Customer Reviews

The Fabulist

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(32)

 

 

Does anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that all of the 5-star reviews for this book were penned by Mr. Glass himself? It's interesting to note that in almost all cases, this book recieved either 1-star or 5-stars (with the vast majority being 1-star reviews). If you dig into the reviewers who gave it 5-stars, 9 times out of 10 this is the only book they have ever reviewed. It's also curious that the first four reviews were all written on the same day -- May 12, 2003 -- and all gave the book 5-stars.

It seems that Mr. Glass still hasn't kicked that nasty habit of fabricating stories, or in this case, reviews.

This fictionalized memoir fits the trend of autobiography as a replacement for therapy. But rather than giving a compelling story about sin, or powerful story of redemption, it contains the whining of someone who just can't seem to understand why everyone (sob) hates him. <Other people are bad too> seems to be the strongest defense Glass can muster as he whines about mistreatment throughout the book. There is a superficial sorrow as he realizes how he destroyed others' careers through his lies and how he betrayed the trust of everyone around him, but most of the book is mired in his reflections about his lack of self love. He only seems to muster real emotion when contemplating the suffering he goes through when people overreacted to his lies. What I found most interesting about this book is its complete lack of understanding of other character's concerns and problems--Glass's narcissist's mind cannot seem to see others beyond the anecdotal, colorful vignettes he peppered his articles and stories with. Thus the stereotypical coworkers, parents, brothers, and women. Glass cannot extend his imagination and interest enough to write about anyone except himself, and his refusal to probe his own psyche leaves his only important character (himself) blank and dull.

I took this book home from the library for the same reasons most people read it -- to find out more about the mind of a talented deceiver. I was deceived. As a novel, it's garbage. No good. It reminds me of a script from an afterschool special about the importance of telling the truth. And as someone else noted, the romantic relationships that the Hero gets into are ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Ten-year-old-kid silly.

The one redeeming point? Glass figures out why he lied. He lied because --- drumroll, please --- he wants people to like him. Nothing more complex than that. He lied because he wanted to please people. Not because he was lazy, or manipulative, or psychotic, or because he wanted to undercut Journalism. He lied because he wanted to make up stories that told people exactly what they wanted to hear.

Well, that's a reasonably interesting insight, which can be applied as a cautionary tale to most people's lives. Who among us hasn't been tempted to lie just to make someone think better of us, or to make someone feel better about a bad situation? The novel tells us: THIS is what that impulse can lead to.

Don't bother reading it, though -- read some nonfiction pieces on Glass if you are interested in his real story. Because this book is a bunch of crap.

I finally saw "Shattered Glass" this weekend, and I would agree with a previous reviewer who dubbed it the best movie about journalism since "All The President's Men." I was fascinated by the story of Stephen Glass, and I vowed to find and read his book; find and read the original article upon which the movie was based; find and read anything I could about Michael Kelly (whose tragic death last year astounded me); and find and read all of Glass' original articles.

I started with Glass' book, which I found easily in a bookstore in New York City. I'm not sure what I expected to find within it -- his take on the incident, I suppose, or some insight as to why he lied . . . a flushed-out version of the story, written with color and flair, given his articles' reputations.

I sat down on a plastic stool in the bookstore and all but threw the book on the floor after 15 pages. Pathetically boring. I believe I lost it when Allison, his girlfriend, told him to "f*** off." I thought to myself, "How trite, how ridiculously trite . . ." I flipped to the back of the book and realized that it was, entirely, just a retelling of his demise, devoid of personal analysis or color of any kind. I'd rather just go see the movie again.

Mr. Glass missed an opportunity. Criminals and liars are fascinating, especially when expounding upon their own exploits. Rather than just reiterating the story, he should have a) written it in a more interesting fashion; and b) added some juicy introspection!

I'm moving on to locate the article that is the movie's basis. Hopefully it will be more satisfying.

Stephen Glass's novel, The Fabulist, is awful. But to begin with a positive, the opening account of how a fictional Stephen Glass is caught fabricating stories at the Washington Weekly is compelling, suspenseful and comical. There is also a chuckle here and there afterward.

