Actually, I find the argument that these books should be judged simply on their own terms to be absurb, especially since the fabrication of JT Leroy was used to lure readers to the books in the first place. In other words, the books are fiction but the marketing device to get us to read them was a lie, pure and simple. So that's how these writings by Laura Albert should be understood--not as a stand-alone works of fiction but as a marketing tool to fool the public into buying them. If the hoax of JT Leroy shouldn't matter in regard to the books than why, I wonder, was it used in the first place?