Remembrance of things passed: how my friend Stephen Glass got away with it

Glass Menagerie

The only reason anybody would want to buy The Fabulist--a fictionalized account of his fall from grace--is to understand why Glass fabricated stories and how he got away with it. Incredibly, he begins the story with his undoing, and spends most of it describing his life as a former journalist. From a literary perspective, the choice is baffling. There would be a natural market for My Life as a Double Agent by Aldrich Ames. There would not be a natural market for My Thoughts on Gardening by Aldrich Ames. Glass's decision to skip over the portion of his life that gained him notoriety and instead focus on the uneventful period that followed renders his novel excruciatingly dull even to those of us who are clearly the inspiration for some of its characters. I cannot imagine anybody who did not know Glass personally managing to finish the entire novel without being paid to do so.

But while this decision is, from a literary point of view, an unmitigated disaster, it has the benefit (from Glass's perspective) of portraying him in the most sympathetic light possible. He does not have to spend much time portraying himself conniving to advance his career through fakery. Instead, we see him driven out of polite society, wallowing in guilt, and seeking repentance in vain.

Though a novel, The Fabulist is intended to be read as truth in every important way. It is therefore not unfair to point out that the book is filled with lies--and that every significant diversion from the truth either makes Glass look better than he is, or his critics worse. At one point, "Brian"--a character who resembles me fairly closely--calls up Glass to berate him and reject his apology in advance. Glass explicitly presents this as justification for not having apologized or explained his behavior to his friends. "Brian's call," writes Glass, "had shown me, as well, that it would do no good to apologize." Readers would no doubt conclude that something resembling this conversation took place. But, in fact, I never wrote or spoke to him after discovering his fabrications; nor, to my knowledge, did any other writers at TNR.

In the novel, when Glass finds his lies unraveling, a colleague offers to defend him to the editor, and he quietly demurs. (He nonetheless expresses deep regret at not having stopped her.) In reality, he actively encouraged his friends to rally to his side and save his job. "Robert"--obviously based on Charles Lane, the editor who fired him--is portrayed as having written a cover story entitled, "Clinton: Our Most Moral President." Robert, writes Glass, "made the argument without a wink to the viewer, without a moment of hesitation." If Lane could excuse Clinton's lies, we are meant to conclude, why can't he forgive Glass's? Even putting aside the absurd moral parallel, in real life, Lane never wrote any such story. Glass simply concocts this anecdote to smear his critics with a wholly concocted hypocrisy. "Robert" also profits from the Glass affair by writing a book about his role in the episode. In real life, of course, it is Glass, not Lane, who cashed in on the scandal with a book.