Can you Ever Forgive me? : : Memoirs of a Literary Forger

Locations
Call Number: 921 Israel, Lee
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	921 Israel, Lee	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Before turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI, Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines. But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she'd received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Honest, Frank, and Interesting submitted by Sara W on June 21, 2011, 9:05am I'm classifying this one as an adventure since it was a very frank account of Lee Israel's foray into literary forgery and her descent into federal prosecution. Israel's crime was inventive and a bit whimsical, albeit unethical with twinges of desperation.

A talented writer under her own name, Israel's book is tightly and candidly written. Not terribly thrilling or overtly hilarious, but a very pleasant read. The blurb from Katherine Hepburn on the back cover was probably my favorite part.