Gawker
Online Mag Needs Intervention For Controversial Opinion Addiction
Slate's obsession with constantly upending the conventional wisdom now has it blatantly debunking itself. [Slate]
Posts Tagged “
Fake Writer Day
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slate
Slate's obsession with constantly upending the conventional wisdom now has it blatantly debunking itself. [Slate]
Slate's obsession with constantly upending the conventional wisdom now has it blatantly debunking itself. [Slate]
notes on a scandal
"I Have the Road Map to Crazy": Who's Afraid of Laura "JT Leroy" Albert?
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 'Terminator' Leroy." More »
ann brashares
Ann Brashares Flaunts Her Ill-Gotten Gains
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 did Anne come up with the idea for the bestselling series that eventually netted her a 25X25 kitchen, we wondered? We seemed to remember hearing something about that once. Let's see — according to the Times,In 1999, after hearing a colleague describe how she had once shared a pair of pants with friends, Ms. Brashares began working on a book about four teenage girlfriends who spend their summers apart, but stay in touch in part by taking turns wearing the same magical jeans, which somehow fit each of their bodies.Funny, that's not how we remember hearing it: More »
fake writer day
Laura Albert's Tits Nicer Than JT Leroy's
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 copout. She also 'didn't do it for the money,' she claims in this recent interview, though there must be a considerable amount involved, considering that two of Leroy novels have had their film rights optioned. But perhaps most infuriatingly, Albert seems to completely misunderstand the process by which profile subjects are selected to be on the cover of Vanity Fair. Here, she's talking about how thrilled she's been to be featured on the cover of the Paris Review:LA: What's really funny is: you can have these people talking smack about it, you know, "She's this and that." But the fact is, it's the Paris Review. If there wasn't some value to my work, which, you know, that's the thing that has been questioned...Laura, everyone knows it doesn't always mean you've got nice tits. It can also mean that you have a small, wet ween. More »
[Interviewer]: Right. That's true. And If you get the cover of Vanity Fair, that's questionable. It could be about the gossip.
LA: Well, it means you've got nice tits. Wait a minute, no — I have nice tits, I could do that.
james frey
James Frey Now Plagiarizing John Mellencamp
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 JohnDylan and MaddieHold on to nineteen as long as you can, Dylan and Maddie! We don't know why, but have this suspicion that changes are gonna come around real soon and make you women and men. More »
They can see the glow a hundred miles away it's night and they're on an empty desert highway. They've been driving for two days. They grew up in a small town in Ohio they have known each other their entire lives, they have always been together in some way, even when they were too young to know what it was or what it meant, they were together. They're nineteen now. They left when he came to pick her up for the movies, they went to the movies every Friday night. She liked romantic comedies and he liked action films
sometimes they saw cartoons. They started the weekly outing when they were fourteen. [ . . . ] He picked her up and carried her to his truck, a reliable old American pick-up with a mattress in the back
books
Does Google Book Search Mean Retiring 'Fake Writer Day' Tag?
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 lasted. We do gleefully anticipate some fun gotcha moments as the new technology becomes more widespread, though. In fact, just for kicks, we plugged a favorite recent phrase into Google Book Search:100% original, alas. More »
kaavya viswanathan
IvyWise founder Katherine Cohen Still Credible. Not!
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 is the Ping Pong club" "it still puts him in the right range for a minority, socioeconomically disadvantaged student") by an expert: "Katherine Cohen, CEO and founder of IvyWise, a school-admissions consulting company." More »
james frey
The Vengeful Ghost of Drunk James Frey Haunts Employees Only
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 opening lines:"Be careful how many times you say "James Frey" in public. He could appear right behind you."
Hold on, we're trying it right now. James Frey James Frey James Frey. Huh, didn't work. Excuse us while we go try it thirteen times in front of the bathroom mirror by candlelight.
Is James Frey The Candyman? [NYO]
Earlier: You're Going to Love The Way You Look — He Kinda Guarantees It
Update: AIEEEEEEEE!!!
this thing looks like that thing
You're Going To Love The Way You Look -- He Kinda Guarantees It
A reader sends us news of our favorite disgraced writer:"We made eye contact with Frey, who couldn't decide whether he should look proud or ashamed at being recognized. If my friend hadn't pointed out who it was, I would've sworn it was the guy from the Men's Wearhouse commercials."
Thank you, tipster. We'd always wondered who Frey reminded us of, and now we know! The saddest part is that George Zimmer (that's his name, didn't you know?)(Update: Okay, WE didn't know) has much more hair.
fake writer day
Kaavya Viswanathan Continues To Rehabilitate Image
For the two of you who still care what America's favoriteAhh, that's our Kaavya. Ever questing for originality. More »
harvard
Down By the Banks of the River Charles: Lovers, Fuggers, Thieves, Plagiarists
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 examples of similarities among her work and editorial cartoons featured on Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index, a Web site that lists and organizes editorial cartoons from around the world." This incident follows the suspension of a column by the Crimson'sVictoria B. Ilyinsky after Ilyinsky was found to have ripped off material from Slate. There's an easy Kaavya Viswanathan joke here, but at least Kaavya plagiarized from an actual book; stealing stuff from the Internet seems so much more lazy. What are the odds that both these girls' claimed to "build large suspension bridges in my yard" in their admission essays? More »
james frey
James Frey Might Want To Go Back To Just Making Things Up
Over at his website, Big Jim Industries, disgraced memoirist James Frey posts the first paragraph of his new book Here it is: More »
nick sylvester
Fake Writer Lectures Future Lawyers on Art and Artifice
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. More »
kaavya viswanathan
Fake Writer's Real Writing Shows Plagiarism Not Necessarily a Bad Idea
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, there is a particular poignance to the passage below:Also a good packager. Those guys can make a world of difference. More »
lee siegel
Keep Falling Upwards with Lee Siegel
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:I'm looking for a research assistant to help me with a book about Internet culture that I'm writing for Doubleday, which is due to be finished by the end of next March. My name is Lee Siegel, and I'm a senior editor at the New Republic, and the author of "Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination," a collection of essays that has just been published.More »
jessica simpson
Remainders: Jessica Lets Herself Go
• 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 sure you get tape of Jared Kushner dissing the art. [Salander]
• Oh, this is rich: Are Mark Foley and Eve Ensler all that different? You challenge us so, David Brooks. [TimesSelect]
• Speaking of Foley: JUST KIDDING! IT WAS ALL A BIG JOKE! [Wonkette]
• Actress Sharon Stone, best known for her role in Police Academy 4, is rumored to be canoodling with Jared Leto. We're not sure we buy it, but the mental picture is amusing enough. [LSE]
• Won't someone help Julia Allison have a threesome? If only so she can stop using her Silver Bullet vibrator? [Glamour]
• Vanity Fair defies rumor and, instead of Borat, puts George Clooney on the cover. To be fair, they're both equally ridiculous characters. [FishbowlNY]
• We know that "Britney Spears Loses Custody of Child to 'In Touch' Magazine" is an Onion headline, but we fail to see the parody. [The Onion]
fake writer day
James Frey and Oprah: Misty Water-Colored Memories
The paper chasers over at The Smoking Gun are venturing into the wild world of print with The Dog Dialed 911: A Decade of the World's Most Dogged Investigative Reporting, a book of random and ridiculous documents organized into lists ("4 Early Eminem Hits," "11 Things a Teacher Should Never Say to His Students"). This image appears under the list "1 Sentiment No Longer Held," with the following explanation: More »
james frey
