5-star reviews for a fabulist memoir

Jason Arday, the serial fabulist who resigned last week from Cambridge University, released his memoir “Great and Unfortunate Things” on Tuesday. As of this writing, the book had a 4.18 average from 103 ratings on Goodreads. Fully 48% give Arday five stars. Another 37% give him four. Two stars or below? A mere 7%.

The Goodreads jury, apparently, has reached its verdict: The story of a nonverbal autistic boy who could not read until 18 and then rocketed all the way to becoming Cambridge’s youngest black professor is sacred.

When the demand for underrepresented heroes outstrips the supply, fabulists and frauds have an opening. More important, they have an ecosystem.

The reviews are replete with the language of wonder. One called the book “the improbable-but-true story” and awarded five stars “for the basic premise alone,” adding: “You make this stuff up (sic).” Truer words!

Another declared that Arday becoming a college graduate a mere five years after becoming fully literate was “nothing short of amazing.” Others called his accomplishments “truly unbelievable,” his memoir “incredibly moving” and “incredibly inspirational.”

Incredible. Amazing. Unbelievable. The reviewers keep reaching for exactly the right words without quite noticing what those words might mean.

Never mind that Arday stepped down August 5 after Cambridge opened an investigation into his academic qualifications and honorary appointments. Never mind the detailed allegations of extensive textual overlap in his doctoral thesis. Forget the questions surrounding his athletic feats, fundraising claims, and résumé. Pay no attention to the rather awkward question raised by the tale of a man who supposedly learned to read at 18 and graduated from a prestigious institution five years later.

The Goodreads crowd had already rendered its rapturous verdict.

Among the first two dozen or so reviews visible on the site, nearly all awarded four or five stars. Almost nobody stopped to wonder whether the “unbelievable” story might, in fact, be unbelievable.

Why would they? The story delivers everything the contemporary literary class has been trained to admire: a black autistic man overcoming a racist and ableist system; a fierce immigrant mother redeeming her son; grit and determination carrying him into the heights of the ivory tower. It is less a memoir than a perfect machine for producing approved emotions.

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Even reviewers who finished the book after the scandal broke offered only careful, almost apologetic caveats. One finished the memoir, Googled Arday, discovered the plagiarism reports and resignation “only hours” earlier — and still found the book “well written” and “fascinating.”

Several reviewers thanked 37INK, a Simon & Schuster imprint devoted to publishing black authors, for providing advance review copies through NetGalley. NetGalley collects volunteer reviewers whose preferences are already known. Publishers naturally use such networks to build early attention and enthusiasm around books they hope to sell.

Nothing sinister is required here. That’s practically the point.

The machinery works because everyone already knows the story he is supposed to like. The publisher finds the audience. The audience recognizes the moral cues. The reviewers supply the adjectives. By publication day, a book whose author is already engulfed in questions about his biography can arrive wrapped in a halo of “incredible,” “amazing,” and “inspirational.”

Amazon, where reviews could not be posted until the book was actually released, appears much less enchanted. Even 37INK, perhaps wisely, does not feature the book on its home page.

When the demand for underrepresented heroes outstrips the supply, fabulists and frauds have an opening. More important, they have an ecosystem.

The university hires. The publisher packages. The advance readers applaud. And by the time anyone asks whether the inspirational story is true, the five stars are already in.