Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2008)

by Lee Israel

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Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
266	18	100,855	(3.25)	14
Before turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI, Lee 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 she'd 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 Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.… (more)

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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! (

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dwcofer | May 7, 2024 |

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! (

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SamMelfi | Sep 13, 2023 |

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! (

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schoenbc70 | Sep 2, 2023 |

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.

Going_To_Maine | Dec 16, 2020 |

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. (

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Helenliz | Nov 11, 2020 |

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Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Lee Israel	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Curtin, Jane	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Dingler, C. Laura	Designer	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

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Can You Ever Forgive Me? {2018 movie} by Marielle Heller

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Canonical title

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

2008

People/Characters

Important places

New York, New York, USA

Bernardsville, New Jersey, USA

Important events

Related movies

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018 | IMDb)

Epigraph

Dedication

For Bill Aue. . . who would have had fun
with all this . . .
and Byron Dobell

First words

They were such good company, even by letter.

Quotations

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Original language

English

Canonical DDC/MDS

Canonical LCC

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Wikipedia in English (2)

Lee Israel

Literary forgery

▾Book descriptions

Before turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI, Lee 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 she'd 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 Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers.

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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. [publisher]

Contents and pigeons -- Wretched and excessive -- A Mayan minute -- The flies -- Slippery slope -- Cousin Sidney -- Louise -- Riffing -- Faux Louise -- Dorothy -- Noel -- The jig is up -- Violets for his furs -- Trimester two -- This ain't no country club, Lee -- Prep time -- My third trimester.

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