Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1003

Our Love/Hate Relationship with Literary Boys

In her debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman takes on a figure all too familiar to humanities students, aspiring writers and anyone anywhere near Brooklyn: the serious, literary young man. Young Werner in Buddy Holly glasses, if you will.

Because, let's face it: as a nation, we're obsessed with smart, well-educated, upper-middle-class white men with literary leanings and the semi-autobiographical novels they write about themselves. Franzen, the Great American Novelist, fits here, as do Philip Roth and the other Great Male Narcissists of post-war fiction, whose characters are often "self-obsessed, self-recriminating, somehow lovable jerk[s]." 

[image error]Nathaniel, Waldman's subject, is "bookish, ambitious" and a giant bundle of anxious self-awareness, especially in regards to "his stylish torment, his self-seriousness, his dangerous admixture of grandiosity and insecurity, and old fashioned condescension toward women gussied up as sensitivity, his maddeningly irony, his very specific way of treating people badly while worrying about liberal politics," notes Katie Roiphe in her review of the novel for Slate. He's tall, has some game with the ladies, lives in Brooklyn and has just signed a six-figure book deal. He's basically that guy, but a lot more successful. 

If the idea of a female author, someone who's probably dated her fair share of bookish jerks, calling Nathaniel-types out on their shenanigans appeals to you, then keep looking. "What could've been an American Psycho for hipsters feels like a traditional romance," Melissa Maerz wrote over at Entertainment Weekly. This is primarily a love story, set against the same backdrop as Girls. Indeed, this synopsis from Publishers Weekly reads more like the plot to an indie rom-com than a nuanced critique of the modern man: 

[Nathaniel's] well-intentioned missteps with reporter Juliet and editorial assistant Elisa earn him tireless tsk-tsk reprimands and a rep for being “the kind of guy women call an asshole.” When he begins dating a seemingly perfect-for-him writer named Hannah, we wonder whether Nate will adapt or strike out yet again. Hannah is nice, smart, and makes him feel “at home,” but will Nate, who seems to feed off misconnecting with women, make the right relationship move—or is it yet another “dick move”?

Actually, scratch that indie bit. One of the big studios should get the rights to Love Affairs ASAP. Love Affairs is more of a modern comedy of manners set in hook up culture than a critique of the type of sexism that exists amongst the liberal elite. It's essentially saying, "this is the way the world is now; boys will be boys."

But literary boys have been taking flack as of late. Most notably, Moira Weigel and Mal Ahern ripped Men-Children a new one in a recent New Inquiry piece. The Man-Child, as described through a series of meme-worthy putdowns, "has two moods: indecision, and entitlement to this indecisiveness," "can’t even commit to saying no" and "wants you to know that you should not take him too seriously, except when you should."

This description could easily apply to all millennials, but the New Inquiry leands towards hating on serious, intellectuals guys who would make horrible, awful boyfriends. (Whether they make good writers is another question; can you imagine Hemingway living in Brooklyn? Didn't think so.) That's a good start. Now maybe we'll seeing a good take on why the indecisive, neurotic and self-absorbed Hannah Horvaths of fiction are equally undateable.

       

The Hulu Sale Is Off

After a billion-dollar bidding war, Hulu's owners—Fox, NBC, and Disney—have decided to keep the Internet TV network because they didn't get a good enough offer. It's quite the conundrum: Hulu is too valuable to sell, but also so valuable that its owners would really like to sell it. None of the original founders are there anymore, and even CEO Jason Kilar has left. Plus, the three owners all have different ideas for what to do with the thing, making it really hard to develop the product further. But without a high enough offer, that is just what these three squabbling media giants will do, instead investing another $750 million into the site to "propel future growth." So, the next time they try to unload—and there will be a next time—the streaming TV site will be worth even more. And then, NBC, Fox, and Disney will want more for it. And then we'll be right back here again, won't we.

The owners had some supposed high bidders in the billion-dollar range, but apparently those bids weren't enough for what these media companies fancy a very valuable property. They had been hoping for figures in the $2 billion range, reports Variety's Todd Spangler, which was the company's valuation about a year ago. The final offers from the rumored suitors—DirecTV, the Chernin Group, and Time Warner Cable— tough, are not public. But in a complete turnaround, sources tell AllThingsD's Kara Swisher that these guys will get a slice of that money for new distribution deals. 

