two are missing. I saw you skulking around back there the other day. Does that give you pleasure to steal from my family? I was going to donate those to my mother’s nursing home, you asshole.
Go home and stay there, Larry. Keep your germs to yourself. If I see you around here again, I’m calling the police and you can take your fat friend with you. He can isolate with you until this is over if you two can’t stand to be apart.
—Susie
Katie Wesolek
Location: Nashville, TN
About: This is a forged letter from Larry David to the Ethicist column of the New York Times. He is a keen commentator on social dynamics and I thought it would be funny to imagine a social conundrum he would encounter as a result of the pandemic.
Age: 35
Larry David writes to The New York Times' The Ethicist column:
Dear Ethicist,
Perhaps you can settle a debate I'm having with my friend, Jeff. Before COVID, it was perfectly plausible to turn down invitations, for lunch or what have you, by claiming to be busy. Now, obviously, we're doing the distancing and the sheltering and nobody's doing lunch anymore. We are living in the Post Lunch Era.
But now it's Zoom. Everyone wants to Zoom. Zoom meetings, Zoom happy hour, Zoom Passover, Zoom with your pets, Zoom with your kids. I didn't want to interact with your kids in real life. You think I want to do it now, on a tiny laptop screen over a weak connection? Give me a break!
My problem is this: I can't say I'm busy anymore. Nobody's busy! We're all at home, staring at the wall, counting down the seconds until our merciful deaths!
My plan is to tell people, no more Zoom, I have the coronavirus, not feeling up to it. Jeff says that's unethical, it will upset people, it's unfair to people who are actually sick. I say, times are tough all over.
What say you, Ethicist?
– Larry David
Kelly Matula
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
About: I am a healthcare researcher and writer living with multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses. My "literary crime" is a forged letter from Erik, the Phantom of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, which is one of my favorites. If you've only seen the musical (which I also love), be warned that they're very different.
Age: 33
My Dear Christine,
By the time you read this, I will be dying—dying of love, ah Christine! You will have come to bring back the ring I gave you, as I asked you the last time we saw each other, when you consented to be my living bride, allowed me to kiss your little forehead, kissed me back, and then wept with me. Oh my dear Christine, you cannot know how remarkable this was for me. I write it in this letter because I do not know for how long I will be able to speak when you see me again when I am dying. My whole life, no one would ever let me kiss them. My own mother, when I was a little boy —yet already with this face like a hideous death’s head, ah!—would scream and run away, nearly fainting from the smell and sight of me, and throw me my mask to cover myself. She never held me, either, or as little as she could help it. As soon as little me could make my way without having to be held by her, I was left to crawl upon the floor. My face and my smell disgusted and terrified her, even as my mind fascinated her and my voice bewitched her.
But you, Christine, ah Christine, you were frightened of me—I know you were, child, for who would not be frightened of poor, ugly Erik?—but you also pitied me, and that pity allowed you to bestow upon your poor, wretched Erik the grace of an angel. I know you called me your Angel, Christine—after the stories your good father used to tell you about the Angel of Music, which you in your innocence gave me as a tool to help me approach you and gain your trust, in the hope that even once you saw me you would not be afraid and hate because you knew and trusted me as your Angel—but, alas, you were still afraid when you saw your Angel, Christine. You called me an angel, Christine, but really you were an angel to me. For you brought to me joy. Before I heard your voice, I had never known joy, Christine. My childhood had no joy. My time in the fairs was a humiliation, though I took some pride in learning illusions and tricks. During the rosy hours of Mazenderan—when I met our good but meddlesome Daroga—I knew cunning, and the little sultana enjoyed my tricks, but I felt no joy. When I first came to Paris, designing the Opera and building it was rewarding, and I was relieved to have a place to hide myself. Over time as I lived here, I felt pleasure when the music was good —or more often, irritation when it was bad, as the managers were often idiots. But, ah, my child, it was only on hearing your voice that I first knew true joy. Teaching you from my hiding place by your dressing room was also at first a joy, but I soon became tormented by the desire to have you with me always. When you took off my mask and were so frightened of my horrible ugliness, I feared—ah, Christine —that joy was gone from me forever, which was why I plotted to destroy the opera house, kill your young boy and the Daroga, and take you for my dead bride if I could have you no other way. I was mad with rage at how joy had been given to me briefly only to be snatched away. But when you so sweetly came to me, agreed to be my living bride, allowed me to kiss you and then kissed me in return, I felt such joy as I had never dreamed, for which the beauty of your voice had but little prepared me. You knew my ugliness and yet you did not draw away. You pitied your poor Erik and his love for you, and gave him such joy in your innocent, good way as he had never dreamed.
