The Fabulist

Rogue journalist Stephen Glass just can’t get it right. Once, he

fictionalized his reporting to improve upon reality. Now he has
written a novel that makes his real-life story seem less interesting.
The Fabulist (Simon & Schuster, $24) is a novelized apologia from
Glass, the young writer who in 1998 was found to have fictionalized
large chunks of his journalism for The New Republic and other
prestigious magazines. Glass was exposed after Forbes.com tried to
follow up on one of his pieces and was unable to verify the supposed
facts.
Fired by The New Republic, Glass retreated to law school, where
  
absolute fidelity to the truth is less of a cardinal virtue. He also
underwent therapy, and eventually he produced this book, which he
must have hoped would at least be therapeutic for his career. That
seems unlikely, but you can’t blame the guy for trying.
You might instead blame his publisher for aiding and abetting Glass in this dubious
venture. But this isViacom unit Simon & Schuster, which only last year was staunchly
defending its authors Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose when they were caught
borrowing other writers’ prose. Clearly, S&S is impervious to embarrassment, so Glass has
found the proper home for The Fabulist.
And of course his timing turned out to be perfect, since the novel was published just as
the Jayson Blair scandal erupted at The New York Times . A high-profile media
campaign already had been prepared for The Fabulist, beginning with a 60
Minutes interview with its suitably penitent author. That’s heady stuff for a first novelist,
but in this case it was only the beginning. Once the Times scandal broke, Glass and Blair
were yoked together like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. A Factiva
search for recent stories mentioning both their names turned up 288 hits.
There’s even a movie in the works: Shattered Glass, based on a Vanity Fair article and due
out in October. Glass will be played by handsome Hayden Christensen, who was Anakin
Skywalker (the future Darth Vader) in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. The
film’s take on Glass will not necessarily be flattering, but if the movie is a hit, that could
further boost interest in his book.
All of which would be great for Glass if The Fabulist were fabulous. Alas, it is not. Glass is
said to be working on a second novel, but his first one will not leave its readers eager for
more. It does, however, leave them puzzling over which parts of it are entirely
autobiographical and which (if any) are wholly the product of the author’s imagination.
The protagonist is named Stephen Glass; he works at a magazine called The Washington
Weekly, which greatly resembles The New Republic; he is tripped up when another
journalist is unable to verify the facts in one of his stories. (Apparently, the real-life Glass
resents having been caught by a mere Web site; in the book, his fictional self is exposed
instead by The Substance Monthly, a stand-in for the ultra-prestigious Atlantic Monthly.)
Fired by the Weekly, our hero retreats to his parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs, where
family issues intrude into the plot. Then he returns to Washington, where he is hounded
by journalists eager to turn on their former friend. One of these furies, named Cliff, finally
corners him in an animal hospital and threatens to harm a small dog unless Glass explains
why he had fabricated his stories. The moment has arrived for the novel’s big pay-off,
when the fictional Glass shares the hard-earned insight the real-life Glass has gleaned
from all those years of therapy. Here it is: “I lied because I wanted people to love me.”
Cliff doesn’t believe him. The reader doesn’t much care. Fortunately, the novel ends five
pages later, with Glass moving to New York to put his life back together. The real-life Glass
did indeed end up in New York, where news reports indicate that he recently passed the
state bar exam. The Fabulist thus far has failed to vault onto the best-seller lists, so it looks
like Glass may have to resign himself to being a lawyer. Strange career choice for a man
who wants to be loved.

From https://www.forbes.com/2003/06/11/0611bookreview.html