This is the second time the media giants have attempted to offload Hulu, with no success. 

       

In Kuwait, Instagram Accounts Are Big Business

[image error]In Kuwait, even grandmas have Instagram businesses. In this case "Instagram business" does not mean a business using Instagram for free (but pretty!) advertising, like Coach posting hued advertisements for its bags and shoes. Rather, people use their Instagram accounts as online store fronts, selling anything and everything through the social network. "If you have an Instagram account, you can slap a price tag on anything, take a picture of it, and sell it," explains artist Fatima Al Qadiri, who grew up in Kuwait, in a Mousse Magazine interview. "For instance, you could take this can of San Pellegrino, paint it pink, put a heart on it, call it yours, and declare it for sale. Even my grandmother has an Instagram business!" The practice is so popular, Kuwait has an Instagram Business Expo. 

Jason Kottke dug up a few examples of "Kuwait's booming Instagram economy" and they're a fascinating use of the filtered photo-sharing service that we don't see here. For these sellers, Instagram provides a free, beautiful web store with built in social-sharing features. The service has no method for financial transactions. Instead, Kuwait's entrepreneurs, post a WhatsApp or Kik number (for low-cost texting) and an e-mail address for business inquiries and do their bidding that way.

It's not all that different from a small business owner linking to his or her website, but in this case the Instagram account is the professional website. One such Instagram business, Sondos Makeup, has a traditional site, too. But it's just a link back to the Instagram account:

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That URL at the bottom is the only clickable thing on the entire page. In this world, the website advertises the Instagram account as the point of sale, not the other way around. 

Fatimah Al Qadiri describes a lot of the wares as "hacked products" and some of it does look like the type of stuff you'd find on Etsy or eBay. Store & More, which describes itself as "online store for cute ladies," sells a lot of headbands and beaded bracelets:

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Sondos sells a hodgepodge of makeup products from various brands (or maybe brand impersonators). Mangabox sells Japanese comics. 

But then, there's the type of retail you don't see on Etsy, like Sheeps_sell, which sells livestock. 

       

The Zimmerman Jury Can Judge His Fate Much Better Than You

This morning, closing arguments in the trial of George Zimmerman concluded. Zimmerman's fate is now in the hands of the six women selected to consider the evidence. When the verdict is returned, whatever it happens to be, there's one thing that's important to remember: Those women know more than you.

Perhaps you feel as though the attorney's closing arguments were unimpeachable. Perhaps you agreed with defense attorney Mark O'Mara, who argued that Zimmerman's guilt had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If jurors felt that evidence was missing, the Associated Press reports him saying, "You can't fill in the gaps. You can't connect the dots. You're not allowed to."

Or perhaps the prosecution was compelling. Prosecutor John Guy disagreed with O'Mara, arguing that Zimmerman decided to kill Martin in cold blood. Again, the AP:

"The defendant didn't shoot Trayvon Martin because he had to, he shot him because he wanted to," Guy said. "That's the bottom line."

One juror, a young woman, appeared to wipe away a tear as Guy said nothing would ever bring back Martin.

Again: Your assessment is not less important than that of the jurors, but it is less informed. No matter how much of the trial you watched on CNN, those jurors almost certainly saw more of the evidence than you did. They held documents in their hands. They saw what the witnesses—and Zimmerman—were doing while not on camera. They were excluded from hearing evidence that the judge deemed inappropriate or inadmissible. They have been instructed on the specific components of the law. And, most important, they are the only ones who know what arguments are being used to persuade each other to reach a unanimous decision.

Each of these things is an important part of the process of a criminal trial; I'll break out why below. But again: While we can watch the trial through the keyhole provided by CNN, we should never convince ourselves that we know better than the people in that room.

This is admittedly personal. For much of the year 2009, I sat as a juror on a well-publicized trial in New York City. Thousands of people each year sit on juries, of course, but few sit on ones that last a long time and are the subject of intense scrutiny. And in few—including the one in my experience—are the repercussions as high as in the case presented to these six women.

Jurors must evaluate the evidence. While both sides present opening and closing arguments, the central component of a criminal trial is the evidence. And in our system, that evidence is introduced through witnesses. If the prosecution has computer analysis that shows important information, it must call a computer analyst to the stand to explain how it was developed. Every physical thing is linked to a human representative.

