Jonah Lehrer is so very close to giving us an on-the-record first-hand account about all that self-plagiarizing, his resignation from The New Yorker, and his made-up Bob Dylan quotes--he just has to finish writing it. "I’m writing something about the mistake and affair myself, if only so I can learn from the failing, and I’d prefer not to talk until my writing is done," writes Jonah Lehrer in an e-mail to Los Angeles magazine's Amy Wallace. So you know what that means: an essay is on the way. Wallace doesn't really find out the specifics of what Lehrer's "writing", or the biggest question we have, just who's going to publish it?

But Lehrer does write her, "I’m extremely tempted to correct many of the false accusations that have been made about my work in recent weeks," before declining to answer any more of Wallace's questions. So there you have it: the reason that there haven't been any incremental corrections to stories that may be erroneous and the reason requests to eliminate false accusations haven't been made is because there's a piece of Lehrer "writing" in the works. A piece of "writing" that addresses all those issues, and one that now has a bit of hype to it. We dropped Lehrer (his representatives) an e-mail, to see if he would answer our questions about his "writing", and will update if he gets back to us.  

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Alexander Abad-Santos