{"product_id":"can-you-ever-forgive-me-memoirs-of-a-literary-forger-9781416588672","title":"Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger","description":"\u003cp\u003eNow a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthyLee Israels hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker  Edna Ferber  Noel Coward  and many others.  Before turning to her life of crimerunning a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBILee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller  and her second  on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen  made a splash in the headlines.  But by 1990  almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio  Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter shed received once from Katharine Hepburn  and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer  she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991  she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of  among others  Dorothy Parker  Louise Brooks  Edna Ferber  Lillian Hellman  and Noel Cowardand sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.  Lee Israel is deft  funny  and eminently entertainingin her gentle parable about the modern culture of fame  about those who worship it  those who strive for it  and those who trade in its relics (The Associated Press). Exquisitely written  with reproductions of her marvelous forgeries  Can You Ever Forgive Me? is a slender  sordid  and pretty damned fabulous book about her misadventures (The New York Times Book Review).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44938353442869,"sku":"ByrdShop_1416588671","price":99.98,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781416588672.jpg?v=1787335304","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/can-you-ever-forgive-me-memoirs-of-a-literary-forger-9781416588672","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}