What this means is that the person and the evidence are inextricably linked. Jurors are asked to evaluate the witness as placeholders for the evidence. Not only in the case of eyewitness testimony—is the witness squirming in his seat? Does he seem believable?—but in expert testimony, too. Credentials are considered, but so is the presentation. Did that doctor seem uncertain in answering his question? Did she qualify her analysis? When the camera in the courtroom shows the lawyer asking the question and not the witness answering it, you're missing part of the evidence.

Physical evidence also offer details not conveyed over the television. Tiny details—textures, discolorations, notes—can all be elements that play into the decision-making process jurors use. Those details may not be conveyed, even in high-definition.

Then, of course, there is the response of the man on trial. What is George Zimmerman doing while the evidence is being presented? How is he reacting? Zimmerman is frequently shown during CNN's boradcast, but not always. His demeanor is something the jurors must consider.

This works both ways, by the way. The attorneys for either side are also watching the jurors, evaluating their reactions as the case is made. In our case, consultants sat in the audience, rarely taking their eyes off of us and taking notes in a notepad.

Jurors only see evidence that's admissible. Criminal trials are not about guilt. They are about whether or not someone broke a law. This is a very important distinction.

Imagine that laws didn't exist. If you killed someone, you are guilty of committing that act. But you are not guilty of murder, because murder requires a violation of the law. Or imagine that a law is passed so that murder requires the use of a gun. If you stab someone to death and are put on trial for murder, you should not be found guilty.

During a criminal trial, there are only three participants. There are the prosecution and defense, presenting evidence through witnesses and rebutting the evidence of their opponents. And then there is the jury, which is asked to evaluate it. The judge is a referee, there to evaluate the process, not the case. He or she evaluates the law. The judge knows the specific details of the statutes under consideration and makes determinations about which evidence is allowable in that context.

Courtroom observers—and non-sequestered people following press coverage—know things that a judge might consider unduly prejudicial if presented to a juror. As a person watching from the outside, you are more than welcome to judge the defendant based on that evidence. But if the judge excludes it from consideration by the jury, there's a reason, based in the law.

The jury only worries about what the law says. This is an important point, worth repeating. If that law states that murder requires a gun, the jury cannot find a serial strangler guilty of murder. When the jury retires for its deliberations, the instructions are clear: does the evidence presented in court surpass any reasonable doubt that the particular laws at issue—in the Zimmerman case, manslaughter or murder—were violated? The jury is not judging if Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. It is not evaluating if he is a thief or if he is cheating on his wife. It is there to read Florida's statutes and see if the evidence builds high enough that they are all convinced that Zimmerman should be punished.

Deliberations are much, much harder than they seem. The most surprising aspect of my jury service came in the sixth month, in the first hour that we all returned to the jury room and were asked to deliberate. (This was also the first moment that any of us ever spoke about the presented evidence with one another.) One component of the case seemed, to me, open-and-shut. I assumed that, of the twenty or so charges, it could be dealt with quickly. I was wrong. Disagreement was substantial and significant. Arguments were presented and the law assessed. Eventually, I changed my mind.

This is the process. As any Twelve Angry Men fan knows, it's people—regular people in an extraordinary circumstance—asked to work out any substantial differences of opinion. Imagine finding five random people on the street and coming to unified agreement on any issue. That's what these six women must do: reach a unanimous verdict on the matters of law before them. It's cajoling and argument and empathy and mind-reading and frustration for hours and hours. It was, if I'm honest, also fascinating and deeply enjoyable.

That you, on your own, decided George Zimmerman's guilt or innocence based on your sense of whether or not he killed Trayvon Martin is fine. It is your opinion. But when those six women, exhausted and perhaps frustrated, emerge from their sequestration to announce their verdict, remember that your disagreement is worth little to nothing. You didn't see the case they did. And the case they saw was the only one that matters.

       

A Flash of Light Didn't Blind the Asiana 214 Pilot

On Thursday, National Transportation Safety Board chairman Deborah Hersman provided her final incremental update on the on-site investigation following the deadly crash of Asiana flight 214 in San Francisco. Among those updates was a clarification on a statement by the pilot flying the plane, indicating that he saw a flash of light just before landing. While that comment sparked some speculation yesterday, according to the NTSB, the pilot doesn't think that flash affected his ability to land the plane. 

