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How Quentin Rowan (aka Q.R. Markham) went from aspiring writer to serial plagiarist—and how everything unraveled after the publication of his spy novel, Assassin of Secrets:

By then, the mystery about whether Rowan was, so to speak, an authentic plagiarist had been solved. Two days earlier, he’d sent a series of apologetic e-mails to Jeremy Duns, who posted them on his blog. ‘I just wanted to make the best ’60s spy novel I could,” Rowan wrote, adding that he was not “playing a prank.” He signed off, “Gosh I wish I could do it all over.” He was picking up the odds and ends of his life. Little, Brown asked that he pay back his advance—fifteen thousand dollars, for two books—and reimburse the company for the book’s production costs. He was no longer welcome at the bookstore. He’d been about to move in with his girlfriend, a lawyer, but she broke up with him, and he was planning to move to Seattle. Rowan said that for the past fifteen years he had been dreading being discovered as a plagiarist—“Lots of waking up in the middle of the night and looking in the mirror.” Now he seemed dazed. “I couldn’t really envision it, to be honest,” he said. “I couldn’t envision what it would entail, except humiliation.”

“The Plagiarist’s Tale.” — Lizzie Widdicombe, The New Yorker

See also: “The History of Dialogue: Other People’s Papers.” — The New Inquiry, June 22, 2011

Exploring the social etiquette of Couchsurfing.org—and how its rapid growth is challenging the community’s expectations of safety and mutual respect:

Orange Acres takes all kinds, provided you follow a few simple rules:

• No alcoholics, crackheads, or members of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, or PETA

• ‘[O]n the subject of hippies and rainbow people,’ please don’t wear patchouli oil: ‘That stuff stinks forever’—and bring your own pillowcase if you have dreadlocks.

• Happy Hour starts at 6:30 p.m.; during that time—and only during that time—you may drink beer or smoke pot. Do not get shitfaced or you will be thrown out of the house. If you drink and try to drive, Jeff will handcuff you to a chair and call the cops. 

• Dogs and children must be on leashes. This is non-negotiable.

“The place really is not a commune; it is a dictatorship,” Halvorson tells me.”

“I Couch-Surfed Across America.” — Tim Murphy, Mother Jones

See also: “A Girls’ Guide to Saudi Arabia.” — Maureen Dowd, Vanity Fair, Aug. 1, 2010

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Washington Monthly, The Millions, a fiction pick, plus a guest pick from Alexandra Jaffe.

Nieman Storyboard’s “Why’s This So Good” explores what makes classic narrative nonfiction stories worth reading.

This week, Andrea Pitzer examines Susan Orlean’s “Orchid Fever,” which was originally published in The New Yorker on Jan. 23, 1995.

Orlean builds her study of obsession out of a vocabulary of desire and devastation, ranging from the apocalyptic to the sexually charged. Laroche’s own “passions boil up quickly and end abruptly, like tornadoes.” In the Fakahatchee, the rocks have crevices, the trees have crotches, and the orchids invite erotic speculation. Mere friction is enough to ignite the grass, literally setting cars on fire, leaving behind “pan-fried tourists” and the carcasses of burned-out Model Ts.

“Why’s This So Good?” No. 31: Susan Orlean Maps Obsession

The strange story of Martin Amis’s lost book, Invasion of the Space Invaders, which offered tips on how to play video games like PacMan:

He is almost as enthusiastic about PacMan, although you get the sense that he sees it (in contrast to Space Invaders) as a fundamentally unserious endeavor. “Those cute little PacMen with their special nicknames, that dinky signature tune, the dot-munching Lemon that goes whackawhackawhackawhacka: the machine has an air of childish whimsicality.” His advice is to concentrate stolidly on the central business of dot-munching, and not to get distracted by the shallow glamor of the fruits: “Do I take risks in order to gobble up the fruit symbol in the middle of the screen? I do not, and neither should you. Like the fat and harmless saucer in Missile Command (q.v.), the fruit symbol is there simply to tempt you into hubristic sorties. Bag it.”

“The Arcades Project: Martin Amis’ Guide to Classic Video Games.” — Mark O’Connell, The Millions

See also: “Video Games: The Addiction.” — Tom Bissell, The Guardian, March 21, 2010

Even that Tuesday, a pattern had begun to emerge. The beating was always fiercest in the first few minutes, an aggressiveness that Colonel Qaddafi’s bizarre and twisted four decades of rule inculcated in a society that feels disfigured. It didn’t matter that we were bound, or that Lynsey was a woman. But moments of kindness inevitably emerged, drawing on a culture’s far deeper instinct for hospitality and generosity. A soldier brought Tyler and Anthony, sitting in a pickup, dates and an orange drink. Lynsey had to talk to a soldier’s wife who, in English, called her a donkey and a dog. Then they unbound Lynsey and, sitting in another truck, gave Steve and her something to drink.

“4 Times Journalists Held Captive in Libya Faced Days of Brutality.” — Anthony Shadid, Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell and Tyler Hicks, The New York Times, March 22, 2011

Photo: ANTHONY SHADID. The reporter, middle right, interviewed residents of Imbaba, a lower-class neighborhood of Cairo, on Feb. 2, during the days of street demonstrations leading to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. (Credit: Ed Ou for The New York Times)

Featured Longreader: Jan de la Rosa, YAlit enthusiast. See her story picks from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Guernica, plus more on her #longreads page.

The power of habits in guiding our behavior—and how companies like Target have used customer data to create new buying habits:

There are, however, some brief periods in a person’s life when old routines fall apart and buying habits are suddenly in flux. One of those moments — the moment, really — is right around the birth of a child, when parents are exhausted and overwhelmed and their shopping patterns and brand loyalties are up for grabs. But as Target’s marketers explained to Pole, timing is everything. Because birth records are usually public, the moment a couple have a new baby, they are almost instantaneously barraged with offers and incentives and advertisements from all sorts of companies. Which means that the key is to reach them earlier, before any other retailers know a baby is on the way. Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things, like prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing. ‘Can you give us a list?’ the marketers asked.

“How Companies Learn Your Secrets.” — Charles Duhigg, New York Times

See more #longreads from Charles Duhigg

The art of writing romance novels:

The romance heroine, though possessed of heart, intelligence and beauty, is at the mercy of her own self-criticism most of the time. As the story begins, she is scared and isolated, poor, or abandoned, or lonely. Not infrequently, the book opens with her having just suffered some terrible loss; her husband has just died in a plane crash, or her parents or beloved guardians have died, and now she is forced to work as a paid companion to a rich and disagreeable widow, maybe, or she’s just come to Australia from England to live with her grandfather, who is mean as a snake. Then she runs into an unusual and interesting man who openly demonstrates his dislike for her, or else pretty much ignores her entirely.

Difficulties will multiply. And almost always, as the tension builds, the heroine is beset with doubts about her own competence, attractiveness and worth.

That’s just how I feel! the reader cries inwardly.

“Romance Novels, The Last Great Bastion Of Underground Writing.” — Maria Bustillos, The Awl

See more #longreads by Maria Bustillos

[Fiction] A favor from an ex, with a catch:

DENNIS

Let me guess. Is this about money? Now that I have it? Or do you suddenly need me on some emotional level heretofore unrealized?

Pause.

JOSH

Yes. I need money.

Silence.

“Turnabout.” — Daniel Reitz, Guernica

See more #fiction #longreads