The Fabulist

by Stephen Glass

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 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.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Journalism

352 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Stephen Glass (born 1972) is an American paralegal who was previously a reporter for The New Republic; he was eventually fired for fabricating articles, quotations, sources and events. The story of Glass's downfall is told in the 2003 film Shattered Glass.

Reviews

[Laura Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe in forgiveness and redemption and that a person should not forever be defined by his biggest mistake. If Stephen Glass was a convincing fiction writer as a journalist, there is no reason he would not be equally creative as a novelist. That is the mindset that led me to pick up this book.

The thing is, I couldn't quite get a handle on how to relate to his "novel." Is it really a novel or is it a memoir? The main character is Stephen Glass and the opening scenes tell the familiar tale of his firing for inventing stories and passing them off as journalism.

It is "fiction" like a "ripped from the headlines" TV episode or a biographical film "based on a true story." Perhaps the truth embellished with outrageous details (again the way a Hollywood director "improves" a true story by adding some car chases and over the top heroic dialogue) is the only style Glass has mastered. Or maybe Glass called his straight-forward memoir a "novel" simply to avoid being accused of another fraud when he remembered things incorrectly.

Once he has finished the part of the story everyone knows, he tells a tale of his downfall full of details that might be part of a wacky movie farce. For example, one scene has him trying so desperately to avoid waking his girlfriend that he tries to wear her too-small underwear taken out of the drier rather than open the dresser in their shared room. He shreds them, leaves them in a dish drawer, and ends up crafting underwear and socks out of garbage bags to wear on a flight from Washington to Chicago.

If it is fiction, it is bad fiction, a wacky scene from a mediocre television sitcom. If it actually happened, however, it is amusing. Things that are too outrageous to accept as fiction do sometimes happen in life. It is just plausible enough that someone in an emotional state could be so foolish. Because the author is Stephen Glass, I didn't know which is was, and how to respond to it.

This, of course, is all very meta. It made me realize how I read differently depending on whether I perceive the story to be fiction or non-fiction. Maybe the book is a simply brilliant piece of literary performance art. Probably not.

[George Ilsley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like many other reviewers, I expected something much more brilliant from someone who supposedly wrote such amazing fiction (under the guise of non-fiction).

So in this novel (fiction within a non-fiction framework) you would think that the creativity would have been unleashed, and the author able to create something stellar.

However, the novel is burdened by the author's back story, and the reader's reluctance to believe what is being written. Maybe if Glass had assayed a completely new topic, instead of such heavily autobiographical material, he might have accomplished more.

It’s ironic, no? The novel is burdened by an adherence to nonfiction, while his journalism was tainted by fiction.

Returning to the back story— he never seems to explain why he did what he did. He does provide examples, however, how he was a liar from a very young age. Obviously, he should have gone into writing fiction and not journalism. (And yet, this novel argues against that).

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

So ... this was an incredibly strange reading experience. Parts of it are *exactly* like SHATTERED GLASS, except from the (oddly reasonable) perspective of Glass. Other parts illustrate how skewed his view of (fake) reality truly is, and how much he views this massive humiliation as the single-greatest thing that has ever happened to him. He paints himself in the most unlikeable way possible, yet seems to enjoy doing so; I feel sorry for him, but not in the way he intends. When he explains how he went about fabricating his work, he is incredibly detailed and straight-forward -- he clearly seems PROUD of how good he was at lying in public. He cries constantly (it seems to be his reaction to everything). He vaguely implies that being Jewish played a role in all this, and he sort of blames his mother for being too protective of him. He never explains *why* he fabricated his work, beyond saying that he needed people to like him in a way that was obvious. The writing is not bad or good. He throws in some sex episodes with random hot women for no reason. At one point he uses a garbage bag for underwear and pretends to be deaf, always suggesting that this was mostly due to weird circumstance. I would pay $100 to interview this dude.

[Nitya Iyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

After watching the movie Shattered Glass, I picked up the book thinking that they're usually better than the movies they inspire. Right up front, Glass says that it's not a memoir, not meant to be read as anything based in reality. But truth be told, the story seems to follow his own life pretty closely. So possibly the only reason I enjoyed it so much was because I could actually see Hayden Christensen's whiny drooling mugging face mouthing lines from the book.

