Lee IsraelRecensioni

This is a very short (129 pages) account by the author detailing her life forging famous signatures on personal letters. For the most part, the book was uninteresting and boring. The author comes across as unapologetic for her illegal activities. At the end of the book she is jealous of the profits the dealers made to whom she duped and to whom she sold the forged signatures. Regarding the forged letters, she says her actions were "fun and totally cool."

The author bragged that she never spent even a minute in jail for her actions and was only sentenced to probation for theft and forgery. Her attitude toward her crimes and getting off almost unscathed was repulsive and now she is making more money off of her crimes by the writing of this book. Shameful!

This lowlife's claim to fame as a writer are biographies of Bankhead and Estee Lauder. Nobody was hiring for hack biographies so she supplemented her income by first writing, signing and selling to unsuspecting dealers letters from famous people. Later she graduated to stealing original letters from rare book libraries and substituting her miserable forgeries. Israel's writing is very repetitive and not very engaging. One gets the sense that Ms. Israel does not take this poor behavior very seriously, and, indeed, she does not have to do any jail time. It seems that the theft of books or other collectibles does not warrant much attention from either law enforcement or the judiciary. Each time I read about the meagre punishment given to these thieves the more outraged I get (quietly). Melissa McCarthy does seem a very appropriate choice to play this lady in a movie. People will find her cute and funny, as long as you don't own.a bookstore or are a rare book librarian!

As a librarian I’m aghast (!) at the crimes Lee Israel committed, perjuring letters from the literary cavalcade of popular or “ignoble” writers.
However, as a reader, her story made me:
sad (her inability to continue using her skills to support herself, leading to a period of downfall
admire the creative drive (using said skill and gift as a means to inventively go on) and
chortle at her reinsured turns of phrase and circumstance
All this in 127 short pages!

This is a fun little romp! It's slight, and I would have loved more gory details, but I'm pretty happy to have spent some time with the book. The dig on Paddy Chayefsky proving that he couldn't write realistic women by writing Network is dang true. (Good movie, unrealistic women... and men too, really.) So yes, a decent bit of entertainment.

It is noticeable that this is titled memoirs of a lterary forger, rather than confessions. And that sets the tone of the piece. It is an odd combination of misery memior about her descent from making a living as an author to being broke enough to consider forgery. Then there is a sense of bragging about the letters she forged, which are quoted extensively, and how those who she fooled were clearly schmucks who deserved it.
There's some interesting detail about watermarks and typewriters and the mechanics of the process, and that for me was the most interesting. The rest of it was a puff piece and overly full of padding. The author sounds unpleasant and unrepentant and I can't say I feel at all sorry for her and her self-inflicted predicament.
The title is taken form a phrase she put into the Dorothy Parker letter and not a sense of the author's repentance for her crime.

I found it not overly interesting. It seemed almost as though she was bragging about what she had done. If it was me I would be wanting to keep it quiet.½

gh. Seriously unappealing. Thin on story, thick on self pity. Might be more appealing as a film.

There are no dates so it's impossible to tell if we're talking the '80s or the early aughts. Israel is pleased with her own cleverness but doesn't detail much. Her disdain for others is so unappealing.

An original which makes for good reading.

If you've seen the movie you can more or less skip the memoir but it's interesting if you want to see how true to life the movie was. The movie is a bittersweet delight thanks to the actors; the story as recounted in the book is tawdry and cheap. Israel's tone is matter of fact and even a little defiant; she comes across as largely unsympathetic although her writing is crisp and skillful. So if you're thinking about choosing, I would pick the movie, as the book is a largely unpleasant experience.½

This sketch of a book amounts to little more than a magazine article about Israel's career as a thief and forger. To fill it out, she includes multiple examples of the fake letters she created, pointing out which bits were hers and which came from the famous people she was aping. She is obviously proud of her work and generally seems unrepentant.

But her fuck 'em attitude and snark kept me reading even as it repelled me. Looking forward to seeing the movie now.

This book might actually be the rare case where the movie might be better than the book!

