Heart of Glass

Bef

ore there was Jayson Blair, there was Stephen Glass, the Pinocchio of print journalism. Remember him? Five years ago, when he was just 25 and a fast-rising writer at the New Republic, Glass became briefly notorious when it emerged that he had fabricated all or parts of dozens of pieces in that magazine, George, Rolling Stone and other high-profile places. That story about the cult that worshipped George H.W. Bush always did seem too good to be true.

For years, Glass disappeared from public view. Now suddenly he's back with The Fabulist (Simon & Schuster; 342 pages), a lightly fictionalized account of his disgrace and its aftermath with a central character named Stephen Glass. You might expect a legendary liar to have a gift for invention. "I am compulsively imaginative," the "fictional" Glass assures us. But you'd never know it from this wan novel about a pip-squeak Raskolnikov who wants everybody to love him.

Though it's too late for Glass to disinfect his past, for the record he says he's sorry over and over again. But abjection is not the same as introspection. Glass literally does not know what to do with himself. He doesn't seem to know he's a cross between two classic American characters — the confidence man and the young man on the make. Saul Bellow would have made him an intricate, sweaty loser. Glass is content to offer himself up as an infantile schnook. Thanks to a good woman and a good rabbi, he eventually discovers both love and God, though not the power to resist writing lines like this: "Her pixie blonde hair and gamine charm go straight to my heart."

By getting this book out now and scheduling an appearance on 60 Minutes for last Sunday, Glass pre-empts an unflattering film, Shattered Glass, slated for release in the fall. He still might have done better to produce a straightforward memoir. But you can see his problem. If he ever tries to publish nonfiction again, who's going to believe him?