was one of Nick Sylvester's Village Voice headlines. Now the dude is sincerely fucked. After admitting to fabricating part of a cover story for the once-reputable and now quite-failing liberal newsmag, he's been suspended and probably ruined forever. Or for the time being. He's 24.
Punch in "Sylvester" on Gawker,
first. Read about the new management and how Sylvester wrote a fake lede in an article about a Neil Strauss book. Then start here.
In addition to the much-maligned Voice story -- which has been removed from the Voice website (though it's on newsstands so check it while you can!) but is
nicely summarized by Ben Pale Wire -- the AP has jumped on an article he wrote for an
August Voice education supplement, calling him on his major bullshit, there, too.
But some of the guys at I Love Music (
wade through if you like!) are trying to defend their fallen brother, if you can believe it, on the grounds that anyone familiar with his writing style should know that he's prone to
hyperpole and
glib off-the-cuff 'tude (an exaggerated version of us) like some hyper-Thompson or Wolfe
quasi-fiction. Someone there suggested that he's in the vein of classic gonzo journalism, the fiction-riddled pieces that ran back in the day whose point was moral, not truth. Uh huh.
His admittedly hilarious blog
Riff Central, which ran fake interviews with The Arcade Fire and The Game, I guess, is where he ought to be confined to, former
Harvard Lampoon editor that he is. Naw, that's harsh. I can't say I'm happy to see his ass canned at Pitchfork, where he's just been taken off the masthead (and a mere suspension at the
Voice, no less!), but I can't tell you how many times Ferd and I have wanted one of these
Look At Me, Not The Music writers, rife within the pages of Sylvester's periodicals as well as
Spin (talk about a tailspin! but more on that, later, when I present my "the demise of the music writer" post), Chris Ott's
Perfect Sound Forever, my beloved alma mater Stylus Magazine, to an extent, and countless other webzines, to get their big.
Sylvester's one divisive dude. On one hand, it's pretty hard to refute his knack for pioneering the second wave of "I write like I'm too busy for this shit" (whose repercussions are much at hand at the Voice and, obviously, at
Pitchfork). And check our sidebar links for Riff Raff, his own
Voice blog that gets mad props from this little Seat here. But even the slightest glance will prove his ever-leaning tendencies towards a growing confidence in his apparent logorrhea (here, pick your
favorite review!) and the absurd. This is the guy who got booed offstage for
reading The New Yorker at The Plug Awards instead of introducing the album of the year award. And though former Pitchfork god Brent DiCrescenzo vouches for his character, much like the current acting ed in chief at the Voice, he still
lambasts his lack "of syntax whatsoever, approaches writing like it's a Pollock, and spews adjectives he picks up on East Side streets into an obtuse approximation of 'sentences.'"
So is he swelling with his own hubris? He can't be an idiot (he went to Harvard, geez!) and any journalist, fake or not, knows you don't lie. Even the kids at
our own shit rag know that. So are these Gawker exclusives for real? Did he really not know that this was front page business, not a jokey riff (no pun intended!) deep in the
Voice music section? I dunno, men. But frankly, no matter how many loving anecdotes I'm going to get from kids who went to Harvard with him, toured with Harvard with him, or worked at the Voice with him, I'll still be dubious. Moral of the story? Fuck this guy's panache. Rent
All The President's Men.
Much, much respect for the folks at the aforelinked Sound Opinions Message Board and ILM, the latter a major hub of know-their-shit music writers. And peruse Gawker for other stories about some fundamentally wack shit he's pulled, proving himself to be writer first, journo second.
