HAROLD'S END - Softcover

J. T. LeRoy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0867196149 ISBN 13: 9780867196146

Publisher: Last Gasp, 2015

Synopsis

The international best selling author of Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things presents his new and tremendously moving novella, Harold's End. A San Francisco street kid hustling to feed his heroin habit. A middle-aged rich guy with an uncommon turn-on. Oh yeah, and a snail. The authentic tale uniquely allows the sweetness of childhood to seep through muck in unrivaled literary finesse. Harold's End features illustrations by Australian artist Cherry Hood.

About this title

About the Author

JT LeRoy is the author of the International Best Sellers, Sarah & The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. He is Associate Producer for the film adaptation of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, directed by Asia Argento, while the screenplay for Sarah is currently being written by Jeffrey Hatcher for director Stephen Shainberg with producers Mary Jane Skalski and Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. JT wrote the original script and was Associate Producer of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, which won the 2003 Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival. He is working on another collaborative project with Van Sant and is currently writing its original screenplay.

JT's work appears in many short story anthologies, including The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003, edited by Dave Eggers and read by Tatum O'Neal on audio edition; MTV's Lit Riffs; XXX, edited by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders; Nadav Kander's Beauty's Nothing; and The Fourth Sex, Adolescent Extremes by Francesco Bonami & Raf Simon and in literary journals such as Zoetrope, McSweeney's and Memorious.

He has written the liner notes and biographies for musicians Billy Corgan, Bryan Adams, Liz Phair, Conor Oberst, and Courtney Love, among others, and profiled award winner Juergen Teller for the 2003 Citibank Photography Prize catalogue. A contributing editor to Black Book, I-D and 7x7 magazines, JT has also written reviews, articles and interviews for The New York Times, The London Times, Spin, Film Comment, Filmmaker, Interview, and Vogue, among others. He is syndicated world wide. JT's first novel, Sarah, inspired a line of clothing by Costume National and Heatherette. He has written about fashion for various publications, including The London Sunday Times, 7x7, and the MAO Fashion Public Relations firm. He also represents Gary Graham, DITA, and other fashion houses.

JT, along with Astor, Speedie, and Dean Faustman make up the rock band, THISTLE LLC, which, in the words of i-D Magazine, "slides like a jazzed up piston amongst the dirty garage rock bands of the moment...Odd yes, but brilliant definitely." The band has worked with Dennis Herring (Modest Mouse; Sparklehorse; Throwing Muses). Jerry Harrison (member of Talking Heads, producer on The Von Bondies; Live; Violent Femmes); Karl Derfler (No Doubt; Motley Crue; Toots & The Maytals). Thistle, LLC has been featured on a Daniel Johnston tribute album, along with artists Beck; Death Cab for Cutie; Tom Waits, and others, which is out now on Gammon Records. Thistle, LLC recently filmed a cameo on the George Clooney-produced "Unscripted" for HBO (airing mid January, 2005). Their debut EP is available now at THISTLEHQ.COM, and at live shows.

From the Inside Flap

Introduction by Dave Eggers:

JT LeRoy s first two books, Sarah and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things will prove to be among the most influential American books of the last ten years. This is not because they are read and understood by everyone; it s because they are read and loved, rabidly, by thousands of young and very sensitive people who believe that JT speaks for them. He does speak for them and does so without knowing that he does, and does so with a perfect and bizarre eloquence. JT is in the company of Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver and Thom Jones, in having the ability to take the profane and miserable and make it exquisite. The worlds they bring us to are bleak and seemingly godless, but somehow we cherish our time there. How can they do this? The answer is in the words they choose to define hell. They do not choose the usual words and in this we find pleasure.

Reviews

J.T. Leroy is one of a growing number of gay confessionalist artists -- a group that includes the singer Rufus Wainwright and the film director Jonathan Caouette. Their work is regarded as redemptive, and Leroy in particular is celebrated for his terse, self-focused excavations. Perhaps this solipsistic quality will be eroded over time: As the author ages, he may yet raise his gaze from his own befouled lap and view the world around.

In Leroy's bitty new novella, Harold's End, a wary, hopeless boy named Oliver is plucked from San Francisco's infamous Polk Street hustler huddle. Plumped up in the Castro district, in the home of an older man named Larry, he is given hamburgers, the best heroin available, and a pet snail named Harold. This arrangement goes sour after an evening of non-negotiated scatological play: "The fourth day after my enema, Larry wakes me up in the afternoon. 'I'm having some people over, and I, I need you to go out.' "

Oliver, with Harold, is returned to his dirty corner and reunited with his street friends, youngsters whose names -- Crayon, Gotti, Serenity -- wouldn't look out of place in an S.E. Hinton book. But Harold's thin shell, it turns out, isn't tough enough for street life. Oh golly: metaphor.

Illustrated by the Australian artist Cherry Hood's gothed-up Margaret Keane-like watercolors of the book's characters, Harold's End is dedicated to Harold (and to "all the inadvertent losses") and very briefly introduced by the novelist/personality Dave Eggers (140 words, minus titles and proper names). It closes with an unseemly oddity: a round of applause by the editor, Michael Ray, and four pages of sweet thanks from the author.

