A strange thing happened on October 8th. Commentary began to circulate about an interview with Chris Brown in the Guardian, propelled by the implications of an offhand reference he made to his own sexual history. Brown described his first sexual encounter at the age of eight with a teenage girl. The reaction itself, originating largely from a Flavorwire response to the interview, arrived on a Tuesday, a full four days after the interview was…

A fabulist is a fabricator in the total sense of the word, a forger but also a constructor, someone who tells lies in the service of a grand project. The fabulist is always an aspirational figure, and the personal legend they create is the means by which they achieve their desired position, however briefly. It seems as though every few years, the popular imagination is stirred by the exposure of a fabulist. An ambitious charlatan…