It’s been five years, almost to the day, since Glass, then a 25-year-old star at The New Republic, publicly self-destructed. The improbable stories he’d been making up and passing off as truth were recklessly audacious: in one piece he “reported” on an imaginary “First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ” (see graphic). In another he wrote about a Conservative Political Action Conference that really took place, but invented episodes in which sex-crazed participants snorted coke. By the time the then New Republic editor Charles Lane caught on to Glass, the writer had become a journalistic suicide bomber, not only taking out his own career but destroying a portion of the always-fragile bond of trust journalists try to form with their readers. “I just want to say I’m sorry,” he says in the cafe. It’s a refrain you’ll hear again and again over the next hour and a half.
Glass couldn’t be sorry at a more convenient time. His autobiographical first novel, “The Fabulist”–which Simon & Schuster was so desperate to keep under wraps that it referred to the project only by the code word Gladstone–hits bookstores this week. In his author’s note he insists, “This book is a work of fiction–a fabrication, and this time, an admitted one.” But “The Fabulist,” which is compelling, though not necessarily for the right reasons, is clearly his attempt to explain things. Later this year Glass will be the subject of what’s likely to be a far less flattering portrait, a movie called “Shattered Glass,” executive-produced by Tom Cruise and starring Hayden Christensen of “Star Wars.” And then there’s this sad stroke of serendipity: Glass returns to the public stage just as another young star is self-destructing. Two weeks ago 27-year-old Jayson Blair resigned from The New York Times after charges of plagiarism. So Glass isn’t just a novelist. He’s a founding member of the liars’ club.
In person, Glass is doughier than he was when he first became famous–and notorious. He says he hurt his back in the gym, and now gets most of his exercise walking his dog. In “The Fabulist,” his doppelganger is Stephen Glass, a young writer at the fictional Washington Weekly, who gets caught making up fantastical tales and then tries to rebuild his life. “It’s a way for me to confront my lies,” Glass says, “and to explore larger issues. Like, what does it mean when you betray basically everyone? I lived a lie. And how do you build a life from there?”
In Glass’s real life, the answer is: graduate from Georgetown Law School, clerk for a judge, fall in love, move to New York. (He now lives in SoHo with writer Julie Hilden.) Glass’s old friends are long gone. Back when he fell from grace, they wondered, as everyone did, what had gotten into him. Was it runaway ambition? Too much pressure put on someone too immature? Was he a sociopath? Or just an idiot? Glass says he was driven by insecurity. “I thought I truly, truly was not a good-enough journalist or a good-enough person,” he says quickly but calmly. “And the irony is that by trying to convince other people–and therefore myself–that I was better, I destroyed everything around me.”
Glass keeps returning to his feelings of remorse, and seems sincere. He holds your gaze. He clarifies the most insignificant details: “I need to be very careful of always, always telling the truth.” Of course, this is exactly how he would be acting if he was acting. “I think Steve is clearly the same person that he was five years ago,” says former New Republic colleague Peter Beinart, the magazine’s current editor. “Which is to say, he’s very smart and completely repulsive.” Lane, who exposed him, says Glass is still “wheeling and dealing.” “His contrition is coming in a marketable form,” says Jonathan Chait, who had been a close friend at the magazine. “He decided to slink away, and staying slunk away might have been a better option than coming back in this fashion.”
Glass anticipates such responses. “Look,” he says, “I feel terrible about what I did. I know there are some people who will never, ever believe me, no matter what I do. And I simply don’t know what to do except to lead a trustworthy life.” Glass considers “The Fabulist” an apology–and defends it more vigorously than he defends himself. “There is a long literature of people who have written novels and nonfiction work inspired by their downfalls,” he says, in a phone call one morning after his therapy session. “Do these people, myself included, have the right to write? Is this valueless? I think my book is a cautionary tale, and it’s important to have cautionary tales. I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but I’m proud of my novel.”
Whatever reception “The Fabulist” receives, Glass is moving on. He’s trying to get admitted to the New York state bar–which could be tricky because of his past–and working on a second novel. (He says it’s about high school.) “I don’t expect it to be a world where people will offer me things,” he says. “I think it’ll be a world where I need to work really hard to make it as a novelist.” We know he’s got the ambition and the imagination. Even his detractors would admit he’s a sure hand at plot. But what about character?
