This is who we, the readers, thought JT LeRoy was: A reclusive writer, biological male (but with gender issues), survivor of an abusive childhood, southern, child hustler, an HIV-positive junkie who wrote autobiographical fiction. This is who JT LeRoy turns out to be: a middle-aged woman from Brooklyn, who wrote fiction that was not at all autobiographical.

This is the new trend, following tight on the heels of the memoir craze: the revelation that the memoir author was not as truthful as we had thought, after all. (See also: James Frey, Augusten Burroughs.) The question is, does it matter? A good story is a good story, after all, regardless of whether or not it’s true. And how true does a story have to be to be a true story? Books like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Julie and Julia come with introductions that basically say, “This book is true, except for the parts I made up.” After all, who can be expected to remember word-for-word a conversation they had three months or five years ago?

I have this habit of making everything vaguely interesting or amusing that happens to me into an anecdote, and then telling these anecdotes over and over again to anyone who will listen. (This is a habit that annoyed the hell out of one of my former roommates, who usually got to hear these stories about five times each.) I am definitely way, way wittier in my anecdotes than I am in the actual situations. I move things around to make them funnier, to make myself cleverer. I exaggerate. I make my own motives purer, and my ex-boyfriends jerkier. I’m no JT Leroy (at no point do I claim to be a rent boy), but sometimes I may be a little bit Augusten Burroughs.

So why do we as a culture feel betrayed when it turns out that James Frey wasn’t really a criminal? If it’s about the art, should it really matter? After all, aren’t we writing aiming for Truth with a capital T, the underlying big truths of life, instead of truth with a little t, the facts and dates of what really happened? And how true does something have to be? Obviously, LeRoy made up an entire life. But what about all the writers who are just stretching the truth a little, to make things sound better? All writers are liars, after all. And the books are still the same, whether they are true or not.

I don’t think it matters in terms of art, whether the things written are true or not. But it matters to us culturally, because we feel emotionally manipulated and suckered by these false memoirs. Some writers get to be celebrities, and writing is a business, after all. James Frey got to be on Oprah. And maybe the thing that bothers us most is that we liked our illusions. We got attached to the fakes.

There’s a certain semi-ridiculous segment of Harry Potter fandom that was really, really ticked off that Hermione ended up with Ron and not with Harry. They thought they knew the story, and then JK Rowling went and changed it on them. Now they say things like, “Hermione wouldn’t really do that.” It’s the same in the faux memoir game. We thought we knew the how the story went, and then life went and changed it on us.