The writing's not too bad. A little too crisp sometimes for my own taste, but we all know how much I love the ornate wordiness of eastern romantics. But it's a fair look into the devolving mind of a journalist whose desire to impress quickly overwhelms his obligation to the truth. And much like when I was reading A Million Little Pieces> I could honestly empathize with many of his sentiments. I could see myself falling into those traps.

But that's why I studied literature, not journalism.

[Jennie · Rating 2 out of 5]

[I originally wrote this review in June 2004.]

I don't remember exactly when I started maniacally devouring news stories about disgraced former journalist Stephen Glass, but I'm pretty sure it must have been in the summer of 2000. I got my hands on a copy of the Vanity Fair article that would later serve as the basis for the film "Shattered Glass," I read everything I could find about him on the Internet, I zipped through what I could find of his fabricated articles. And when I first heard that he was writing a novelization of his own experiences, I had a very different reaction from that of the people he'd betrayed. They were all livid because they saw the book as an attempt to cash in on public interest in his story, but me, I was relieved. You see, it fit in very tidily with how I wanted to view Glass: as a natural storyteller who had slotted himself into the wrong niche. I kept thinking that maybe if he'd fallen into legitimate fiction writing just a little bit sooner, he would have found that he got the same sort of high from sliding fiction into reality consensually that he got from doing it non-consensually. Maybe then no one would have gotten hurt.

Considering how closely I've followed reports on his rise and fall, it's notable that I didn't buy Glass's book when it came out last year. I told myself it was because I didn't want to reward him by giving him my money, and that someday I'd pick up a copy at a used bookstore. But if I'm being honest with myself, I have to admit that a lot of it was also because the reviews had been so universally scathing. Now, many of those reviews came from the pens of journalists who were clearly offended by Glass's actions, so I took any assertions of the book's mediocrity with a grain of salt. But what if it really did turn out to be that bad? What would that mean? For a long time, I thought I was just better off remaining blissfully ignorant.

Today, though, where a friend and I are writing a novel in which one of the characters is a journalist who slowly descends into fabrication, I decided it was finally time. I bought a copy of The Fabulist through abebooks, thereby neatly dodging the issue of whether Glass would make money from my purchase. The book, clad in a white cover with simple black ink letters, bears the ascription A NOVEL as if to remind the reader that this story about a young journalist at a Washington political magazine who fabricates stories is not the story of the *real* young journalist at a Washington political magazine who fabricated stories. For someone who already knows all the ins and outs of Glass's exploits, the story is a strange mixture of fiction and fact in which it's difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. I understand the appeal of this sort of writing all too well -- setting stories in real places, involving real events and recognizable names so that readers may imagine that these things could actually have happened -- it all adds to the illusion, and thus to the writer's own excitement. Glass's bits of realism in this novel are probably a bit more extreme than most: the protagonist bears the same name as his notorious creator, and the details are a bit *too* close to what actually happened for comfort. But no matter, he's disclaimed this story as a novel in big black letters on the front cover, and given his background, this is the sort of thing Glass should do best, right? It should be a terrific yarn.

Sadly, it's just not. Now, many of Glass's former friends and colleagues have taken sadistic glee in reporting that the man actually doesn't write all that well, and that when he was a journalist, he needed drafts upon drafts to get through even the simplest of stories. So let me clear one thing up: Glass certainly can string words together into pretty sentences. But the narrative falls completely flat, and what makes that fact all the more tragic is the fact that The Fabulist really *could* have been a good story. Unbound by the constraints of the truth, Glass could have written a beautifully embroidered version of how exciting it felt to fabricate stories, his desperation in wanting to be adored, and his close encounters with people who could have caught him sooner, building to a crescendo in a classic narrative arc which would end, as the film about him does, with his downfall. Instead, he chose to begin the novel with the ending of that story, and in doing so, he seems to have bypassed everything interesting he had to say. The result is painfully fragmented prose that dwells interminably on the dull and skirts over anything that seems potentially exciting. Instead of experiencing the devastation of Glass-The-Character's own self-destruction along with him, the reader is subjected to watching him hide in his parents' home, take a job at a video store, and avoid encountering anyone who had anything to do with his previous life.

