I want to say that my book was squarely a novel. And while it was inspired by real events, I was trying to tell an emotional story and so I wasn't presented with the same challenges as the movie.

I do think Chuck is presented as a hero in the movie and I do think he did do something very, very noble, and is right to be celebrated. He did the right thing when it might have been a difficult thing to do. He behaved, at a very tough time, very well. At the same time, I behaved disastrously poorly.

But then why is he -- or the character he inspired -- such a bad guy in your book?

The novel is really a character study, an exploration of one individual ... The other characters [are] used to explore the central figure. And I think that's true of many novels, especially many that use some humor and are written in the first person, whereas the movie is done from an omniscient third-person perspective.

So it's unfair to think that Robert is the Chuck Lane character?

That's how I feel.

You insist on talking about "The Fabulist" as a novel, but it was inevitable that people read it as a roman à clef. Do you regret it?

That was the novel I wanted to write and felt a passion about writing. I spent a lot of my time regretting a great deal of my life. I feel different emotions other than regret about the way people interacted with the book. I feel grave regret about not apologizing sooner, and I feel enormous remorse about my past misbehavior, which is horrible. "Regret" is not the word I would use to describe how I feel about the way in which people interacted with the book.

I should say I don't read a lot of media gossip, unless someone sends it to me. And I don't read reviews unless someone asks me something about one. But I want to say that there's an important strain in American literature in which people write stories about their own terrible misdeeds. And I think that seems lost on some people.

Well, let me ask you about one review that goes to that point. Jonathan Chait, a former TNR colleague of yours, reviewed the book --

I haven't read it.

Well there was one thing in particular that he objected to --

You're saying there's one thing he objected to? Or there's many but just one you want to talk about?

Well, one I want to ask about. He wrote that he felt the character that resembled him, Brian, called the novel's "Steve Glass" to reject any apology for the series of lies and fabrications before Glass had a chance to offer one. He claims that never happened. ["Glass explicitly presents this as justification for not having apologized or explained his behavior to his friends," Chait wrote. "But, in fact, I never wrote or spoke to him after discovering his fabrications; nor, to my knowledge, did any other writers at TNR."] And he suggests that you still see yourself as the victim in all this, that you imagine yourself "more sinned against than sinning."

I want to be really clear about this: I don't feel comfortable criticizing my reviewers.

This is a little different. It's a former colleague --

Yeah, I'm just not comfortable criticizing reviewers. I'm sorry if his experience of his reading of the book caused him additional pain, or it mischaracterized how he was in some way a victim in all of this. Again, it's a novel, and I've caused Jon enormous pain, and I'm sure trouble -- I haven't spoken with him -- but I can only imagine I've hurt him in significant ways. And I feel terrible about that.

But this goes back to my central point here, which is that I don't have the feeling to make me want to criticize my reviewers. That's not how I feel.

OK, but do you regret that you didn't, in some way, do something to make it less inevitable that everyone who picked up the book would read it as memoir?

Had I apologized sooner, then the people I hurt would not have had their first experience with me be this book. That's one of my many regrets. I should have apologized sooner, much sooner.

Has anyone accepted the apology?

Some have. Others I haven't heard from. Some I think probably don't accept my apology. This is still the early stages of a long, long process of apologies. It may never [be accepted], or more likely it will take time.

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