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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
I suspect that there is considerably more imagination applied to the reconstruction than to the fall. For one thing, Glass omits the fact that he finished law school at Georgetown and worked at a D.C. firm. Is this because a law degree isn't the stuff of exciting fiction? Or because real-life Steve Glass looks somewhat less pathetic -- and consequently harder to feel sorry for, harder to forgive -- if we know that, actually, he didn't lose everything.
Is "The Fabulist" interesting for nonmedia addicts? It does contain sporadic moments of clever invention. The story that leads to Glass' exposure is about "angry lottery winners" who've become so addicted to spending their winnings, they plunge into debt. Much later, Glass' new girlfriend turns out to have a sordid past of her own; she's a gambling addict. But one expects such clever touches from Steve Glass; they're just the sort of thing he used to make up in his articles. I suspect that those with more remove from his tale than I have will find this all a bit thin gruel.
Which leads us to the real question: Is it a successful apologia? Glass seems to hope so; the book is peppered with apologies. "What I did was a terrible mistake ..." Or: "My only purpose here is to answer your question ... and perhaps to ask your forgiveness ..." In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, Glass professed that he hopes his former colleagues will see the book as "an exercise in remorse and redemption."
It doesn't help Glass' case that he devotes at least as many words to excoriating other members of the press as he does to self-flagellation. He portrays the New Republic as a cynical, venal institution read only by senior citizens (another group Glass has fun with). Chuck Lane is presented as an insufferable dullard pathetically desperate to build himself up by tearing Glass down. I don't know Lane well and have no idea whether he fits these descriptions, but for Glass to smear Lane (and several other ripped-from-the-bylines characters) and then protest, "Hey, it's only fiction," is cowardly -- as cowardly as running away was in the first place. Taking responsibility is a burden he wants to shed before he has even shouldered it.
The theme of hyperambition posing as righteous anger is one that Glass applies to the media in general. It's not that we were genuinely upset by his actions; we just want to get a good article out of Glass. "They're going to write about me, and write about me viciously," he says. There's a grain of truth in this -- a very small grain. Glass misses the larger point. We were genuinely upset, and because of that, we will write articles about what happened. This is what writers do. We write because we believe that we have something to say -- rather than something to make up.
Glass may think the media sleazy, but at least, he suggests, ordinary Americans have their priorities straight. "Most people, people who are not journalists, care about their jobs, their families, and that's what they should care about," Glass writes. And so he gets along extremely well with people of color, like the Latino janitor at the Washington Weekly (whom he knows only by a demeaning nickname) and the borderline mentally retarded, like the video store employees he manages (manipulates?) better than anyone has before him. ("Amazingly, they had managed to rent two videos in my absence ... ") Coming from a man who used to parody those same ordinary Americans in the pages of an elite magazine -- and whose book contains more such parodies -- this newfound appreciation for Babbitry takes some nerve. Or maybe it's something else. Glass' ability to apologize while simultaneously insisting that his wrongs were trivial; his sneering portrayal of journalists even as he begs our forgiveness; his insistence that his book is fiction even as he asks you to believe that his repentance is real; all this goes beyond chutzpah into self-delusion. Part of Steve Glass wants to give the world the finger; an equal part just wants to be hugged.
In the end, the more Glass' apologies pile up, the more perfunctory they feel. It's as if Glass knows this is what's expected of him before he can progress through the cultural cycle of exposure, exile, repentance and rehabilitation. Unfortunately for the author, we still expect that repentance to be sincere -- and the very act of apologizing in a novel makes Glass' integrity suspect. Even Glass hints that his apologies are pointless. "You'll never be sorry enough for the journalists," Glass' heroic brother tells him. (Glass paints characters positively in exact proportion to the degree they unconditionally forgive him.) "You'll never win them back and get into their good graces again, not in this life. You could work harder at good deeds than Mother Teresa, and you'll still be the fabricator."
It's safe to say that Glass hasn't tested the veracity of that assertion. But as one of those potential forgivers, I'd like to take him up on it. What would it take for me to forgive Steve Glass? Nothing so saintly, actually. He'll probably need to do more than just write me a letter. He could start by actually apologizing to everyone who was ever hurt by what he wrote and what he did -- individually. In person, if possible. Maybe he could pay back the money he accepted from magazines for the stories he made up. By defrauding his employers, Glass essentially stole that money -- and with this book, he's compounding the original theft. He could donate some cash to the Columbia School of Journalism for a course or a lecture series on journalistic ethics. To say that there's no point in even trying seems terribly convenient.
Earning forgiveness isn't impossible, but it is hard. For forgiveness to mean anything, it should come hard. But even now, five years after his banishment, Glass just doesn't want to do the work. He may call himself a novelist instead of a journalist, but has Steve Glass truly changed?