Okay, so Glass doesn't really grasp the art of narrative. It's his first attempt at writing fiction -- at least where he's admitting it upfront -- so let's cut him a break in that department. But surely the guy who once brought us colourful computer hacker Ian Restil and Susan the phone psychic had at least managed to come up with compelling characters for us to enjoy, right? Alas, no luck there, either. Peppered throughout the tedium of what amounts to a terribly uninspired life, Glass-The-Character has endless unselfconscious encounters with secondary characters the reader can't bring himself to give one whit about. In every case they're more caricatures than they are people: his girlfriend is a self-centred bitch who doesn't really understand him, his relatives cardboard cutouts of Jewish stereotypes, his co-workers at the video store thrown in for comic relief. None of them are likeable, none of them are interesting, none of them are even remotely real. And even the protagonist -- who you'd think Glass would have some pretty keen insights into after so many years of therapy -- is neither hero nor anti-hero, but a personalityless teller of a story that seemingly has little to do with him, his feelings, or his motivations. Like the narrator in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," Glass-The-Character simply details the events of the story with a detachment that borders on pathological given that these events supposedly actually happened to him.

In the end I have to admit that everything I wanted to believe about Glass seems to have been wrong. The Fabulist doesn't read like the work of a gifted storyteller who ended up in the wrong profession, got caught up in trying to do what he does best in an inappropriate environment, and in his confusion and desperation, quasi-innocently hurt a bunch of people. It reads like the work of a gifted con artist whose talents dry up when he's not caught up in the improvisation of the moment. To tell a truly great story, you need to do more than make things up on the fly; you also need to construct a cohesive narrative and flawed-yet-lovable people for the events of that narrative to happen to. You need to reflect on what those events imply for the human beings you've invented, and make your readers feel what those human beings are feeling as the story unfolds. Glass, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have enough insight into the human condition to take those necessary extra steps (especially, maybe, when he's writing about someone so similar to himself). He's not, as it turns out, the world's most misunderstood fiction writer. He's just, as one of his former co-workers at the New Republic called him in his infamous 60 Minutes interview, "a worm."

After everything he's done, being a bad storyteller turns out to be the one thing I can't forgive him for.

[ingeborg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really really like this book. After watching the movie (just because Hayden Christensen was in it LOL) I got so interested in Stephen and his story, so I decided to read the book.

I think it's a good book for people my age (15-16), at least if we're the same reading level.

[Aurore Persy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found out about this novel during research for a class I am giving, and ended up getting sucked in very easily. The last part pales in comparison to the rest of the book but enjoyable read nonetheless!

[Lucija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solidna knjiga, u nijednom trenutku mi nije bila dosadna
Pisao je na normalan i razumljiv nacin
Nisu mi se nijednom pomjesali likovi sto je također +
Prica sama po sebi mi je bila dobra
Stvarno ne vidim zasto je ocjena knjige 3.17 ali ono, meni je dobra i to mi je bitno

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Most people who know of this novel know of Stephen Glass; they know of who he is and what he is famous for. And just reading the description of this novel, they'll probably go into the novel thinking, just like I did, that this book, labeled as fiction, is probably the most non-fiction piece of writing Glass has ever done.

Glass tells his story in a very clever way. Attention to how he tells the story is very important to the story itself, and the techniques Glass uses in many ways contradict the actual content of the `novel.' Of these, the most important technique is beginning the story `in medias res.'

When the novel opens, Glass (henceforth referred to as `Fictional Glass' for purposes of differentiating him from Glass the author) is at the forefront of his downfall. Fictional Glass is about to be questioned by his editor about a piece of his that has some shaky facts. His editor, Robert, seems somewhat over the top, almost immediately unwilling to believe anything Fictional Glass tells him. Glass (the author) by doing this, attempts to draw the reader to his side. Robert is the bad guy here, who's giving Fictional Glass a hard time for no reason.

Glass is clever. This draws the attention away from what Fictional Glass did wrong (and thus, since this is Glass' story, what Glass did wrong) and makes someone else the bad guy.

