Betrayed! Today's Times has a story on just how hot Marisha Pessl is ... which they chose to illustrate with a photo that is NOT HOT AT ALL. It's the most egregious display of two-face we've ever witnessed. See for yourselves:

vs.

Deceiver! Janus of the ingenue-lit set! Now we will have to judge your novel on its merits!

Special Topics in Calamity Physics," by Marisha Pessl [Amazon]

[UPDATE 3:37 p.m.: Gawker, you have things backward!]

Actress/playwright/author Marisha Pessl, Barnard '00, is going to be huge. Her new book, "Special Topics in Calamity Physics," is two parts Nabokov, one part Salinger, with some Pynchon thrown in just for shits. Just 27, she's poised to join the Foer-Smith-Eggers club as the voice of her generation. And oh yeah -- she's smoking hot, those raven locks twisting 'round her alabaster face ... "Gatey," she purrs to us in our dreams. "Read my flashily erudite first novel, a sly satire of academia crowded with jokey literary references. Enjoin my--"

No! Damn it, we will not let her gank our hearts. Not again. Oh, Kaavya, you precedent you. Your Schiavo-like gaze may not have set our hearts askitter like fair Pessl, but O! What big numbers you had. The better to seduce us with: Half a mil at age 18 for two titles, quality irrelevant. Those were figures we could get behind, salivate over, semi-plausibly obtain for our own hacky manuscripts. You took those hopes, Kaavya, and you dashed them. Or, you know, the Crimson did, by exposing you.

No, we won't go down the precocious novelist road again, Marisha. Too much to lose. Hawk your prose and womanly wiles somewhere we can't see you. That way, when the news arrives that your novel is literally two parts Nabokov, one part Salinger, with some Pynchon thrown in just for shits, we won't even look up from our books.

"Special Topics in Calamity Physics," by Marisha Pessl [Amazon] 

It's easy to complain about the lack of hotness in the Ivies (shit, we did), especially when the morning-after Facebook check reveals last night's Heidi Klum to be a long-haired Ernest Borgnine.  

Attractive Ivy Leaguers are so rare, in fact, that when a photogenic student graduates, she gets a book deal. (Revisit: You Yale kids and your flippin' book deals!) Confirmed cutie Robin Hazelwood's novel, Model Student: A Tale of Co-eds and Cover Girls, sounds kind of like God and Man at Yale-meets-"Project Runway":

She recalls cramming for a final during a shoot in the Caribbean precisely where Emily Woods in Hazelwood's roman a clef is found reading Milton on the beach by her feisty, gum-snapping hairdresser. (The coiffeuse's reaction after flipping through Paradise Lost: "Good lord, you're a genius!")

Percentage of buyers who threw away this book and saved the jacket "for later:" 77.

p.s. -- How do these kids do all the coolest shit while "cramming for finals?"

It gets tiring to hear people talk about the declining beauty standards at your school as "[name of school] goggles." Because of course the first thing you do is to log onto Facebook and compare the Jason Browns and Samantha Millers from your school to the Jason Browns and Samantha Millers of the entire United States. And unless you go to Vanderbilt, with its affirmative action for Latvian models, chances are your school comes out looking pretty homely.

As if we needed any further confirmation, The Hill newspaper has just published the 50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill. How many of these 50 knockouts attended an Ivy? We'll give you a hint: it's the only outcome more pathetic than zero. That's right, one. Meet the only guy in D.C. with the looks to match the diploma:

Sam Arora, press aide, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) reelection campaign

Sam Arora, who bears an uncanny resemblance to actor Ben Stiller, was born in New York City and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

He graduated cum laude from Columbia University with a bachelor's degree in political science. He had intended to major in theater but changed plans after studying politics for a year at Oxford University.

Arora's career in politics began on Capitol Hill as an intern and later as a staff assistant for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in 1999. While he was in college, he interned for Hillary2000 and worked in the New York senator's D.C. office in 2001 and 2002. He worked in the Democratic National Committee's political department in from 2003 to 2004 and has been back in Clinton's campaign office since 2005.

Just wait for Capitol Hill's 50 Best Personalities. Until then, Sam's all we got.