Literary Clusterfucks 2013

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.

Chuck: its a bit tasteless that hes telling various people his mums dead, his brother's dead, he had cancer he didnt have. Esp in public, and for the benefit of his own career. I mean this isnt criminal, sure, but still.

Oh yeah, no doubt. But I don't think his story is consequential enough to justify this sort of (admittedly super juicy) feature focus. And the glossing over of his mental health issues to create a pantomime villain is pretty awful.

Also holy hell the ending of the book sounds bad.

the book is stupid but i think it’s like a requirement now for bestselling “crime-mystery” novels to be stupid.

I definitely agree there is not quite enough there to justify a huge feature. Reading the story (and seeing the illustration at the top) imagined I was on the road to one big event which was the culmination of all the lies. It never really came, though there's sort of hints that he was more generally sinister in his day to day dealings with people.

I feel like I've prob met people who were like this - maybe in music or whatever. One guy I worked with in a record store who became quite successful in techno - we used to call him "the grifter" - he stole from the till every day to buy his lunch, even after his label was succeeding, he would ask you to cover him for a gig and say the pay was 100 and the promoter would give you the money and it would turn out it was 300 and he'd expected to be given it later.

A year or two later he did some big event at Sonar and I knew one of the acts and if came up casually that he had ripped everyone off.

This is more than a decade ago and he lives in LA now and someone sent me a photo of him standing beside his Lamborghini.

So in a way I can understand the motivation behind publishing this piece even if blow by blow it all feels sort of small. Maybe industries should start exposing their grifters. I mean presumably this will lead to lots of stuff the writer couldn't find out or verify coming out.

(sorry written on my phone)

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.

― Chuck_Tatum

i agree that the systemic failure is the big story here and it's certainly possible, though i'm not in any position to judge, that the guy may not be in full control of the crazy shit he says. mentally ill or no, he is still _responsible_ for his actions, and it is neither cruel or unfair to report the pertinent facts regarding his past words and actions. the behavior can't be addressed without combating our tendency to overlook or excuse it (which is _particularly prevalent_ when it's a well-heeled white guy doing it, i've found).

i was entertained but it's funny that all this guy's ridiculous machinations got him to the point where he could be....a successful derivative thriller writer? seems like he was aiming much higher for a while.

Million bucks for writing a shit book, plus who knows how much dosh for film rights? More than many con-artists manage.

yeah he and his publisher seem to have done pretty well and (I’m guessing) unlike the last clusterfuck to make this thread (the weird YA twitter thing) there’s probably little overlap between those enjoying the NYer schadenfreude and those who would actually buy the book or see the movie

Turns out that Mallory article was indirectly responsible for this further cluster:

So apparently some famous writer was disgraced this week and a venerable literary organization asked me to fill in for him at a dinner to raise money for imperiled writers around the world.

You won’t believe what ensued.

— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) February 6, 2019

possibly dont read and boost stuff based on the authors biography idk

is he actually "famous" for any reason except just being disgraced? i assumed the anand thread was abt someone else *actually* famous (and also disgraced)

he has a #1 bestselling novel

he's the author of a #1 New York Times Bestseller which has been adapted into a Hollywood film so that's fairly famous?

ok fair enough, stand down mark s

(i still feel like "some famous writer" ought to mean ppl who don't read books might have heard of him but probably i shd take this to the "annoy the shit out of you" where it can be the only sensible post)