Of course though, Glass, through his narrator Fictional Glass, admits that he was wrong, that no one else was to blame but him. He does this because he has no choice. Throughout the novel, Fictional Glass admits periodically that he was wrong, and midway through the book, gives a ten page account of HOW he did what he did.

This of course is where we realize that Glass, after all of this time, is still incapable of telling the truth. Sure, what he tells us is `true' by any means, but remember, this is a `novel.' Glass chose to write this as an autobiographical novel rather than a memoir. This isn't Glass telling us what he did, how and why he did it. This is Fictional Glass telling us. This is Fictional Glass offering his apology. Stephen Glass could just have easily chosen to release this book as a memoir, and account for his deeds in that way. But that isn't what Glass chose to do. Glass chose to have a fictional character apologize for him.

Glass is a good storyteller. That's how he got to the position at The New Republic that he was in when he was caught. He wouldn't have achieved the position he achieved at The New Republic WITHOUT being a good storyteller. The `novel' is in fact well written. But don't fool yourself. Fictional Glass even says in the story's opening pages, "Nothing would make me so happy as your liking me once more." But until Stephen Glass, not his fictional counterpart, tells us HIS story of how and why he did what he did, it's difficult to see him as anything more than the liar he was in his time at the The New Republic.

[Učitaj se! | Martina Štivičić · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zanimljiva, dijelom autobiografska, priča o novinaru koji je većinu svojih članaka doslovce - izmislio. Nakon što se njegove izmišljotine otkriju, on biva prisiljen snositi posljedice, koje uključuju i potpuno srozavanje njegovog novinarskog kredibiliteta i ugleda, kao i to šti biva za cijeli život etiketiran kao 'lažljivac'.

Jako mi je zanimljivo bilo čitati što sve za sobom povlači izmišljanje i neprovjeravanje činjenica kod pisanja novinskih članaka i kako kobne mogu biti posljedice za takva djela, iako mi se najvećim dijelom činilo kao da čitam o nekom vremenu koje je do danas posve zaboravljeno i prošlo, imajući u vidu kako se današnji članci većinom samo prepisuju i prenose s jednog internetskog portala na drugi, bez ikakvih provjera autentičnosti izvora. Ono što Glass prikazuje u svom romanu, mi danas u biti možemo vidjeti i osjetiti na svakom koraku, no nekako mi se čini da laži i neistine iznesene u novinama i drugim medijima uopće više ozbiljno ne shvaćamo i čak ih toleriramo.

Vrlo zanimljivo, napeto, vjerno opisano djelo, koje se ne dotiče samo problema izmišljanja novinskih članaka, već i psihičkih problema osoba koje imaju patološku potrebu biti voljene i odobravane, te problema ostavljanja naučenih navika i ogoljavanja samih sebe pred drugima. Velika preporuka!

[G-- · Rating 1 out of 5]

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. 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.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book really didn't need to be written, or at least published. If the reader is looking for insight on the author's journalism scandals, the same information is in any number of news articles, or indeed the film 'Shattered Glass'. (There is something disingenuous about the film, though, which is a morality tale - as if Glass's fabrications occurred in a vacuum and reflected nothing about the culture of journalism.) If Glass wrote this as a therapeutic exercise, and if it helped him to come to terms with the situation, good for him; however, it is not a novel, and adding 'funny' anecdotes about elderly Jewish women and creepy co-workers does not make it so. Glass clearly has a bent for descriptive writing - and I will say this for him, that he is good at it: the book was an easy, if not a particularly good or satisfying read - and he evidently wanted to tell his story, but bundling the two together simply doesn't work.

The one thing in the novel that felt really genuine was the description of a letter he received from a person whose career he had damaged through his falsehoods. Glass's reaction spoke of real and even touching remorse. On the other hand, his vitriol for his former colleagues, and editor in particular, undermine the impression somewhat. A mess of a book.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very compelling novel to say the least. While watching Shattered Glass and while reading this book, I kept finding my self rooting for Stephen Glass. As a journalist witnessing journalism gone bad... I'm not sure why. Perhaps I felt as if he were some sort of misguided underdog, but really it's not that way. However I did enjoy this book and suggest it for writers and journalists alike :)

[Chérie · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's so strange to read a fictionalized memoir by a known fabricator. it's like an IRL spin on the unreliable narrator device.

even if it was complete lies, it played with some interesting themes about family and what it means to fall into an endless loop of approval-seeking.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes a brave person to tell their story of deciet and lies. I was impressed.

