The writer who became a criminal

Established biographer Lee Israel is arrested by the FBI for forging letters from famous people and selling them to collectors, as well as stealing the original letters from library archives.

It sounds like a movie plot, but it's a true story.

Yes, they even made a beautiful film out of it, starring the great Melissa McCarthy. That's how I got to know this story a few years ago. Immediately after I went to look for the book:

Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger, Lee Israel, 2008.

What struck me about this story is that Lee Israel had his breakout moment, with a book on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Then she lost everything, partly for her attitude which she defines as antisocial, partly for having overestimated her chances of finding a job thanks to her ability as a writer.

Over a period of about three years, I plummeted from best-sellerdom to welfare, with a couple of pit stops in between. I had adored the writing life and the freedom that accompanied it. I never took it absolutely for granted, but I assumed that if anything happened I could strike a tolerable bargain by taking to the marketplace the segregable skills I had developed in decades of researching and writing nonfiction. This turned out not to be the case. The marketplace has no little box called “book writer”. I had not done time in the pillory. I hadn't worked at a real job.

A period of voluntary and maybe irresponsible inactivity, together with a literary flop, led her from parties to a life of deprivation, so much so that she could not pay house rent, nor veterinary care for her ill cat.

While doing research in a library to write a biography of Fanny Brice, she accidentally finds three authentic letters from the actress.

Some time before she had sold a letter from Katharine Hepburn in his possession for $ 250, it was by chance, but this new find offers her a way out.

So she hides Brice's letters in a notebook and leaves the library. Thus began his criminal career.

She keeps looking for genuine letters from famous people in libraries, some she steals some she copies. She copies the style, looks at the paper and letterhead, and tries to determine what kind of typewriter was used.

Then she buys several typewriters, one for each person, the necessary writing paper, and starts forging letters and reproducing signatures. They are letters from famous people that she knows very well, having studied their documents, habits, and interviews. Among all, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, and Noel Coward stand out.

For them to seem true, the letters must contain important details of private and public life, which must correspond to precise dates, places, and periods. Lee Israel invents these letters thanks to his knowledge of the characters and sells them to collectors in New York who send them to other collectors around the United States.

When the letters end up in the hands of people who have known those famous people, or more shrewd dealers who have had the writing paper analyzed, things get complicated.

Lee Israel got on the FBI list, but she didn't stop. She continued to forge letters, only that since she couldn't go to the dealers anymore, she sent a friend of hers. After another period though, the game is over.

This story is terrifying and fascinating at the same time. Motivation and certainly desperation drove her to unleash her skills as a writer and create a credible and valuable literary world. Albeit illegal!

The forged letters were larky and fun and totally cool. [...] They totaled approximately 100,000 words, give or take. A quantitation falling somewhere between Madame Bovary and Madam X – not bad for less than two years' work. I still consider the letters to be my best work. Reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's summing up in Tootsie, I was a better writer as a forger than I had ever been as a writer.

I find it incredible and even sad that her talent, her imagination, and her work as a precise biographer and researcher have taken this path.

After the trial, Lee Israel ends up under house arrest, after which she will work as an editor in a magazine.

She died on December 24, 2014.

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Lee Israel wrote:

• Miss Tallulah Bankhead, 1972
• Kilgallen, 1980
• Estee Lauder: Beyond the Magic (An Unauthorized Biography), 1985
• Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger, 2008

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Thank you very much for reading.

Let me know what do you think!