I was then a dog ready to die for you, Christine, as I told the Daroga. But also, in my joy I wanted to let you feel joy too, Christine, and I knew you would not have joy in my little house by the lake forever. I knew you could only have joy with the boy, the Vicomte. To give you joy I had to let you go with him. He is a good boy. He will be good to you. You will have joy with him as you never could with your poor, ugly, old Erik, who can give you no joy apart from music. And your whole life cannot be music always. But with the boy you will have both music and other joy too. For he can love you in the world, while poor hideous Erik can only love you here under the Opera. And you are too young and beautiful and good—good enough even to kiss your poor, hideous dog of an Erik, oh!—to be made to stay under the Opera forever.
So as I said before, Christine, marry the boy with my blessing. He is a good boy. I am even a little bit sorry I killed his brother, he is such a good boy. Go with this good boy and be happy, and always remember your poor Erik who loved you. Try not to remember me as I was mad at the prospect of my only joy being taken away, but remember the beautiful voice that helped you find your true voice, and the music we shared. Christine, I love you.
Your
Erik
Patrick McDonnell
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
About: An imaginary letter written by Ernest Hemingway to the daughter of Fitzgerald F. Scott about an imagined love affair when he was old, that led to the writing of the Old Man and the Sea. And the Nobel prize.
Age: 68
Dear Scottie,
your dad and I had our differences but we went Mano a Mano to sort it out because it's not good to let things fester especially between two men of our caliber. It reminds me of my wound in WWI when I had to stay in hospital surrounded by that plenitude of female pulchritude with my manhood at it lowest, but let's not go there since we already had that one out.
Your mother Zelda was a real pistol, as you know, having had to put up with her for so many years. She pulled a real mean one on your dad saying he was 'small' but I put that to rights. Speaking of her how is she? Still bonkers? I hope she is getting some care as she is deteriorating something bad in the mental state of mind. Hate the shrinks myself. Maybe we I can visit her - probably not.
Man, I love it here. The margaritas are so fresh with a coolness that belies their nature, like the women who prepare them. They say the best cuban cigars are rolled on virginal thighs, but I have seen them roll it myself, and it is not on young girls but old dames thighs, what did Ben Franklin say, "women rot from the head down"? What women there are here in Cuba, with Batista in power the casinos and whore houses are doing a good business like they never did before, the women are goddesses, black and white and mixed coloured. It can give a man a thirst.
You can't get any good whisky here. I used to get some rye in Canada when I worked for the Toronto Star, those were the days! Better ones followed in Paris and Spain. Do you remember them, or too young? Did you forget the times in the Jazz age? when the coons played splendidly with an intensity that would shame any white musician. Those were fun times, like it was a feast that would never end, and a fiesta in Spain following the bull fights. I was starting to make money with which I could indulge my little fantasies of wine and women. Then the big game hunts, that came later with my second wife, and her money. She was a poor shot, but good in bed. Till she wasn't.
Well I wanted to have your womanly advice; sorry it is taking me so long to get to the point, as I have met a young Italian girl in Venice. God dash me I am smitten - at my age. Yes she was young, 19, when I met her. I didn't mean for it to happen, I was on a duck hunting trip to Northern Italy with her brother Gianfranco. Hunting and women don't mix.
And now she is coming to visit us with her mother in Havana, and I am still acting like a love lorn ass, at my age, but there isn't much I can do about it. She is an artist, poet, and an aristocrat. To boot. The say Valesquez, the painter, when he visited Rome in his sixties, he had a 16 year old lover, and they had a son. To top it off, he painted her in the nude - it is the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery. The best damn painting he ever did, and he was in love with her. I guess it didn't work with me, I wrote that trash novel, "Across the River and Into the Trees" for her.
Now I am starting on a new novel, about a fisherman in Cuba. And I hope Adriana can do a cover piece for it, she is an artist. I guess I let the cat out of the bag, telling you her name.
Does a young woman expect any physical affection? I mean I have diabetes and heart problems and I hardly ever get near Mary, if she would let me when I am soused. So does a girl expect that kind of thing? Just wanting to know your woman's point of view.
They say I may get the Pulitzer and there is talk of the Nobel prize for the little thing I wrote about the peon who went out fishing, Not my best effort, but serviceable. If I do we will have to go to Paris to paint the town red.
E.H.