‘The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos’
By Mark Chiusano
c. 2023, Atria/One Signal
$28.99/320 pages
Feel that little tug?
It’s probably nothing to worry about, it’s not important. It’s just that someone’s trying to pull your leg, to make you believe something that’s not true or doesn’t exist. Just a little tug, right above your ankle, no problem. You might not even notice it unless, as in “The Fabulist” by Mark Chiusano, the wool’s pulled over your eyes, too.
A little more than four years ago, Mark Chiusano first spoke with former Rep. George Santos over the phone for a newspaper story, and red flags popped up immediately. Says journalist Chiusano, Santos kept offering conflicting stories about this or that in their initial interview and other, later, conversations featured uncomfortable inconsistencies. Soon, any contact with Santos began to have “an uneasiness to it.”
There was a reason: spinning stories, as it turned out, was something Santos had been practicing since he was young, and he was really good at doing it.
Santos was so good at tale-spinning that, while reporting on Santos, Chiusano watched as highly experienced detectives and other professionals accepted Santos’s lies as truth, though many of his stories were verifiably false. He was so well-practiced at lying, Chiusano says, that eventually, Santos’s habit of telling rich childhood whoppers grew into a talent for creating giant cons, including the biggest one of all: running for public office, and all that it entailed.
In politics, Chiusano notes, Santos was “suddenly surrounded by rich people” and they weren’t just random gullibles to cold call.
“Now,” says Chiusano, ”they were at his fundraisers, or on his call lists.”
It’s been said that to know the story, follow the money but that’s not easy when you’re trying to understand George Santos. But let’s be clear, though: it’s not author Mark Chiusano’s fault here. The trail of allegations, cons, drag shows, pants-on-fire, money-grabbing, and tall tales is a long and convoluted one (or more), and it nearly requires a mathematical diagram to untangle. The difficulty lies in the lies that, as recounted in “The Fabulist,” are unrelenting, astounding, and (let’s be honest), ridiculous in flashing neon, which makes them almost ruefully funny in their brazenness.
Shake your head. Go on.
At just about every page, you’ll ask yourself how this ever happened at a time when claims can so very easily be fact-checked. Absolutely, this will lead to a thick air of disbelief in the sheer amount of cons that “George and Anthony and Devolder and Santos” is said to have pulled off – and one way or another you’re likely going to have emotions about that.
On that subject, Chiusano cautions readers not to be armchair psychologists. Indeed, while you’ll note a bit of extrapolating in what you’ll read here, Chiusano seems mostly facts-only neutral, outside of his author’s note and introduction.
Readers may marvel at that, and the Herculean effort that might have taken.
Followers of politics and readers who’ve been watching the saga of George Santos will devour “The Fabulist.” If you love a good, romping head-shaker, pull this one off the shelves.
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