Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger

Before turning to the criminal life, running a onewoman forgery scam out of an Upper West Side studio shared with her tortoiseshell cat, and dodging the FBI, Lee Israel enjoyed a celebrated reputation as an author. When her writing career suddenly took a turn for the worse, she conceived of the astonishing literary scheme that fooled even many of the experts. Forging hundreds of letters from such collectible luminaries as Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, and Lillian Hellman -- and recreating their autographs with a flourish -- Israel sold her "memorabilia" to dealers across the country, producing a collection of pitch-perfect imitations virtually indistinguishable from the voices of their real-life counterparts. Exquisitely written, with reproductions of her marvelous forgeries, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is Israel's delightful, hilarious memoir of a brilliant and audacious literary crime caper.

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: If David Carr's voluminous, well-documented Night of the Gun is the Warren Report of apologetic memoirs, Lee Israel's Can You Ever Forgive Me? is its cheeky, slim opposite. Barely repentant and witheringly funny, Israel recalls her short life of literary crime as, first, the forger of signed letters by such personages as Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, and Louise Brooks, and then, more desperately, an out-and-out thief of such documents, all for resale to dealers and collectors. She has nearly as much fun telling her story as she did as a forger, and she proudly includes many examples of her handiwork (two of her Coward fakes passed muster enough to be included in the authoritative Letters of Noel Coward). Reading her memoir, it's no surprise she could take on the roles of these legendary wits; she's a master of the cutting, brilliant observation that made her subjects famous (her portrait of her hapless criminal partner is vicious and priceless). No doubt they would have found her an excellent correspondent. --Tom Nissley