Jason Arday should ask for a cover charge. His entertainment value is that splendid. For the last couple of weeks, the “youngest ever black professor” at the University of Cambridge has been a nearly ubiquitous and nonstop source of hilarity. The proximate catalyst for the comedy is the imminent publication of Great and Unfortunate Things, co-written with the “book doctor” Eve Claxton. It is due out on August 11 from Simon & Schuster. Amazon lists it as an “Editor’s Pick” of “Best Biographies & Memories.” “A story of resilience, dignity, and the extraordinary power of those who hold steady for us when we cannot yet hold steady for ourselves,” says one blurber. “Makes you believe in the transformative power of grit and the magic of a mother’s love,” quoth another. A story easily worth the “$1.4 million” advance that Jason said he was offered for the book (though that figure is disputed). Did you know that poor Jason, now 41, was “diagnosed with autism and developmental delays at age three, and experts told his parents he would never speak, write, or live independently”?
And that was the least of Jason’s trials. The Atlantic got hold of an advance copy of the book and drew attention to what some have delicately described as numerous “inconsistencies” in Arday’s account of his life story. Comparing the final book with the book proposal, the author of “Icarus in the Faculty Lounge” uncovers some amazing things. In his proposal, Arday recounts being hit by a car, spending months in a sort of conscious coma, then waking up and having to relearn “everything—how to walk, to talk.” That remarkable experience is, we are told, entirely omitted from the book, as is his bout with testicular cancer (in the book he grapples with not one but two brain tumors). Arday has apparently never been to Brazil, but that quotidian fact did not prevent him from encountering a mysterious “shaman woman” there who predicted that he would suffer greatly but also achieve great things. “Every event she described has since come to pass,” he wrote.
Read Full Article: https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/09/great-and-unfortunate-fabrications/
