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The Fabulist

The Fabulist

List Price: $24.00
Your Price: $16.32
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't bother with this tripe
Review: ...Trite characterizations, weak plotline, and lackluster writing make for a very, very poor read. If this editorial conman were a talented writer I'd give him a break but I finished this piece of [work] wondering why in God's name a reputable publisher would issue something as weakly written and conceived as this.
It might have made a decent magazine article but then one is reminded that no reputable magazine would ever buy anything from this disgraced ex-journalist. Thinking of buying this book? Take a tip from those magazine editors---Just say NO.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: INTRIGUING
Review: After watching the movie "Shattered Glass" and reading the book I wonder why people are calling Stephen a horrible person. I found his story quite intriguing and the book was quite entertaining. I felt for Stephen because he couldn't stop lying. It's actually something that I was compelled by, all of us can understand the need to want to be the best, the one who is the center of attention, the one who everyone wants to be like. Stephen just took it too far. I can't, like other people, spit nasty comments about him because we don't know exactly why he did what he did. We don't know him, or what pushed him to that edge.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: INTRIGUING
Review: After watching the movie "Shattered Glass" and reading the book I wonder why people are calling Stephen a horrible person. I found his story quite intriguing and the book was quite entertaining. I felt for Stephen because he couldn't stop lying. It's actually something that I was compelled by, all of us can understand the need to want to be the best, the one who is the center of attention, the one who everyone wants to be like. Stephen just took it too far. I can't, like other people, spit nasty comments about him because we don't know exactly why he did what he did. We don't know him, or what pushed him to that edge.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No Class Glass
Review: As far as I'm concerned, Stephen Glass should never be given one ounce of praise or accomodation for spinning his tales and lies, all that were published to the public record.

He is no journalist, let alone a writer or a human being.



Rating: 5 stars
Summary: journalism as escapism
Review: As it turns out, fiction is stranger than truth. And The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ makes for a better story than do run-of-the-mill fundamentalists.

If you want to understand how a young journalist might tumble down the rabbit-hole to a more vivid, more technicolor world, read this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Please, please don't read this book, for the love of...
Review: Despite the hubbub about this book, I decided to give it a try. High minded moralists -- or journalists -- would like to convince you that it's horrible. It's actually quite fascinating and something every jouralism major and journalist should read. They might actually learn something. At the very least they'll be entertained. The Fabulist is a page turner and it isn't going to hurt you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't waste your time but watch the DVD
Review: Don't waste your time with this trash but watch the "Shattered Glass" DVD if you're interested in this story. "Shattered Glass" did an excellent job of telling the Stephen Glass story. You will not feel the least bit sorry for Stephen, a pathological liar and master manipulator who couldn't seem to care less about the lives he effected. Let's not reward Stephen's lack of a conscience by buying this dribble. Besides, he had written enough fiction before his first novel.


Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Protagonist, Author...Reviewer?
Review: Given that the author and title character admitted to having created fake websites, fake memos, and fake voice-mails to add credulance to his writings, is there really any question that he would hesitate to post positive reviews about his latest concoction (from which he derives instant profit, mind you)?

I love Amazon.com, and I find Amazon's user-contributed reviews to be one of the service's coolest and most useful attributes, but this is one particular book where you really have to take any positive review with a huge lump of salt.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fablemeister's con-primer
Review: Having been entertained by a couple of Glass's New Republic articles and seen the movie, Shattered Glass, I rushed to read his book. I rate it five stars not for its writing quality, which is notably lacking, but because it's so instructive in that very lack. A gifted con artist such as Glass, like a gifted jazz musician or athlete, has a gift for performance but not necessarily for analysis or description. A Paco de Lucia, B.B. King or Michael Jordan isn't the best at ex post facto commentary. Stephen Glass could live the story's improvization, but not later explain the story of his story. He could whip out brilliant licks and riffs in the heat of action, improvising in mid-step and turning on a dime, covering stories with cover stories and resourceful "sources," but this novel shows that genius-level skat-con journalism is one thing and Monday morning retelling is another. A talented con, whether Frank W. Abignale, Charles Ponzi or Stephen Glass, is a situation surfer who reads waves, knows currents and board angles of attack, is able to duck and carve, invent, reinvent, do ad hoc and mad hoc with a straight face and sincere smile, in the flow and in the zone. In this novel, criticized as shallow and insincere, Glass is of course insincere and inept, but is mainly simply out of his element -- not in the action, just pontificating on memories of action -- and then padding the gaps with wishful thinking. This novel's characters, at once vaunted and vapid, are as hollow as they are because Glass, self-preoccupied as any solo strutter must be, intently focused on multifaceted, deceptive invention, had little energy or awareness left over for seeing his associates clearly. The people he wanted, he invented as narrowly glimpsed fantasmas. The narcissist is not the best observer of the wholeness of real people, thus his novel's characters reflect that. But the novel is highly valuable as an intro to journalistic con-artistry.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: 5 stars?
Review: Having read this book and observed Amazon custiomers' 5-star reviews one must wonder if Stephen Glass has visited this website.


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