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]