'The Fabulist' review: George Santos uncovered

What is it in our culture that creates a George Santos? Though his lies were unusual, the disgraced congressman from Long Island is not a unique phenomenon. Many social-media profiles feature largely fabricated or at least highly curated personas. Countless bestselling memoirs are riddled with exaggerations or outright inventions for the sake of compelling narratives. Reality TV stars are performers playing characters in a simulacrum of “real life."

In former Newsday columnist Mark Chiusano’s new book, “The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos,” Santos is treated like a mystery to solve or perhaps a patient to analyze as his strange little falsehoods are given as much scrutiny as his federal crimes.

Chiusano has covered Santos since 2019, three years before Santos won a congressional seat in Nassau County. Even back then, Chiusano questioned inconsistencies in Santos’ claims, leading Santos to block him on Twitter. Santos has also called “The Fabulist” a “grift.” Of course, he would, as Chiusano details every sad, confounding white lie told by Santos, as well as his 23 felonies, and the bilking of thousands of dollars from donors to fund a lavish lifestyle, leading to his ousting from Congress on Dec. 2. Chiusano digs deeply into Santos’ past, uncovering a long history of scams started at age 19 in his ancestral home of Brazil.

By now we have heard all the outrageous lies and crimes. Chiusano’s book offers not just a contextualization of those deceptions but also a fuller, even compassionate story, a piecing together of a complex character. And Santos is truly a character, one that is fully constructed. “The Fabulist” also explores Santos’ incalculable smaller scams, myriad aliases, and innumerable grifts only partially covered by the mainstream press, as well as the many people he betrayed and swindled along the way.

For the literary-minded, the fact that Santos served the same congressional district that was the setting for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is a fascinating irony. Fitzgerald’s novel was also about the hoodwinking of an unsuspecting public.

Chiusano’s analytical approach illuminates how someone as anonymous and inexperienced as Santos was able to earn a seat in Congress. Santos rode a wave of anti-vaccination, anti-masking, Blue Lives Matter and anti-AOC sentiments held throughout Nassau County at the time.

“Modern Long Island is neither firmly red nor blue, but rather acts as a kind of swinging bellwether and microcosm of national political currents,” writes Chiusano.

At first blush it feels as though Chiusano might have an axe to grind by parsing trivial fibs that center on Santos’ background or appearance, which held little consequence in his job as a congressman. It becomes clear that the journalist is presenting a comprehensive portrait of a grand fabricator and the society that created him.

“Some of the great con artists,” writes Chiusano, “particularly those with active imaginations, seem to be similarly susceptible to the zeitgeist. Their cons are in the field of the moment.”

The “moment” for Santos was elected politics, the “perfect place for a status-conscious person interested in performance, storytelling, money, and messiness,” writes Chiusano.

“Santos,” writes Chiusano, “had a knack for knowing what a crowd wanted to hear at the right moment.” Chiusano investigates how so many people could have fallen for Santos’ charade.

“People tend to be biased toward thinking statements they hear are true,” writes Chiusano. “Hypotheses for this truth bias includes it would be too chaotic to go through life always suspicious of everything you’re told. We think we’ll know when someone’s lying to our face, but that’s not the case.”

Chiusano laments what the legacy of a person like Santos portends. Since Santos has been found out and we continue to unpack his crimes and lies, the former congressman has become a pop culture item, in effect, “winning” infamy. Perhaps our culture has finally entered a kind of nihilism where nothing matters anymore, least of all the truth. Chiusano leaves us with an eerie but valid thought: Political parties should work harder to vet their candidates — but who would be interested in the facts, who would pay attention anymore to what’s real?

CORRECTION: George Santos defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman to win the seat representing the 3rd Congressional District. A previous version of this review suggested Santos had beaten another rival.