Down-on-her-luck celebrity biographer Lee Israel came up with a money making scheme that both stretched her creativity and got her in trouble with the FBI. Using both her literary gifts and her research skills, she forged autographed letters supposedly written by twentieth century luminaries such as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Noel Coward, and sold them to brokers, who in turn sold them to collectors. Two of her Noel Coward forgeries even ended up in a book of the composer's collected correspondence. As her involvement in her crimes deepened, she even stole materials from archives and academic libraries.

Eventually Israel had to face the music, but I don't have the impression that her conscience bothered her very much. She seems to have fancied herself as a folk anti-heroine, like Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde.

This witty memoir, which can be read in about an hour, provides an interesting look at an uncommon crime.

I watch the reruns of "What's My Line?" all the time... I enjoy Dorothy Kilgallen, but this book was difficult reading.

The print was small, and for a paperback, it had too many pages, & too much minutiae about her life in society..

So the book bored me, it lost me 1/4 through; but I did read most of the end which recounted her murder... But even that was filled w/ redundancies.

There was a whole lot of collusion going on there, she was found dead very early in the morning (before breakfast) and her family & staff seemed to have covered it up... Reports state she died/was found around noon?

But the most important fact was that she was murdered while investigating the murder of JFK.... and the FBI & CIA had a huge dossier on her...

I wish the book had been easier to read, but the writing was to leave no small stone unturned and all them stones began to drag heavily on me too early on.

No. No, I cannot. Not cool, Lee Israel.
Lee was poor so she faked correspondence between famous people and other people. She got caught and now she's poor again so she writes a memoir. She tries to pretend to be reformed and Sorry, but she's not and you can tell by how gleefully she relishes her tale and how super clever and talented she still thinks she is. Ick.

The only thing I knew about Dorothy Kilgallen before reading this book is that she was a permanent member of the quiz show What's My Line in the 50's and 60's. I've seen most of the episodes on GSN and enjoy them a lot. Since I was only about seven when she died its not surprising that I know little about her beyond what I saw on old reruns. Somehow I don't think I would have enjoyed knowing her as a person, she was very fashion and clothes obsessed, the bulk of her work was as a gossip columnist and she was pretty nasty about a lot of it. Not things that hold much interest for me. She did do a lot of serious journalism including several murder trials that apparently were very well received. She followed the Sam Shepherd case and was the first to say that he was railroaded in his first trial. The most interesting part of the biography surrounds Dorothy's death. She was apparently consumed at the end of her life with proving that Lee Harvey Oswald had not been a "lone gunman" and was amassing materials to write about her theory. She is one of dozens of people around the death of JFK that died under "mysterious" circumstances. Was it suicide, murder or accident. We'll never know, neither does that author but it was a fun read at the end to see all the facts and theories that surround this woman's demise.

It has now been several weeks since I read Can You Ever Forgive Me? and I continue to be outraged by this text. As an academic and a book editor, I am appalled at Lee Israel's despicable choices. She writes in a quirkily charming voice, but her subject matter should strike readers, writers, librarians, and scholars as utterly repugnant.

Lee Israel committed literary forgeries. She chose high-profile Modernist writers and falsified letters from her subjects by imitating their styles. She also altered documents from academic libraries by appending fabricated material to them. One might applaud her literary ventriloquism as an eccentric writing exercise; when she chose to sell her fabrications to dealers, however, she violated both moral and intellectual integrity.

There is certainly a social critique to launch against private collectors who wish to "invest" in cultural ephemera such as letters, and I feel limited sympathy for those who were duped by Lee Israel's schemes. However, these forgeries also have consequences for scholars trying to understand their subjects. Israel reports with glee that one of her false letters has been included in a major edition of an author's collected letters. This is a terrible corruption, and Israel demonstrates no remorse for her actions.

What particularly irritates me about this text is that, in publishing a book about her forgeries, Lee Israel has been doubly rewarded for being a thief and a liar. Because of her actions, it is now even harder for legitimate scholars to do archival work. I am disgusted by Israel's shamelessness and disappointed that a major publisher would publicize her actions. I suppose the value in the text is that it serves as a warning. As for Lee Israel, well, she has to live with herself.

