Slate's obsession with constantly upending the conventional wisdom now has it blatantly debunking itself. [Slate]

In this week's Rolling Stone profile, Guy Lawson surveys the damage of the JT Leroy implosion, described as the "first complete recounting [Laura Albert] has ever offered of the decade-long transformation of an HIV-positive, transgender street kid named Terminator into the celebrated fiction writer Jeremiah…

We were ogling the photos of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants author Ann Brashares's impeccably renovated four-story carriage house in today's Home section, which filled us with the same predictable envy and incredulity we feel every time anyone suggests that writing can eventually lead to fiscal solvency. However …

Fake writer Laura Albert, who wrote the books originally attributed to a male truck-stop hooker named JT Leroy, continues to light the fire of our righteous indignation. Albert, you'll recall, is unrepentant, using the whole 'it was a literary hoax, I'm playing with notions of gender and identity' thing as a…

Well, the o.g. Fake Writer seems to have learned his lesson about lifting whole sentences verbatim. But the latest novel excerpt up on Big Jim's website (by the way, he's lying about the 'Big,' too, obviously) certainly owes a debt to Farm Aiding singer/songwriter/actor John Cougar Mellencamp. See for yourself:

Today, Slate investigates the possibility that Google Book Search means the end of plagiarism as we know it (no!), for the simple reason that it makes it possible to find out, with a mere button-click, whether a sentence appears in more than one book. We'll be sad to see plagiarism go — it was very, very fun while it …

Who cares about anything besides real estate, IVF, and getting into prestigious exclusive colleges? Not New York, clearly. This week's inferiority-complex inducer is an article about the insane impossibility of getting into college, wherein crazily overqualified applicants are evaluated, then dismissed ("a red flag…

The Transom reports that, when James Frey overheard a group of acquaintances talking smack about him at Employees Only, he got so incensed that be "broke his highball glass in at least a dozen pieces"[haha]. The intimation that he'd been drinking is nice, sure. But we're still obsessing a little about the item's…

A reader sends us news of our favorite disgraced writer:

For the two of you who still care what America's favorite YA author copykitten has been up to lately, this video finds her on the Dark Continent. Watch for the scenic shots of wildlife, the glamor shot of a windswept Kaavya listening to her ipod and looking bored in a Jeep, and the money shot of the text that asks…

At left, a cartoon published on October 12 by Newday's Walt Handelsman; at right, a cartoon published in the Harvard Crimson by Kathleen E. Breeden on October 25. As the Crimson reports, there's a "noticeable similarity" between the two. "Further review of other cartoons drawn by Breeden has yielded three other…

Over at his website, Big Jim Industries, disgraced memoirist James Frey posts the first paragraph of his new book Here it is:

Life is way to short, particularly ours, but Idolator points you to a lecture given at Harvard School of Law by wunderkind fabulizer Nick Sylvester. We didn't even get as far through the video as the Idolators did, but, you know, we are sort of honored to be part of his personal Power Point presentation.

The kids at IvyGate take a break from their non-stop Aleksey D. Vayner coverage to note the return to print of ur-Vayner Kaavya Viswanathan. Kaavya's got a profile of 85 Broads founder Janet Hanson in a magazine put out by Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business. The piece is pretty flat, but, as the Gaters note,…

New Republic art critic Bad Lee Siegel, having come to terms with what a horrible place the Internet is and all the horrible things it made him do, now plans to ride that train as far as it will go. And he wants you to come too! Atrios forwards this listmail from Siegel:

• NB to Jessica Simpson: Might we suggest a new top coat? Some sort of Sally Hansen extra-life type product? [OAN]
• No plans tonight? Go check out Observer founder and editorial director Arthur Carter's sculpture show, and see what's so much more important than his little peach paper. Bring a recorder, and make…

Somehow, in our ADD-inflicted carelessness, we missed this Guardian interview with Fake Writer James Frey; it's the disgraced memoirist's first interview since Oprah gave him a national flogging back in January. Frey says quite a bit but, as it's coming from an admitted liar, it's hard to know what to believe. Rather…

Disgraced Internet cowboy Lee Siegel, philosophizes on the motives of anonymous internet critics: "At least for those who practice incessant character assassination, which represents a good portion of the blogosphere, they vent out of the pain of being unacknowledged." It's a pain Siegel should know well, having…

Fake writer James Frey has been slowly reintroducing himself into society, emerging from the Tribeca loft he shares with his wife and daughter to attend a select few chic events hosted by artists or VH1. As part of the progression of returning to some semblance of public life, Frey allowed his wife, Maya, to drag him…