A "Metropolitan Diary" item in today's paper sets off the B.S. detector of a number of readers. At least 12 Times commenters have upvoted a comment that says, "Often I feel that a Metropolitan Diary entry is more a short piece of 'Only in New York' fiction than it is truth. I think this is one of those exercises in creative writing, especially after noting the last name of the writer."
The Metropolitan Diary is a collection of anecdotes submitted by readers. The one at issue here involves a man who gave $200 to an "attractive" drama major with a hard-luck story, only to learn the next morning that it was an "exercise" concocted so that the woman could "understand what it was like to be Blanche DuBois and rely on the kindness of strangers." The person who submitted the anecdote gave the name Jerome Kowalski. Kowalski, of course, is the last name of some of the characters (Stanley, Stella) in the Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" that also features a character named Blanche DuBois.
If the stories are fictional, the Times might want to label them as such. As it is, they are presented as being as true as the rest of the material in the newspaper.