Specifically, the pilot told investigators that he could still see flight control instruments after the flash, which he believed to be the sun's reflection. Hersman also tentatively ruled out a few more mechanical factors that may have contributed to the disastrous landing, noting that investigators found "no anomalous behavior" in the autopilot, flight director and auto-throttles. The NTSB has also ruled out the possibility that the fire following the crash started by a punctured fuel tank. 

The agency also provided a few more detailed accounts of the scope of the damage from the crash. One particularly vivid account came from a first responder firefighter who entered one of the front doors of the plane. The firefighter described the contrast between the front and the back of the plane. He entered the front door of the aircraft, where he thought that it looked like "if you just fluffed the pillows a little bit you could turn the plane around" and send it out to its next flight. But then he kept waking. Further back, the damage got worse and worse. That's corroborated by a structural analysis of the plane post-crash, which notes that by the back of the plane, its structural integrity was essentially gone. Here's a post-fire photo of the interior of the plane, via the NTSB: 

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The NTSB is working on cleaning and returning personal items from passengers. They're also almost done removing debris from the debris field. The agency released a photo of the aftermath of the crash to show just how much debris they're talking about here: 

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There are still a number of questions out there about the events surrounding the crash, which killed two and injured over 100 people. Was the post-crash scene confusing? Is a communication breakdown to blame? What about the inexperience of the pilot flying the plane? Is pilot error even at fault? The NTSB, while providing quite a bit of information on their investigation to the media and the public, have been careful about not crossing the line into analysis at this point. And we'll have to wait awhile to find out what their thoughts are on probable cause. 

Hersman indicated that the final report from the agency on the crash shouldn't be ready for another year, on the fast side for their agency. But if they discover any particular safety issues that would prompt a recommendation from their agency, they might speak about that sooner. Hersman added that the information released to the public so far represents the "tip of the iceberg" in their investigation. 

       

Science Has This Average-Penis-Size Thing Nailed Down

Penis-measurers of the world, breathe easy: you have been validated. A new study, carried out by sexuality researchers at the University of Indiana, has found that the average erect penile size is exactly 14.15 cm. That number is notable not because it differs from previous studies, but just the opposite: it's quite in line with prior research, "suggesting that men likely self-report data accurately—or at least reliably—to research teams." (A choice excerpt: "Although many men may wish their penis were larger and may expend significant effort toward penile enlargement, this does not necessarily mean that men overreport their penile size to researchers.")

Carrying out a scientifically accurate study on erect penile size is hard difficult, it turns out, because most men have a strange tendency not to develop a full erection while being coldly observed by scientists wielding measuring sticks. Strange. Which is why studies such as this one must rely on men to self-report their sizes, which can also, err, arouse suspicion about the accuracy of this study, for obvious reasons: how do we know these penis stats confirm prior penis stats if these penis stats also rely on self-reported penises? It's a penis paradox!

Cleverly, Dr. Debby Herbenick incentivized men to be honest, as she explains on Psychology Today:

Unlike most previous studies of self-reported penis size, [subjects] had good reason to report accurate data to us because we were using their size data to match them to a condom that was sized to fit their erect penis. If they reported a bigger-than-reality size to us, they would get a baggier condom. If they reported a smaller-than-reality size to us, the condom would be too tight.

Well played. Except the condoms were more than just motivational ploys. "We didn't set out to be 'penis size researchers,' Dr. Herbenick explained in an email. "It was part of a larger study on condom fit—and the Discussion section of the study says a bit more about other fruitful areas of research."

Fruitfully enough, Herbenick's study produced another unexpected find. Unlike previous studies, this one took into account how men achieved the erection they were measuring. As it turns out, "oral stimulation of a man's penis resulted in reports of greater lengths and fantasy alone was associated with significantly smaller penile dimensions reported." This could suggest oral sex causes larger erections. Or—because correlation causation etcetera etcetera—it could mean men with larger penises are just more likely to be receiving oral sex in the first place.

Clearly, more research remains to be done. Which might is good news for penis-measurers.