I knew of Lee Israel from her writing in the New York Times .. in particular, the Elaine Stritch profile Stritch herself references in her one woman show AT LIBERTY (NY Times June 23, 1968, "Stritch: She Got Raves in 'Private Lives' (And Was Out of Work a Week Later)" [look it up in the NYTimes archives on line .. I did :)] ... Stritch calls Israel "one hell of a writer", and those kudos took me to this article. Israel ends the published profile with this quote (which Stritch paraphrases slightly differently, same effect, in her one woman show): "I think, too, that a lot of directors are afraid of me because, in the words of Gershwin, 'There's a lot of things I don't know, but I do know this,' And I do know the theatre. All I'm' looking for is somebody who knows more than I do. If they're interested, they can call. But I couldn't swing it with someone who knows less, because all I'll do is argue. I won't be able to make any music that way."

Great writer, great subject. And in this current memoir, this great writer turns her lens on herself .. often gingerly outlining the edges of stories (suitors, cats, various apartments, friends who fade and friends who stay around) .. and a dicey, illicit, white collar crime spree Ms. Israel dreams up in the early 1970s. Her actions of forging and repenting, her sweet and self-effacing and intriguing descriptions of her own journey ... aggravate and challenge and entrance me.

I'd love to meet her. And I'm mad at her. Hell, I'm a researcher and I love these same characters whose work she forged. Not sure if i can "forgive" her actions exactly, but hey, who am I? I do love her mind. and my my my, she can write up a dream. Stritch is abso-fucking-lutely right about that.

i find her now sad and tenacious and a bit humorless. yet .. a woman who achieved many things in her lifetime.

recently saw an old episode of 'what's my line' that the Game Show Network currently is airing as a loop (the full sweep of the many years of this show) .. one of the mystery guests that day in the early 1950s was Dorothy's father. the stiff relationship revealed in that exchange between the two of them, pride through discomfort, formality and total lack of ease, revealed something ... who knows what. and this biography provides some context.

Israel is incredibly entertaining in this slim memoir -- funny, insightful, and absolutely unapologetic. I recommended this to one of my favorite library patrons, a very discriminating reader, and he enjoyed it so much, he bought some as gifts. Those unfamiliar with the authors whose letters Israel forged will find the story interesting, but it is truly wonderful when you can appreciate her gift.

Interesting and at points hilarious, but her voice really pains me--snobby, bitchy, privileged. However, she led a fascinating life and I'm glad I had a chance to see part of it through this book.

Book thief and forger Lee Israel's 'memoir' Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Simon & Schuster, 2008) is little more than a snarky, blame-everyone-else justification for her serious crimes (which included stealing original letters from various libraries, making and selling forgeries to autograph dealers, and replacing original letters with forgeries so that she could sell the originals).

Israel, the author of several celebrity biographies before she turned crook, tells us that she decided to start stealing and forging letters when she realized she might be able to make a buck from it. During the first major phase of criminal activity, from April 1990 through the following summer, she admits to creating more than four hundred fake letters and "enhancing" other stolen letters by adding forged postscripts. Once her creations began attracting negative attention from suspicious dealers, Israel found a co-conspirator and got him to fence original documents she nabbed. The FBI, aided by several New York autograph dealers, finally caught up with Israel; she took a plea deal and received a wrist-slapping punishment of house arrest and probation (which she basically admits to flouting).

The book itself amounts to less than a hundred pages of text, the remainder of the 125 pages being taken up with facsimiles of Israel's forgeries, which she is clearly very proud of (she says it was a "terrific compliment" that a couple of her forgeries were included in a collection of Noël Coward letters published in 2007). The title notwithstanding, there is no sense whatsoever that Israel actually wants to be forgiven: she certainly doesn't express any remorse about her forgeries, which she calls "larky and fun and totally cool." She claims to feel a twinge of guilt for her thefts from libraries, but says "My guilt ... is mitigated somewhat by the gathering in of the epistolary diaspora" (translated from her excessively verbose style, this means she "helped" the FBI find the original documents and make sure they were returned).

Frankly, Israel's behavior is nothing but disgusting and despicable. She's a liar, a thief, and a forger, and she seems to be little short of gleeful about it. So, as I said when I first mentioned this book, no, I won't forgive. Nor should librarians or dealers forget, because I have no doubt that, given the chance, Israel would not pause for even a instant before engaging in such behavior again.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/09/book-review-can-you-ever-forgive-me.html

An amusing read from the first to the last page! A nice short read.

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