[Rachel Teran]

Fascinating.

[Dr. Corey Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heck of a story teller. I don't know what is true and what is fiction.

[Mindy Killgrove · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish that Stephen would have stopped about half-way. It was at that point that I just wanted the story to end. It made me really sad for him.

[Samantha Myers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just seems self serving in a way that borders on the author making up even more absurdities in an effort to sell a book about his life. However, it is well written, I can't help but think this was his own attempt to lessen his own guilt about what he's done in his life through the one method he knows - creating fiction.

[Tyler Wright · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a book, The Fabulist is terrible. As an insider perspective of a sociopathic compulsive liar clearly suffering from multiple mental illnesses, The Fabulist is top-tier brilliancy. This book should be taught in psychology and criminal justice classes, not English or literature classes.

[Sanja · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not the best well written masterpiece, but the plot is very fun and brings an important message - without a delusion some actions and decisions can not be fixed or forgotten. I like the main character although it's clear the guy is quite a lunatic, but who isn't 😂

[Linda · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had at least expected that Glass of all people could come up with a good story.

[Maryam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Idk man idk

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Suzyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is everything that was awesome and terrible about Stephen Glass. The beginning is great, fast-paced and exciting, Steve's downfall was gripping reading. When I was a third of the way through the book I was texting a friend about it, telling her that he's a hell of a writer. But once that downfall is complete and leaves town, then comes back, the pace slows. Suddenly, with time to think about the way the characters are put together, the cracks start to show. The hispanic janitor, so eager to please and accepting of his place in life; the reporters, bloodthirsty for a scoop; and three Jewish grandmother who couldn't possibly be more Jewish-grandmother-ish. Everyone who forgives Stephen is a good guy, everyone who doesn't is awful in an Ayn-Rand-esque snowjob.

This is how he did it, giving us our stereotypes, what we think of the world, back to us, painting things just the way we want to hear them yet also into compelling narratives.

And it's really depressing.

[Pamfrommd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm tempted to give this one star but I don't like to admit that I finished a one-star book. The author writes well (duh) and his story is pretty interesting, especially to people who follow magazine writing. And I'm not bothered by the author writing what is essentially an autobiography but presenting it as a novel. What is so annoying about the book is the lack of self-awareness the author seems to have. He apparently thinks he is an innocent victim of...what? bad parenting? unbridled enthusiasm (as Kramer would say) for success at all costs? He seems to have absolutely no ethical standards and isn't bothered by that. At least he appears to have given up journalism and is now a para-legal in LA. Earning a salary for an honest day's work, one assumes, rather than earning a salary and a national reputation for a dishonest day's work.

[Margo Candela]

I admit it I this book just because of the hype that surrounded the author. I even got it in hardback, something I only do when I can't help myself. I'd already read the excellent Vanity Fair article on the whole Stephen Glass making stuff up that appeared as fact in The New Republic. The only reason I picked up this book was for the voyeuristic thrill of reading the fictionalized account of what happened by Glass himself. The story was whiny (but in keeping with the main character) and I consider the whole experience a guilty pleasure. Like full fat ice cream served over a warm double fudge browine. Oh so tasty and oh so not fun the morning after.

[Kasey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting a story about Stephen Glass's downfall, because although he specifies that this is a work of fiction, there are obvious similarities to his real life. So much so, I thought he might be so confused on what is truth and fiction that he wrote his life on paper and called it fake.
However, this soon turns into him just tumbling into loneliness. The book starts to drag as he becomes more and more desperate. Some people might like that, but I personally did not, and ended up putting the book down about 20 pages from the end.

[Jacquelyn]

I tracked down this book after seeing Shattered Glass. I did not expect too much from it, but I was really impressed. Amazing writing and I could not put it down. I was very impressed by his writing and the flow of the novel.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprisingly unimaginative.