       

The Next Bond Movie Will Look Like the Last Bond Movie

It was confirmed today that Skyfall director Sam Mendes will be back to direct the next James Bond movie. Supposedly the movie will be the first of a two-part story, but there's no word on whether Mendes will be doing the second one. I'm sure that Sony hopes that he will, given that Skyfall grossed over a billion dollars, making it the eighth highest-grossing film of all time. Who would have thought that the director of sensitive feelings-gunk like American Beauty would later go on to be a blockbuster action movie director. Maybe Lasse Hallström should direct the next Die Hard ? Could Joe Wright do a Tomb Raider movie or something? And conversely, maybe beleaguered Gore Verbinski could snap up some Richard LaGravenese script and reinvent himself as a tasteful mainstream awards-bait guy? Let's change the paradigms, man! Anyway, Skyfall 2: Before Skyrise will be in American theaters in November of 2015. Which, ha, we're all gonna be floating in the sea by then. Oh well. [Deadline]

On the completely opposite end of entertainment news, NBC has decided to cancel Betty White's prank show Betty White's Off Their Rockers. The show, which saw old people pullin' goofs on young folk, lasted two seasons. Which is a pretty good run for a show about that. I mean how long is a show about the elderly sneakin' gags on kids really going to last? I think two seasons is pretty good. Go home, old people, have a rest. And then if you want to prank some young people, go ahead and prank 'em. There doesn't need to be cameras. Just go do it. (Full disclosure: A friend of mine was once pranked on Off Their Rockers. I'm sure the Atlantic Media legal department would like me to be upfront about that.) [Variety]

Carla Gugino has been cast in Wayward Pines, the "event series" that M. Night Shyamalan is doing for Fox. She'll play a Secret Service agent who used to be partners with Matt Dillon's character, who is still a Secret Service agent. The series is about a weird town where weird things happen. Is one of the weird things a dome? Because if there's not a dome on this series I'm not really sure I want to watch it. I'm pretty strictly into dome-related TV shows these days. "No dome? No dice." That's my motto. So, get on that Shyamalan. Make sure there's a dome. There has to be a dome. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Click through the link here to see an amaaaazing clip of Cate Blanchett having an emotional freakout in the new Woody Allen movie Blue Jasmine. I mean is there anything better than Cate Blanchett doing things? I just don't think there is. Especially when she plays a tightly wound WASPy American lady. Meredith Logue and now Blue Jasmine. More please. More! [Entertainment Weekly]

And here is a trailer for Christian Bale in a hill-country crime drama called Out of the Furnace, about two brothers (the other one is Casey Affleck), one of whom gets in trouble and needs his brother to get him out of it. I don't know if he's in an actual furnace, but judging from the trailer it doesn't look like it. I don't see a furnace anywhere, but who knows. There could be a furnace! What we do know for sure is that there's Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson, Sam Shepard, and Forest Whitaker.

       

How the NSA's Microsoft Snooping Might Work

When we published our comprehensive guide to hiding your online activity from the NSA, we suggested you give Microsoft (and other big tech companies) a wide berth if your goal was privacy protection. Reports on Thursday about how the company allows the government to observe user data seem to have validated that paranoia. But how it shares data isn't clear. We decided to try and figure it out.

Micah Lee, the staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who helped us put together our initial guide, conferred with us on the technical aspects of how the company might be letting the NSA access user data. We'll note: This is speculation—but speculation from someone well-suited to speculate.

Email

The Guardian report describes the government's ability to see user emails:

Another [NSA] newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."

("Encryption" refers to the process of digitally scrambling a communication.)

What's being referred to here is probably not HTTPS encryption—encryption between the user and the email server—Lee notes. That would require accessing your email before data is sent to Microsoft. Instead, Lee suggests that the NSA probably means that it has access to emails before they are encrypted for storage on the email server.

Web chats

The Guardian:

Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats.

A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012."

The way this could work is fairly straightforward. A chat goes from one user to another through the Microsoft server. The surveillance capability likely necessitates a point at which the chat is decrypted on the Microsoft server, and stored or sent to the NSA for review. The language is unclear, as ZDNet notes; "capability to dael" with encryption may not be the same as "decryption." But it's clear: the NSA feels confident it can be read.

That point at which your message could be exposed is something Lee, in our guide to protecting your privacy, warned against. "The lesson to be had here is that, if you're using a service and you really need privacy, you need to make sure that the service doesn't have access to the plain text of your messages," he told us today.