But there is much, much more wrong with this novel.

First, its action rings horribly false. Many of set-piece situations (with women's underwear, in a plane to Chicago, with a woman dressed in purple, at a strip club, during a brief affair, at an animal hospital, among others) are so contrived and unrealistic that it is impossible to be unaware for more than a minute at a stretch during the entire 339 pages that you are reading a novel. Whether any or all of these incidents actually or even partially occurred is of course irrelevant. As written, they are unbelievable even as fiction. A novel is not 'true,' of course, but a good one casts a spell which causes the reader to believe he is experiencing reality, albeit an alternative one. Mario Vargas Llosa has written beautifully and instructionally on this in Letters to a Young Novelist and A Writer's Reality. I would suggest that Glass read them, but with a reported six-figure advance for this monstrosity, why would he?

Another way a novel becomes 'real' is with characterizations and descriptions. Glass has little time for this. The characters, including the protagonist, are pita-flat. I couldn't describe the Glass in this book; he simply never emerges from the page into the imagination. Although Sylvia, a love interest, is almost recognizable as a human being (there is a nice descriptive detail about her earlobes), most of the other characters are little more than ciphers. In this, the writer has failed again: The characters in their falsity nag at the reader, reminding him that he is reading a novel  exactly the wrong effect.

Descriptions of place, which in literature inject a reader into a scene and add authenticity, are likewise absent or bare bones.

But what is not absent is Glass's self-absorption and apologizing. It overflows. 'I am sorry.' 'I am so sorry.' 'I am so very sorry.' 'You don't know how sorry I am.' Why do I keep reading this? you ask yourself. Glass invented the Washington Weekly stories because he wanted to be loved. The end. This is a novel? I thought novels were supposed to tackle complex issues, or at least entertain. This does neither. This is the Dr. Phil show.

The book's tin-eared dialogue is yet another mark of failure. To take just one example, I refer readers to the quote by the fictional Glass on page 327 that begins, 'Can a lizard ...' I challenge anyone to read that paragraph and say it comes across as honest, or even sensible, dialogue. It reeks...

And that brings me to my theory. After the real Glass was caught making up stories at the New Republic, he may have thought, 'Since I'm so good at this, I'll write fiction!' Here's the problem: Fiction needs truth, too. Glass's experience at the New Republic may have taught him that liars shouldn't write nonfiction. But what The Fabulist teaches us...

Like many other reviewers, I picked this book up because "Shattered Glass" piqued my interest. I had high hopes that a guy who had successfully passed untruths for truth could tell a good story. I was so, so disappointed.

"The Fabulist" is a whiny tale of a journalist's fall and supposed rise, based on author Stephen Glass' real-life experience as a reporter who fabricated articles while working for The New Republic. Given this -- and the fact that author Glass named the whiny main character "Stephen Glass" AND tells this whiny story in the first person -- and it gets very difficult for the reader to separate the main character from author Glass himself. It's hard not to read it as a forum to explain himself.

Beyond that, some of the scenes seem very sitcommy. Others seem almost delusional. (Seriously, on more than one occasion, I fully expected a scene I was reading to be revealed as a dream, but that never happened.) I had A LOT of trouble suspending my disbelief, and I think that's because the narration is so uneven. The sitcommy and delusional scenes in particular seem jarring and out of place.

The book does offer some consistency, though ... it's consistently whiny. Character Glass always seems to be whining about something ... his co-workers lost faith in him, they didn't give him a second chance, or he feels so lonely and really, really wants a girlfriend. (Gimme a break!)

Furthermore, the only characters with any development at all are family members and the main character, and he's not very likable. Everyone else is just one-dimensional, and that, to me, is the book's biggest failing. Had narrator Glass exhibited some understanding of the people he had wronged by giving them more depth, perhaps it would've been easier to like the character, and hence, easier to like the book. The lack of understanding of the people around him, though, makes the main character and supposed hero seem highly self-absorbed. (Oh yeah, and whiny, too. Did I mention this book is whiny?)

