Literary Clusterfucks 2013

maybe you should i dunno read the article

it's good!

Like if I found out that Harlan Coben was lying about being David Foster Wallace's college roommate would that make his plot twists any worse?

you should read the piece

it's a great piece bc it's v interesting and the guy is a character but i don't think it's like "and therefore his thriller novel about liars is bad" (except that it sounds bad on its own merits). the most lol part was the agatha christie legacy writer who wrote characters based on the guy.

I like the part where he sent emails to colleagues that he said were from his brother about what an amazing guy he (the novelist) was. Think I am going to start doing this. My family could stand to send more unsolicited emails of this kind, I feel

He was just correcting the record

then when someone asks you about your brother you can reply 'oh he's dead, he committed suicide' and move on to talking about that time you were on the cover of russian vogue

Seemingly you can keep this up for a long time with no consequences

being a charming, handsome white fabulist has its advantages it seems

lupus in fabula

i have read the piece and president keyes is largely otm

How otm could he be he thinks the story is that this novel is bad bc the author is a liar

the quality of the book itself is almost an aside, since it's a given that this type of derivative cash-in thriller is going to be likely fucking terrible. the piece is about how the guy conned and emotionally bullied his way into a place where he could easily call in some favors and do the cashing-in.

it's certainly a bit of a catfishing story, and one would almost pity the guy if he clearly wasn't trying to sink other people around him as a means to elevate his own standing.

i would rather watch a movie about this guy than a movie based on his book

oh, i don't care about the book or its quality, and it's interesting how everyone apparently just let him get away with everything. but he didn't kill anyone, doesn't even seem to have done anything illegal, he's just a big liar. it seems like something that could have been summed up in far fewer than 12,000 words

i mean recent history shows us that a lot of people lie about a lot of things that are often more consequential than publishers and academics being suckers

I have pissed
in the cups
that were in
your office

and which
you were probably
saving
for book launch

Forgive me
I had a tumor
and my mom died
and my brother

— Nichole LeFebvre (@nickylefe) February 4, 2019

lol

haa

I’m unclear if I’m supposed to have intuited that he may have been ghost-writing some of the novels by his clients, or if my tendency to find conspiracy is dry-firing. Anybody else wonder about that?

oh, i don't care about the book or its quality, and it's interesting how everyone apparently just let him get away with everything. but he didn't kill anyone, doesn't even seem to have done anything illegal, he's just a big liar. it seems like something that could have been summed up in far fewer than 12,000 words

i mean recent history shows us that a lot of people lie about a lot of things that are often more consequential than publishers and academics being suckers

― mookieproof

it could have, yes. it's not a very entertaining read. the point isn't entertainment, though. when you're dealing with a person of that particular personality type, _somebody_ has to go through and run down all of the evidence, point by point, in a comprehensive manner. if people choose to ignore the facts, well, that's a said state of affairs, but a lot of how liars get away with their lies is people not wanting to go through the tedious and unrewarding work of debunking those lies.

there are things to be learned from this story and i don't think whatever habitual fabulist is the subject of the article will be the one to learn those things.

a thriller novelist afflicted w/ mythomania circulating through the publishing world... i was entertained

i did like the 'moves back to usa, develops britishes accent' part

I read this earlier today on Ted Bundy:

https://theoutline.com/post/7043/ted-bundy-netflix-efron-handsome?zd=1&zi=jh2l2p6n

And while it isn't ofc on any level like Mallory there is a sense that this is what it takes for people to face consequences to actions if you look a certain way, go to certain places, put on certain mannerisms you will be given every chance to fail upwards. How much further would he have gone with his act?

Just speaks volumes for the world we have built.

rly makes u think

haha wow this is so otm

qhow on earth Glenn Howerton — a man who has effectively been playing Bundy on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia for the best part of 15 years — was passed over for the role is beyond me. Perhaps he was afraid of being typecast

besides the howerton line that outline article is... pretty bad :/ sorry

sure its not your politics

no the outline hosts a lot of bad writing

as does The New Yorker

agree that that article has nothing particularly noteworthy to recommend it

xp

i'd be surprised if the outline has ever run anything a tenth as good as the best article in any random issue of the new yorker.

as does The New Yorker

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, February 5, 2019 3:02 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bad writing?!?!?! in the new yorker!??!?! you don't say

lol calm down

I am not comparing The Outline to the fucking New Yorker like you all are, just pairing Mallory to Bundy as portrayed in a couple of pieces that were published in a 24 hour period.

o_Ö

i think it's weird to compare a weird publishing grifter to ted bundy

or to see ted bundy as a story of white male privilege. just seems off.

I don't think the point about Bundy's white male privilege is wrong, I just think the observation is kind of banal and the piece doesn't have much to say beyond it's initial thesis cuz duh yes of course someone who looked and talked like Bundy did got a pass/did not look "suspicious" to a lot of people

for sure and he used it to his advantage

The police have never been able to confirm how many instances of manspreading he was responsible for

i think it's weird to compare a weird publishing grifter to ted bundy

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, 5 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't be too weirded out now Treeship.

The observation is more commonly made around all sorts of figures and everyday in certain corner of the web, but you still have remarks made about Bundy being this good looking guy...like Mallory here, and then some ppl are just waving these fucked up lies as if he is a grifter, that its entertaining, or perhaps not a big deal, like he didn't kill anyone (true, in this case) when the piece itself uses Highsmith and Ripley quite a bit...just a few bits to frame.

But sure The New Yorker is a lot better and more distinguished than The Outline.

not all dangerous psychopaths are murderers of people, some find other things to murder!

Wild but ultimately unsurprising story - seems like a garden variety compulsive liar to me. They just tend to be written about more often when they're in publishing/media because it's easier to find a peer who wants to write about them or finds them fascinating in some way.

The Agatha Christie writer is a real trip - she totally recognised him for who he was early on but instead of shutting him out, chose to massage his ego for her own gain instead.

The bit where he pretended to be his own brother writing to everyone to say he was sick made me think of that time Luna pretended to be some friend of hers saying she'd collapsed and was in hospital, lol.

The excerpts of his "charming" and "self-deprecating" emails made him sound like a huge pain in the hole.

I enjoye this as a HOT LIT GOSSIP story and an OMG CHECK THIS JERK story, but ultimately it made me feel really uncomfortable for the guy's family, like his crimes seemed too small potatoes and too wrapped up in sad mental health issues for this to be worth the full New Yorker exposé treatment. The implication at the end - "oh no, he still lies to his dad, his dad is such a rube" - was pretty distasteful and unsympathetic, as for all we know the dad could be wholly aware of everything but was just being unswaveringly loyal to his son to the journalist because, er, he's his son?

I ended up feeling like the most interesting aspect of the story - the systematic failure of people in the book industry to deal with the problem, and the piratical, privileged nature of publishing - was glossed over too much, although you can understand why the New Yorker might not want to have gone there.

I feel like if Andrew Cunanan didn’t murder anyone he would have gone into publishing

Ha yes I got the Cunanan vibe also.