hAnd something more accomplished, Dan Mallory seemed to be the new golden boy of American letters. She had a great CV, worked for prestige publishers in London and New York, and wrote a psychological thriller, The Woman in the Window, which was a huge bestseller and was adapted into a Netflix film.
He also lit up his public persona with lies. The most serious was that her mother – still alive – had died of cancer, her brother – still alive – had killed herself and Mallory herself – still lying – had a brain tumor. He added a fake doctorate from the University of Oxford for good measure.
It’s a juicy thread that first made headlines in 2019 and has often been compared to Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s also worth a second glance and a natural theme for Missing Pages, a new podcast series about “reopening literary cold cases” and “some of the most iconic, jaw-dropping, and truly bizarre Book scams to shape the “publishing world”.
The podcast is hosted by Bethan Patrick, who has reviewed books for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe newspapers as well as National Public Radio (NPR). his twitter account, @TheBookMaven, has over 200,000 followers. But she doesn’t claim to be either a publishing insider or an investigative journalist.
,Everyone gossips and we all have different ways of gossiping,” says Patrick via Zoom from home, naturally with a stack of books appearing in McLean, Virginia. “I’m not against gossip or gossip, but if I’m going to tell these stories, and if I’m going to engage in these stories people think ‘Oh! ah! what?’, then I’m going to Yes, I want to go that deep.
“I’m Neither Andrew Wylie” [a leading literary agent] Nor am I the wonderful Ian Parker [whose 2019 profile exposed Mallory’s falsehoods] in the New Yorker. I’m in the middle of this podcast but I wanted to do the best I could and talk to as many people about these stories as possible, We’re doing our best to take a 360 look at these scams and scams in the publishing industry,
The first episode of season one eight tells the story of Kavya Viswanathan, a 19-year-old crook who landed a six-figure book deal only to be accused of plagiarism and ended up on a national TV apology trip. Missing Page re-examined the case with interviewers, including Abraham Reisman, The Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, and Viswanathan himself.
In the Mallory episode, Patrick talks to Camilla Osorio, who had the incredible task of fact-checking the original 10,000-word New Yorker. Profile, critic and memoirist Jessa Crispin, author Luis Alberto Urea (who, unlike Mallory, had to do his job the hard way) and two psychotherapists, José Apud and Gerald Perman.
Among her comments is that, while Mallory was actually diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, what bothered people the most, she tried to scapegoat the condition as an explanation for her self-serving behavior. There was a wish
Patrick, 58, explains: “We wanted to talk to psychiatrists because being bipolar doesn’t mean being a pathological liar. Camilla [the New Yorker factchecker] Was genuinely distressed by Mallory’s claim that, ‘I can’t help lying because I’m bipolar.’ I thought, it also affects people in their professional abilities,
The host was also shocked by Mallory’s baseless claim that her brother had cystic fibrosis. “I thought that the people who are affected by cystic fibrosis, the families, the victims of this disease are very tight. They do a lot as a community. They raise money for research. And about a disease. Lying in particular is just really awful.”
She asks: “Is Dan Mallory a sociopath? I don’t know. I know he must have felt some need to put himself on the path to glory.”
Mallory’s unfinished postgraduate research was focused on Highsmith and has spoken of his fascination with his charming imaginist Tom Ripley. Unlike Ripley, the podcast notes, Mallory was no class warrior. But their web of deceit gave rise to a novel origin story about triumph over adversity.
It was perhaps a reminder that writing well in the 21st century is no longer enough. Writers must also play the celebrity game and have their own story to tell to interviewers, profilers, and audiences. And the more painful, the better.
Crispin. The founder of BookSlut.com, tells the podcast: “I want to lay the blame for traumatizing entertainment on Oprah [Winfrey] feet. I think this kind of material certainly trained us to expect these stories of sadness, to expect these stories of trauma, and told us how to prepare for them. ,
The “Oprah Effect” is said to have changed the publication for a long time. But is it for good or ill? Patrick comments: “Oprah Winfrey has done some amazing things for books, especially for books by authors who have been underrepresented – women, black, beepoque, trans, LGBTQ.
