Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger

At first I didn't get the blurbs on the back of Lee Israel's Can You ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger. I thought the slim book might be a re-print, given the quotes were from Groucho Marz, George S. Kaufman, Katherine Hepburn, and Clara Blandick (Auntie Em of "The Wizard of Oz"). I had read the first chapter of this little gem when it hit me. The blurbs were forgeries! Quite clever even if it did make me feel stupid. Biographer Lee Israel gives readers a small chapter of her life, a time when the royalties had dried up, and she had to resort to a life of crime to make ends meet. Oh, she could have probably gotten a job at some minimum wage job somewhere in Manhattan, but what was the fun in that. Israel had a lifestyle to uphold after all. Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger is a story of how one woman forged correspondence by Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Louise Brooks, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward, to name a few, and sold them to various autograph and memorabilia dealers all over New York. The book comes complete with sample letters. Israel makes no bones about what she did and doesn't appear a tad bit sorry. She starts with some of her favorites-Parker, Coward, and Ferber-and tells how she practiced the signatures, how she made sure to use age-appropriate paper and typewriters, copied actual correspondence, and fooled some of the shrewdest dealers in New York. Israel even details how she got caught, her trial, and her sentencing-all in a scant 127 pages. The book's structure is unconventional in that Israel doesn't follow the traditional arc, but there is an arc. There is no plot device to lure the reader in and no build-up of suspense. She lays it out...this is what I did, how I did it, how I got away with it for a time, and how I got caught. If I didn't know this was true, (and I'm still not completely convinced), I would swear that an escapade like this would never work in the early 1990s. Goes to prove that New Yorkers may not be so jaded and skeptical after all. Armchair Interviews says: A most interesting read.

When I looked over the first seven ratings given to this book, I was amazed to find only fives and ones. It would certainly appear that people either loved it or hated it. I can understand those who were personally affected by the offending behavior of the author would be outraged at a warm reception of the book. Certainly those who attack the book do so mostly because they feel that the book celebrates the author and her crimes. While stealing should never be condoned, the book presents much more than a moral argument. I loved the book because of its value as a memoir. It depicts the life of a woman who came to success easily and lost it just as easily. The book is not an apology, as the title suggests. It simply presents us an unaltered, unapologetic glimpse of one writer's real life, "warts and all." And in the telling of the story, Israel engages with her epistle writing victims in a humorous and almost magical way. I would not suggest that Lee Israel's book excuses the significance of her crime. It does, however, provide us with a legitimate human experience that is surprisingly delightful.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this witty book. And Lee's "forgeries" of this marvelous cast of characters are great reading too! Thanks, Lee. I was happy to read these morsels and hope many more folks purchase it and enjoy it too! Now perhaps you could do a screenplay where these folks all sit around sipping a martini or three and chat!

Once upon a time journalist Lee Israel was a well-connected Manhattan based journalist with the world at her fingertips; her forte, well-researched biographies of what David Plante called "difficult women" gave her entrée into a glittering world of celebrity and real accomplishment. Her book on Tallulah Bankhead is really great, and her Kilgallen book is still the best single volume on the complicated reporter--one of the best biographies, in fact, of any midcentury journalist. The world was at Lee Israel's feet but, as she acknowledges now, a series of bad decisions and a horrifying addiction to alcohol laid her low in the 1980s; by the time the nineties began the woman who had spent thousands a year in taxis and flowers alone was on welfare--when she could get it. She began her "first trimester of crime" by stealing a clutch of Fanny Brice letters, then moved onto forgery by adding bogus postscripts to Brice's somewhat dull news, once she realized that the spicier the content, the more likely dealers would offer big bucks. Then she began manufacturing letters wholesale, often starting with what she calls an "ur letter," one from which she could extrapolate the general emotional tone of the writer, and above all else, one from which she could practice the signature to success by due diligence. (Her account of "inventing the lightbox" is surrealistic, unsettling.) Noel Coward, Louise Brooks, and Lillian Hellman were her cash cows, and with Edna Ferber--chosen for the extreme simplicity of her signature--and Dorothy Parker, she could milk her own caustic wit and alcoholic bonhomie. Eventually she got caught--rather quickly in fact--and the suspense of how she is going to get busted pervades the second half of the book. She was on probation for years, and is still persona non grata at many libraries, research centers, and of course, autograph dealers hate her to this day. She is as blisteringly harsh on herself as Jean Rhys was, and like Rhys she casts a cold eye on the class structures embodied in late capitalism that condemn clever women to the dustheap of history. You ask yourself how a writer could abase herself so fearlessly, but maybe the alcohol burned off Lee Israel's shame long ago. How many people are making a living off of "signed" photos of Brad and Angelina on Ebay as we speak? Do even authors write letters any more--those quaint pieces of paper things? Israel's crime is site-specific--it couldn't have happened anywhere except ritzy, pricey Manhattan Island--and it's specific to a certain era as well. Her book is an extraordinary performance, a De Profundis for our times.