He again recommended "peer-to-peer encryption"—encryption that only the two users in a conversation can unlock. Using a tool like Off-The-Record Messaging allows you to send peer-to-peer messages over messaging systems like AOL and GChat. If it worked with Outlook's web chat—which it doesn't yet seem to—you'd encrypt a message in OTR Messaging which Microsoft would then encrypt again to ship to its server. If the NSA is given access to the message, it would see it after Microsoft's encryption is removed—meaning they'd still see your scrambled, encrypted message. They couldn't do much with that. Not until it gets to the other user (who has your secret decrypting key) could it be decoded.

Direct access

In its response to The Guardian's article, Microsoft made a point of noting that "Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket or direct access to … any Microsoft product." So how could surveillance like monitoring chats work?

It depends on how you define "direct access," Lee said. The companies that work with the government, such as Microsoft, likely have tools that allow for compliance that could be in near real time. "It isn't just giving intelligence agencies accounts on their servers to log in the way employees would," Lee speculates, "but automated systems to comply with requests." For example, if a targeted user sends a chat, that chat could be sent from Microsoft's servers to an NSA-viewable server immediately. The company could argue that this doesn't constitute direct access to the product. But again, this is speculation. How the NSA monitors real-time conversations isn't clear.

Bringing us to:

Skype

The Guardian lifts up the NSA's Skype developments in particular.

One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. "The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture'," it says.

Skype is simply the video and audio version of a web chat. You speak, it's encrypted and sent to Microsoft, Microsoft sends that on to the other participant. The point of weakness is, again, Microsoft. So how does the NSA peek in? Perhaps Microsoft ships decrypted conversations for certain users to the NSA. Or perhaps the NSA is streamed a live feed of a video conversation. As the NSA's clever pun suggests, there is some heavy processing happening as the NSA is trying to observe a conversation. If the conversation came as a complete, stored file, that sort of processing power seems superfluous. It's like adding a splitter to a hose. You still get the water you were expecting, but now it can be sent somewhere else, too.

Again: This is largely speculation. How Microsoft responds to government data requests—which require warrants or directives from a court—isn't clear. But Lee has a recommendation anyway. "Maybe," he says, "it would be a good time to stop using Skype and Outlook.com."

       

'Fox and Friends' Is Not Very Kid-Friendly

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cellphone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why, every day, The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

Fox and Friends had a special guest on Thursday's show: Titus, the amazing 2-year-old baller and Jimmy Kimmel regular. He was on fire, as host Brian Kilmeade constantly observed — that is, until Kilmeade decided to ruin his streak with a basketball to the face: 

That was sad, but funny-sad, right?  Anyway, this next video is much happier. Instead of printing out guns and stuff, 3D-printers can be used to print out artificial limbs for animals—like ducks. And the result is glorious: 

And just in time for summer (or, actually, a bit late, but whatever), we present the different ways to burn 200 calories. Our favorite option is involves the couch and four sitcoms: 

And finally, here is the smartest impala on the planet: 

       

The True Story of the Fake Meeting Between Dickens and Dostoevsky

In 1862, Fyodor Dostoevsky, then a writer of little renown traveling to Western Europe for the first time, dropped by Charles Dickens's offices in London and engaged the English novelist in an intimate chat. Dostoevsky had read and enjoyed some of the writer's works while in prison, Claire Tomalin explains in her 2011 biography of Dickens, and he reflected on this astounding episode 16 years later in a letter to a friend. "He told me that all the good people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been," Dostoevsky recalled, "and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of causeless enmity towards those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort." More than 20 years before Robert Louis Stevenson first published Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, it seems, Dickens described to his Russian contemporary the dual nature of man that he sought to depict in his characters: "There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite." 

It's a remarkable story, so it's no wonder that Michiko Kakutani chose to highlight it in her New York Times review of Tomalin's book.

A remarkable story, except for the minor detail that it never took place. Nor, scholars believe, did the two literary figures ever meet at all.

Eric Naiman, a professor in the department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the first to doubt the veracity of the anecdote. "I have been teaching courses on Dostoevsky for over two decades, but I had never come across any mention of this encounter," Naiman recalled, in an April essay for The Times Literary Supplement. The holes were glaring: What language did the two use to converse? Why would Dickens share such intimate perspective with Dostoevsky, whose works he had not likely read? Why was the story absent from Dostoevsky's published letters and previous biographies? (In addition to Tomalin's book, it had also popped up in Michael Slater's biography two years prior. Dostoevsky's recollection of the encounter had supposedly been chronicled in Vedomosti Akademii Nauk Kazakskoi, a journal that turned out not to exist.)

