DEAN PARK PRESS & COMELY BANK PUBLISHING
  • Welcome
  • Dean Park Press
  • Our Current Authors
  • Blog/News
  • Resources for Talented New Authors
    • Submissions
    • Style Guidelines
    • Formatting
    • Covers
    • Dealing with Writer's Block
    • Sequels Advice
    • A Guide to Scrivener
  • 'Legacy' Comely Bank Publishing Authors
    • T D Burke >
      • The Man From Outremer
    • Gordon Lawrie >
      • Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie
      • The Discreet Charm of Mary Maxwell-Hume
      • The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold
      • The Piano Exam
      • Recipes
      • 100 Not Out
    • Lucy Lloyd >
      • Russian Doll
    • Jane Tulloch >
      • Our Best Attention
      • Assured Attention
      • Christmas At Murrays
    • Roland Tye >
      • Weekender
  • Bookshop
  • Info for Booksellers
  • Terms & Conditions
  • About Us
  • Contact
Community Publishing for the community

Review: Edinburgh Book Festival

21/8/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
Laura Albert (left) with Susie Orbach
**
Laura Albert: In Therapy With Susie Orbach

 
Baillie Gifford Tent, 21st August 2017
 
Paraded as an “experiment” by Susie Orbach – she of Fat Is A Feminist Issue – this extraordinary show was indeed much more performance than simple interview. It’s probably fair to say that most of the audience were primarily there to see Orbach, but her day job is as a psychoanalyst, and this interview with Laura Albert took the form of a therapy session with the American writer.
 
Orbach started well – with the words "Tell me", then silence. Taking that cue, Albert talked on her own terms, and I took to her straight away. Not knowing a lot about her, it became clear that the key features in her life were abuse (primarily) and the use of food and writing as counterweights. She looks nothing like her years – nor does Orbach, by the way – which suggests that each of these women gains vitality from their work. Briefly, Albert was allowed to touch on how abuse has affected her and her work, and on a period when she was (as she put it) 'outed' as her pseudonym JT LeRoy. Albert, it transpired, had got herself into difficulties by signing a contract under her pseudonym and had subsequently successfully been sued for fraud.
 
Having been encouraged to open up by Orbach, Albert then found her 'therapy session' being channeled by Orbach into the therapist's favourite topic, food, fat and body shape. Now Orbach began to direct the show, and there was far less opportunity to find out about Albert – whose story was, frankly, far more interesting for this observer.
 
Then the "performance" ended and there followed a debrief and then questions from the audience which were once again dominated by Orbach rather than Albert. Orbach felt that she'd been "unable to draw a thread" from Albert's talk – as if that were the therapist's job. For her part, Albert, clearly a vulnerable woman, made it clear that she felt taken advantage of by Orbach. And although Orbach said she was sorry that Albert felt 'disappointed', she failed to apologise that Albert was in tears at the end of the show. I found Orbach's lack of professional concern unacceptable, and actually quite shocking. Audience members near me seemed to share that view.
 
I'd like to have bought one of Laura Albert's books afterwards in the signing tent, but the pair of them were sitting together – how that could be I couldn't fathom – and at that point I couldn't bring myself to be near Susie Orbach.

​What on earth was Orbach playing at?
 
 Gordon Lawrie
2 Comments
G. Wiborg
22/8/2017 09:23:46 pm

What a missed opportunity. Or maybe it was inevitable. Laura Albert came in person but as what persona? Instead of showing up for a therapy session she showed up for an audience. She performed and played for laughs and pathos, including crying and asking the audience for chocolate.
No wonder there is a devastating film about her exploitation of others - which I can't imagine Susie Orbach would have seen and then agreed to a therapy session for one of the dominant ideas in the film was how Albert tries to get under the skin of the people she wants by exquisitely honing a script for them.

Just one example of her deceitful behaviour was on show. The women in the audience asking different questions to lead Mrs. Albert towards promoting her upcoming new book and older books, was actually no stranger but part of her entourage. Clever plan.

Orbach tried to listen to Mrs. Albert as she ploughed a food/fat furrow but it didn't sound real to me in the audience and so there was little traction - like when she started to cry - which in my and many others perception was a fake, too. Shame. Orbach is a compassionate and thoughtful woman.

I can only recommend everyone who wants to understand better to watch the documentary by Marjorie Sturm I referred to before: The cult of JT available on Amazon. It reveals her manipulations and is well researched. And to end with Mrs. Alberts/ LT Leroy famous sentence "the heart is deceitful" - I would change it into: Mrs. Albert is a deceitful person.

Reply
Gordon Lawrie
23/8/2017 12:09:59 am

These are very sound points. My review didn't have enough room to explore the very real possibility – even likelihood – that Laura Albert was exploiting Susie Orbach. Or that the tears were fake. Nor was I aware that one of the questioners was a Laura Albert plant. (That might happen quite often; as a publisher I've been known to plant the odd question at an author event myself to ensure things don't go dry.)

However, in the end I placed the responsibilty for the way the show panned out primarily with Susie Orbach. At the outset, she presented it as a 'performance', and that Laura Albert was just the latest in a series of such 'therapy sessions' held by Orbach. Whatever one thinks of Albert, she's a vulnerable soul, and Orbach's professional responsibility as a psychiatrist – and remember that was how she presented herself – was to ensure the welfare of her 'patient'. I suppose I was uncomfortable with her use of 'patient' for 'performance'. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

But I really appreciate your comments, because it is important that readers are allowed to see just how complex this conversation was. I felt like a voyeur watching it unfold, though.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    News

    Latest news from
    ​Comely Bank Publishing


    ARCHIVED Posts

    PLEASE NOTE That links in archived posts may no longer be valid

    August 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    Picture
    Click here for more about author Roland Tye
    Picture
    Click here for more about author T.D.Burke
    Picture
    Click here for Gordon Lawrie author page
    Picture
    Click here for more about Jane Tulloch
    Picture
    Click here for more about Lucy Lloyd

    Picture
    proud sponsors of
    ​
    Friday Flash Fiction

    Picture
Picture

Website by Platform 36
Photo used under Creative Commons from gianandreap