The Fabulist

By Stephen Glass

Book Overview

A NOVEL OF AN IGNOMINIOUS FALL, THE RISE TO INFAMY, AND LIFE AFTER BOTH. - It is the summer of 1998, and Stephen Glass is a young magazine journalist whose work is gaining more and more acclaim -- until a rival magazine tells Glass's editor that it suspects one of his stories is fabricated. As his editor sorts out the truth, Glass is busy inventing it -- spinning rich and complex blends of fact and fiction, and exploiting the gray world in between. But Glass is caught. His fabulism is uncovered and his career instantly unravels. Worse, his editor learns that it's not the first time. Soon, a long history of invention, passed off as journalism, emerges. Glass suddenly becomes a household name -- an emblem of hubris and a flashpoint for Americans' distrust and dislike of the press. The media is consumed with the story: Once the young man who had been known for mastering the "takedown" article, Glass now becomes the one every journalist wants to take even further down. Once the hunter, Glass becomes the hunted -- the story of the year. Glass responds to this agonizing public scrutiny with a self-imposed exile, first near Chicago with his family and then in the anonymous suburbs of Washington, D.C. There, he begins a long personal struggle with his misdeeds, working out his own answers to the questions of why he fabricated, how he can learn to stop lying, and whether, at age twenty-five, he has destroyed his life irrevocably. Glass encounters a world far stranger than his own fabrications -- one populated by eccentric coworkers, ailing animals, angry masseuses, sexy librarians, competitive bingo players, synchronized swimmers, a soulful stripper, and a mysterious guardian angel who dresses only in purple. Meanwhile, Glass is chased by marauding journalists whose desperation and ruthlessness manage to match even his own. As he dodges his pursuers, Glass grasps at straws only to find that, wondrously, they sometimes hold. Despite himself, he rediscovers the Judaism he'd left far behind in Hebrew school, and falls helplessly in love with a young woman who turns out to have her own shameful past. In the end, The Fabulist is as much about family, friendship, religion, and love -- about getting through somehow, even when it seems impossible -- as it is about reality and fantasy. At once hilarious and harrowing, The Fabulist is one of the year's most provocative novels.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743227123
• ISBN13: 9780743227124
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Great work!

Great book!

Read the book not the reviews!

Most of these reviews (and those of the "professionals" when the book came out) reviewed what the writers thought of Mr. Glass and his supposed transgressions. Forget all that! Just read the book...and whether it's fact, fiction, or a mix of both (like most good novels), it's a great read and actually quite moving.

Just like I hoped

The item exceeded expectations and has been a real pleasure to have. I'd been looking for this book for quite a while, so finally finding it and being able to read it is a real treat.

This book is amazing!!! And I'm not Stephen Glass!!!

I read this whole book in one sitting. I started it on a Sunday night and skipped work on Monday just to finish it. And I do have a job. I didn't get fired for writing lies. I'm not even Stephen Glass and I loved it. Trust me, I'm not him. The best part of the book was how I ... I mean Stephen Glass was really a good guy, even though he got fired from the New Republic for cooking stories. Stephen Glass is is a great man. I wish I were more like him. If you want to become more like him, you should bye his book. I bought multiple copies and had one put in a glass case (no pun intended cause I'm not Glass) for safe keeping, because I think this will become a timeless classic and eventually be worth alot of money. If you read this, beleive me. I'm not lying.

A Fabul-OUS read

If you liked the movie Shattered Glass, you will love this book. It gives the other side to the moive, which made the editor the more sympathetic character. While this book does not make Glass the sympathetic character, it gives him more depth. The book gives the reader some insight into his world. For instance, in the first chapter of the book, Glass describes how he dumps his girlfriend's cosmetic bag to find blush and lipstick, which he applies to his face to get into character as he types his fictionalized interview into "notes."

Fablemeister's con-primer

Having been entertained by a couple of Glass's New Republic articles and seen the movie, Shattered Glass, I rushed to read his book. I rate it five stars not for its writing quality, which is notably lacking, but because it's so instructive in that very lack. A gifted con artist such as Glass, like a gifted jazz musician or athlete, has a gift for performance but not necessarily for analysis or description. A Paco de Lucia, B.B. King or Michael Jordan isn't the best at ex post facto commentary. Stephen Glass could live the story's improvization, but not later explain the story of his story. He could whip out brilliant licks and riffs in the heat of action, improvising in mid-step and turning on a dime, covering stories with cover stories and resourceful "sources," but this novel shows that genius-level skat-con journalism is one thing and Monday morning retelling is another. A talented con, whether Frank W. Abignale, Charles Ponzi or Stephen Glass, is a situation surfer who reads waves, knows currents and board angles of attack, is able to duck and carve, invent, reinvent, do ad hoc and mad hoc with a straight face and sincere smile, in the flow and in the zone. In this novel, criticized as shallow and insincere, Glass is of course insincere and inept, but is mainly simply out of his element -- not in the action, just pontificating on memories of action -- and then padding the gaps with wishful thinking. This novel's characters, at once vaunted and vapid, are as hollow as they are because Glass, self-preoccupied as any solo strutter must be, intently focused on multifaceted, deceptive invention, had little energy or awareness left over for seeing his associates clearly. The people he wanted, he invented as narrowly glimpsed fantasmas. The narcissist is not the best observer of the wholeness of real people, thus his novel's characters reflect that. But the novel is highly valuable as an intro to journalistic con-artistry.