So Naiman traced the first mention of the mythical meeting to a 2002 article in the Dickensian, "the organ of the Dickens Fellowship," by one Stephanie Harvey, who mentioned the story so matter-of-factly that all but the most skeptical of literary scholars would be (indeed, were) convinced. When the editor of the Dickensian wrote Harvey asking for further documentation, "she responded that she had lost her notes, had a poor memory, and had moved on to other topics"; when he wrote back, he received an email from Ms. Harvey's sister explaining that the scholar had suffered severe brain damage in a car crash and would not be able to reply. Weird, no? But Naiman, who chronicled his academic wild goose chase in astonishing detail, kept digging, locating some of Ms. Harvey's previous work and eventually uncovering a baffling web of seemingly fictitious academics—whose ranks, in addition to Stephanie Harvey, include Graham Headley, Trevor McGovern, John Schellenberger, Leo Bellingham, Michael Lindsay, and Ludovico Parra—who seemed to have spent upwards of three decades citing and praising and picking apart and criticizing each others' work despite possessing few biographic attributes and occasionally committing (self-)plagiarism with unscrupulous abandon. (In one instance, "Trevor McGovern" published a journal article that turned out to be an entire chapter from a 1978 text with only the first and last sentence altered.) 

Yes, as you've by now probably surmised, Naiman traced each of these academic identities back to one very strange man. Meet Arnold—or AD Harvey, as he calls himself professionally—an obscure London writer and self-described "rejected scholar" who has spent decades wielding a grab bag of scholarly pen names, both to share his research and make mischief. All that, unfurled by a single, fabricated literary anecdote, tucked in the annals of a ten-year-old journal article.  

Anyway, Arnold, exactly three months after being outed, is now the subject of an utterly fascinating profile in The Guardian, an alternately sad and brutally funny portrait of an embittered academic who has channeled his professional failings into an intricate entanglement of academic pranks. Below are some highlights from the mind of AD Arnold, as told to The Guardian's Stephen Moss.

On being a "rejected scholar":

"I'm not an independent scholar," he says, "I'm a scholar who couldn't get a job, a rejected scholar. I didn't choose to be independent. The fact that I was producing books and by 1979 had had half a dozen scholarly articles published, half of them in English literature, half of them in history, to anyone else that would look interesting, but to an academic it looks 'Why can't we do this? There's something wrong with this man.' What makes it look interesting to other people makes it look appalling to academics."

On his decision to begin inventing identities—and his belief in an academic conspiracy working against him:

"I think I was perfectly entitled to do this," he says. "If I was having work rejected because it had my name on it, I was entitled to send in a perfectly decent piece of work with another name."

On being "creative and inventive," not vengeful and bizarre:

"You have failed to detect two things about me," he says. "Yes, I have some of the instincts of the troublemaker. But the other thing is I am creative and inventive. You might have been like this if you hadn't gone into daily journalism. [I try not to take this personally.] It was a jeu d'esprit. Yes, I was misleading the editor of the Dickensian, but it's caveat emptor."

On America's role in the Dickens/Dostoevsky tale:

"What I hadn't bargained for," admits Harvey, "was how much interest there would be in the Dickens and Dostoevsky thing in America. It wouldn't have been noticed if it hadn't been for the Americans."

On what might have been, if only:

"How does the life we live relate to the lives we might have lived or ought to have lived?" he asks rhetorically. "If I'd had the life I ought to have lived, I would have had a junior research fellowship, a fellowship, marriage, marital breakdown, boredom, frustration, might have gone into politics, might have risen to minister of state, then more boredom and frustration. The pattern wouldn't have been that much different in my view."

Now that the gig is up, Harvey, who "has no computer at home, has to go to libraries to get online, writes everything longhand, and pays a typist to type it up," says he is slowing down. Alas. But his work—or mischief—leaves much to be discovered.

Read The Guardian's profile here. Read Eric Naiman's exhausting investigation here. Congratulate Professor Naiman on his admirable detective work here.