Online Reputation Ruin: A Victim's Memoir

A lawyer friend recently told me there were two ways to exact revenge in the 21st century: The rich and powerful use the legal system. For the rest of us, there’s the Internet.

James Lasdun’s memoir, Give Me Everything You Have, is his true account of just how horrible an Internet vendetta can be. It describes his experience as a graduate writing professor mentoring a former student, Nasreen (not her real name), an Iranian woman working on her first novel. If it’s difficult to believe Lasdun didn’t have designs on her—I struggled with this in early chapters—it becomes easier to accept as we get to know him better: He’s aloof in that classic professorial manner. Lasdun is a celebrated poet and novelist, but for all his verbal acuity, he comes off as a little naive. When he describes Nasreen as sophisticated about the Internet—“she was always sending links and attachments,” he writes—you begin to sense where things are headed.