“But like anyone with a lot of power, I don’t think Oprah always realizes the impact that she’s going to have. How could she? You can’t predict it and so I guess That Oprah was actually in the books about aches and pains. Maybe she was part of the zeitgeist, maybe it was something that was helping her then. We can’t count that.,
Patrick has had the chance to see past celebrities and get to know authors personally during interviews or backstage at literary festivals. She holds up to the zoom camera a customized “ideal bookshelf” print with the theme of the authors she drinks. It stars Margaret Atwood, Umberto Eco and David Mitchell.,
She fondly recalls: “David Mitchell: Absolutely my favorite. Someone who is a really complete person, has a family life, is an amazing artist, who is interested in everything and everyone. That’s how I feel.” Was someone who really sits at his place in the world and it’s lovely to be with someone like that.
“I would also say Margaret Atwood, who I’ve known for almost 20 years. She’s so sly and smart and unpredictable. People might be like, ‘Sure, she wrote this and she wrote that.’ Yeah, but sometimes they’re wonderful writers but they don’t bring it up in their personal conversations. He’s intelligent and charm and intellectual fireworks all the time and I love that.”
Another drinking accomplice was Salman Rushdie, now recovering in the hospital from multiple stabbing attacks at a recent literary event at the normally quiet Chautauqua Institute in New York State. Hadi Matar, 24, has pleaded not guilty to the charges of murder and second-degree attempted assault.
Patrick, who has conducted many such events, was as amazed and amazed as anyone. “Salman Rushdie is someone who has contributed timeless books to our culture and has been incredibly generous to other writers and artists and the people who support our culture. So it’s just heinous; It should not happen.
“One of the things we’re talking about for a future podcast episode is, what happens to these live events that we all love so much and attend frequently? We live in a country where Guns are out of control and of course now we know that knives are out of control too. That’s going to change and I hate the fact that we might have to organize a national book festival where everyone’s bags rifled through,
Rushdie was attacked when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or religious order, calling on Muslims to kill him, months after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses. Some Muslims considered passages about the Prophet Muhammad to be blasphemous.
Married to a retired army officer, Patrick lived in Berlin before the fall of the Wall so appreciates the fragility and preciousness of freedom of expression for writers. She comments: “We know what it’s like to be in a place where you are being controlled and watched. In America, one of the things that is both beautiful and amazing about the way we see our writers and writers is that our writers and writers have been independent in so many aspects of their lives for so long.
“We forget that, for example, Penn International and other groups are still working to allow writers to write freely, get out of prisons, out from under the thumbs of oppressors. The fact is That I don’t remember anything in recent history in the United States that speaks of our incredible privileges that, unfortunately, we take for granted.”
She adds: “I don’t think we need to be taught a lesson; I don’t want any knives on the stage at Chautauqua. But I think we need to be very careful and deliberate about what happens next for the artists, especially because it is so important for us to bring in artists from other countries. It’s not just Covid: it’s sanctions, it’s visas, it’s struggle, it’s all kinds of stuff. ,
What impact has Patrick seen on American publishing from the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements? “Such a long way to go. I’m happy to say something has changed. I’m glad to see some women of color who hold high positions in publishing, such as Lisa Lucas at the Pantheon.
“But we not only have to go so far as to read and accept and receive and publish books by people of color – men, women, people of various genders and sexual orientations – but we also have to learn how to talk about them. Do. I’m writing a review of an Afro-British writer this morning and I was saying something about colonialism and I thought I needed to check my language here. I need to be really careful.
“We need to stop using words that allow us to hide, that allow us to keep ourselves silent, and that’s really hard for the words of the world, right? I need to learn all the words.” , was brought to use them, and now I’m wondering what words set me apart from other people. It’s one of those things that the publication has to deal with,
While Mallory was a white male with “perfect credentials,” evidence that East Coast aristocracy and patriarchy dominated, Patrick is seeing a new generation of diverse writers in the climb.
“I’ve been looking at different communities — Black, Latinx, transgender — to help support writers in their ranks and get their attention. I’ve made a real effort, and I’m really looking forward to helping white male colleagues on Twitter. With some little kerfuffles about the fact that, when I’m choosing what reviews I’m going to write, I’m choosing more books of color and authors who are queer and trans.”
She adds: “I don’t think it means I’m ignoring white men at all. I’ve spent most of my life reading the works of white men and some of them are fantastic. I’ve never been Tristram Shandy What an experimental novel, that’s the best! But that doesn’t mean that now, in the 21st century, I can’t decide to take a turn, We need to look a little more intellectually when it comes to different types of writers.”
(This story has not been edited by seemayo staff and is published from a rss feed)