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, <I>Can You Ever Forgive Me?</i> is Israel's delightful, hilarious memoir of a brilliant and audacious literary crime caper. Lee Israel http://lakenet.llcoop.org/search/t?SEARCH=can+you+ever+forgive+me 2008-07-25T13:09:48-04:00 The author describes how, for nearly two years, she successfully executed a remarkable forgery caper in which she used her talent as a researcher and celebrity biographer to forge more than three hundred letters by literary notables. 2275 9781416588672