This is a truly awful book. "Glass" is weak, conniving and unable to apologize, even when he says he wants to. Are we supposed to like him? The prose is awful, too. "Gamine charm"? Please! The characters are thin, the plot is silly. If it reflects real life, fine, but there are some stories in life that don't translate well into books, particularly books about boring people who do bad things and then wallow around in self pity for 300 pages. Like this one. I'm not sure what readers are supposed to get out of this - from what I understand, the characters are just thinly veiled standins for real people. And most of the book is just set pieces for Glass to attack them. Oh, and there's this positively offensive subplot about how he finds religion, and all the good, observant Jews (including a band of mah-jongg-playing grandmothers!) forgive him, and by implication all the nonobservant Jews at the "Washington Weekly" (read "The New Republic") are bad because they don't. The editor, Robert Underwood, is, according to the rabbi, a formerly observant Jew who went secular; what, then, are we to make of his ultra-goy surname? Clearly that he, and I'm guessing a lot of the writers at the Weekly (like his former friend Lindsay), aren't just secular, but self-denying. A big charge to come from a guy in such a hole as Glass. The rabbi even tells him they are his "mark of Cain," protecting him from further punishment. Jeez! This guy Glass, at least his character, has a lot of nerve - he doesn't apologize to anyone, and he's only sorry because his lying hurt him and his family. And at the end of the book, the lesson he takes with him when he moves to NYC is that journalism wasn't for him. So: Bad writing, thin characters, ridiculous plot, and no moral. Truly, truly awful.

Stephen Glass, the author of "The Fabulist", won fame as a reporter for "The New Republic", a prestigious weekly newsmagazine. Having been a regular reader of "The New Republic" in the 90's, I always looked forward to Glass's articles, which included some of the more colorful and unusual pieces in that publication. One of Glass's works, which described how an intercollegiate meeting of Young Republicans degenerated into an "Animal House" like foray into sex and drugs, was probably the funniest bit of journalism on student politics I've ever read. Too bad it was a pack of lies, along with much of the rest of Glass's ouevre. A serial fantasist, Glass freely mixed fact and fiction and palmed off outrageous whoppers as journalism. After keeping silent for years about his disgrace, Glass has now written his confessional. Appropriately, "The Fabulist" is not a strictly factual account of Glass's life, but instead constitutes a fictionalized autobiography.

Glass's story certainly had the potential to make an interesting book. Many fine autobiographies have been written by contrite rogues and criminals. I found "The Fabulist" to be about half of what I was hoping for. Glass begins his book with the story of how he was caught prevaricating and he describes his shame in great detail. There was little or nothing describing Glass's ascent in journalism or his experiences as a writer on "The New Republic." "The Fabulist" feels curiously unbalanced -- there's the middle and end of a story here, but the setup isn't developed. Lacking background detail, "The Fabulist" would most likely be of little interest to those unfamiliar with Glass's story. Apparently, a movie about Glass is set to be released soon, and I'd advise those interested in his life to wait for that.

Set aside for a moment who Steve Glass is and consider the book solely as a novel - not as an act of contrition. What do you have? A poorly plotted and poorly written novel that has one real character - "Glass" - and dozens of poorly characterized other people who pass through the book in order to serve some purpose in relation to "Glass." So we have the suffocating parents who are supposed to show that Glass still can be loved. The ex-gf, who is supposed to show disloyalty. Cliff the reporter, who is supposed to demonstrate the vicious side of reporters. And assorted minor characters who are supposed to demonstrate the "Glass," despite his wrongs, is still superior to everyone else.

Glass can carry on an interesting story for 15 pages in Harper's, but he's unable to do it for more than 50, let alone the 350 that make up this disappointing first book. Let's hope there's not another.

This book is a waste of [money]. Do not buy it.

Kudos to the reviewer below me: it seems that these five-star reviews match the writing style of the author himself, right down to the typos and misspellings. Anyway: "The Fabulist" is predictable, cliched, and worse yet, boring. The (fictional) story of Glass' autobiography reads hollow and fake (pun intended). Seriously, you're better off watching the "Shattered Glass" movie to really know the life of a fabulist. Now THAT film did a better job at portraying Glass' actions than Glass himself could in his debut book.