The writing itself is a concise helping of large-print gloom-candy to tide over fans: Leroy's next most recent (and second) book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, was published in 2001. Now in his mid-twenties, Leroy has mined his reportedly troubled adolescence for these grim, tight and presumably autobiographical tales of the wasted years of a horribly abused youth.

But: Were those years really so wasted?

Leroy's fear of public appearances, frequent use of disguises, and muteness in the face of questions about his history contrast with his bad habit of having his name appear in the press amid a protective flurry of names more boldface than his. The situation has provoked speculation about the authenticity of both his persona and his work. Those questions should be irrelevant. Drawn from life or not, Leroy's work is labeled fiction. But in light of all the victim-cum-celebrity hoopla, these books serve not as fiction but as creative memoirs, delivering catharsis for those who may have been similarly situated and who see themselves in Leroy's work.

Leroy, freed by fame, fortune -- and actual hard work -- from whatever serious troubles he may have had, is no longer anyone's victim. He is now capable of being exploited only by himself, and he will face the risks that any of the once-poor but now resource-rich must when they are subject to -- or, really, subject themselves to -- a torrent of ferocious, boundary-invading consumption. All grown up, he is his own personal Kazakhstan.

Reviewed by Choire Sicha
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Originally published in McSweeney’s in 2002, Leroy’s beautifully written and heartbreaking story of Oliver, a heroin-addicted street kid, and Harold, his pet snail, gets repackaged in a small and gorgeous edition illustrated by Australian artist Wood. Wood’s watercolor portraits of Oliver’s fellow teenage hustlers (Serenity, Gotti, Crayon) and their pets (a snake, a dog, a rat) reveal their toughness and frailty; the paint, lightly, caressingly applied, drips down the page in delicate streaks. "In the eyes of her subjects," Leroy writes in his acknowledgements, "she mines the unspoken, unguarded moments, what lays sic beyond their layers of fortification." Dave Eggers contributes an admiring foreword, and editor Michael Ray delivers an ecstatic afterword. For Leroy fans—and there are many—this is an essential volume.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

EVERYONE THOUGHT HE was a vice cop when he started coming around, just cruising the block slowly in that big old silver Pontiac. He d be leaning out his window, his eyes looping around us like circling horses on a betting sheet. He wore the typical cop s comb-over, bridging a Caesar s crown of curls, the cop shielded face, the desolate look of a defender of justice discouraged. By the second week, whenever we caught sight of that wide, low boat bending round the corner, we all pushed ourselves off the wall and quickly walked away. Around the third week, because he hasn t busted anyone, most of us have concluded he s an outreach worker. So when he pulls the car into the alley, stops and climbs out, he s suddenly surrounded like rich white folks in a jungle movie. He hands stuff to the kids swarming him. From behind me, Serenity s pitbull, Daisy, emits a slow rumbling growl. Gotti squints at him and jabs me with her elbow. "Ain t that the cop that s been shadin us?" Not waiting for an answer, she unwinds the boa snake from her neck and stuffs it in her backpack. Crayon grabs his pet rat down from its perch on his shoulder and shoves him in his army jacket. Serenity uncoils the leash from his waist and snaps it to Daisy s collar. We turn our bodies sideways, ready to sprint. "Why would a cop be handing out condoms?" Gotti asks, flipping her long black braids behind her as we watch the man reach into his bag. We all shrug. Crayon makes binoculars with his hands. "Motherfucker fuckin has a crowd, don t he?" "He ain t hasslin no one," Serenity says, absently petting Daisy to quit her snarl. We don t want to have to run, we have the corner wall, a spot the older boys usually claim, but it s a bitter night and those with good fake IDs are hustling in the smoky warmth of the gay bars. I shrug again. We watch the man cross toward us. We scan him for signs outreach or vice. "That s a cop," Crayon says, pointing to the man s shoes, which aren t the scuffed loafers of the social worker, but the bureaucratic shined black round-toes cops are partial to. And then there s his black overcoat, tied across a protruding potbelly, like a bathrobe. You can almost see the detective badge hanging from the inside pocket. We all nod and are ready to take off when Gotti shakes her head and almost shouts, "Too many folks around him to be condoms! What the fuck is he handing out?" As he gets closer I see long plastic wrappers in his hands. "Maybe he s passing out free pens" "Free pens?" Crayon says. "What the fuck he passin out free pens for? This ain t no goddamned convention." "He sure ain t handing out tampons," Gotti snorts. We watch the man approach, hunched over his bag but looking intently past the kids plucking gifts from his hands like pigeons. "Oh, fuck!" Serenity runs his hands though his purple hair. "Motherfucker is handing out works!" "No fuckin way!" Gotti claps her hands. My eyes widen. He stares straight at us, his puffy face smiling like we re all old acquaintances.

Edition details

• Publisher: Last Gasp
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0867196149
• ISBN 13: 9780867196146
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Cherry Hood
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 100