Literary Clusterfucks 2013

and lookee here: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2011/09/08/10303/think-again-its-not-what-bill-keller-believed-about-iraq-its-who/

In it, Keller recalls his charter membership in what he calls “the I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club,” made up of liberals for whom 9/11 stirred a fresh willingness to employ American might. It was a large and estimable group of writers and affiliations, including, among others, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times; Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek; George Packer and Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker; Richard Cohen of The Washington Post; the blogger Andrew Sullivan; Paul Berman of Dissent; Christopher Hitchens of just about everywhere; and Kenneth Pollack, the former CIA analyst whose book The Threatening Storm became the liberal manual on the Iraqi threat.

the bitchiest wieseltier takedown of all time (not that it's wrong)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/leon-wieseltier-is-a-creep.-hes-also-an-intellectual-fraud./article/2010308#!

i've always thought he was an overrated hack

That dude being a predator was the first I'd ever heard of him so good legacy he's got there

he was an editor + writer for new republic and the atlantic for many years so he's not exactly unknown

15 years ago he frequented a bookstore i worked in; didn't do anything unreasonable, but he was somewhat creepy

i know nothing about writer or writee but that was a joy to read

cosign - not to be slept on imo

I met him once, he seemed like a random old guy and made no impression on me as being either intellectual or creepy

Epstein's finale:

In his middle sixties, now that he has been publicly shamed and self-confessed as a creep, the Leon Wieseltier Show would seem to be over. No comeback for its star, surely, is possible, or so one might think. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

In today's market, I am sure someone somewhere would be willing to pay for a bit of intellectual "tuchus-lecking."

Leon’s reputed cocaine habit, which caused him to load up his Honda with the review copies of books sent by publishers to the magazine and sell them to support his expensive drug habit.

idk how you could afford any coke on that

hagiography

When you win the Nobel Prize but nothing can fill the gaping abyss of your insecurity: https://t.co/LiGPQpeZbR pic.twitter.com/dFY5mBWU4c

— Angela Chen (@chengela) September 10, 2018

https://twitter.com/search?q=ailey%20o%27toole&src=tyah

https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/plagiarism-drama-surrounds-pushcart-nominated-poet.html

hope someone somewhere out there is available to stay on suicide watch for this unfortunate case

Plagiarism is the dumbest shit

Plagiarism is the dumbest shit

she picked the wrong poet to plagiarize. rachel mckibben is not being philosophical about it.

"...In paraphrasing you, I had hoped to put our poems into conversation with each other and go on to explore new terrain opened up for me by your work. I am deeply ashamed of the mistake I made and hope you can accept my sincerest apologies." Bitch, I DON'T.

— Rachel McKibbens (@RachelMcKibbens) December 1, 2018

I need to come back to this, because that tattoo of hers is more than just a line. I was the youngest patient in the US to get braces back in the 80s. My orthodontist was stunned that I'd lost all my baby teeth. I was seven.

— Rachel McKibbens (@RachelMcKibbens) December 1, 2018

My dad helped me lose those teeth, Ailey. Here's a line I never put in a poem: the tooth fairy doesn't come for teeth knocked down your throat.

You can have that one.

— Rachel McKibbens (@RachelMcKibbens) December 1, 2018

jesus christ

Rachel McKibbens has a point. Did Ailey O'Toole ever contact her and ask her permission to "put our poems into conversation with each other and go on to explore new terrain opened up for me by your work"? Given Rachel's response, I'd say the chances are nil.

Plagiarism is the dumbest shit.

yeah, i am not saying mckibbens is wrong to be angry. i am just saying, whoa, she is angry.

Excusing a white person's criminal behavior because you assume they have mental illness IS PART OF WHITE SUPREMACY. Check yourselves. #AileyOToole #RachelMcKibbens #PushcartPrize #Poetry

— Voight-Kampff Test (@enjen99) December 2, 2018

can't help but feel a bit worried for a (seemingly very young person) getting the brunt of these kinds of twitter broadsides. again, not saying the analysis is wrong, just... eesh

I myself have had my style co-opted by other students in workshops. This is not flattery — this is theft. Not nearly as egregious as spitting back words of another poet. Plagiarisers are not welcome in the writing community. #AileyOToole

— Rachael Walker (@rwalkerwrites) December 3, 2018

this take however is pretty fucking dumb

ppl can't tell if you embed tweets here can they

This is not flattery — this is theft.

urrggh. She thinks she can claim all property rights to a style?! Uh, nope. No one ever did before.

yeah. i think this kind of mistake is inevitable given the strident anti-plagiarism stance people were taking on twitter, in which true poetry was an expression of the poet's authentic voice and anything short of that is stealing. i agree that people shouldn't lift lines from other poets, but i also think all art emerges from a tradition and it's naive to imagine that any poet arrived at their voice all alone, rather than via dialogue with other poets. we live in a society and all that

I think there's a lot of space between that and biting poems from a book published in 2017

exactly

The idea that a real poet finds some kind of perfectly individual voice is one of those myths that both critics and artists love to fetishize. The greatest poets are always derivative to some degree and most achieve their individual distinction mostly upon stylistic nuances and personal themes and imagery. Non-greatest poets do exactly the same, except not as successfully.

yeah, you have to fight to be original. not everyone gets there.

We at @GhostCityPress will not tolerate plagiarism. It’s like removing the flesh & bones from an artist. It’s stealing their voice. It’s evil. In light of recent events, we have taken down Ailey O'Toole’s work.

Someone’s voice is to be celebrated, not taken away from them.

— Justin Karcher (@justin_karcher) December 1, 2018

should be asleep but i am reading more tweets about this. what does ilx think of this kind of reaction? i think it's over the top and so much response has been in this vein. again--plagiariam is bad and certainly a kind of violation--but is evil really a good word to use for someone who isn't donald trump?

the poetry world is exceedingly small and difficult to become established within, so that the idea of anyone occupying some unmerited sliver of publishing space in that crowded and miniscule world utterly infuriates the coterie of poets who've managed to carve out a tiny bit of standing room in that micro-universe.

perhaps the fact that these people are involved in 'the lit world' does not necessarily mean that they have good judgment in other, or perhaps any, respects

yeah i guess. i just think the absolutism is idiotic.

plagiarism is a bad idea and very stupid but yeah it does not rate very highly on the "evil" scale. it's not really even "criminal behavior" in the usual sense of the word; you could lose your job or a book contract for doing it, but you're probably not going to jail. (good thing too, or bob dylan would already be there.)

it seems like part of a broader trend toward flagrant self-righteousness.

and lack of self awareness.

like did that poet above, who complained about people biting her style in her poetry classes, never try on the style of other poets in the process of finding her own voice? is she an actual god capable of ex nihilo creation?

"I myself have had my style co-opted by other students in workshops."

i bet this person is a real blast to hang out with

snowflakes on a wet black bough

imago, calling out sanctimoniousness among twitter users is my thing. back the fuck off.

lollll

Uh it's one thing to steal a line or two from another poet/m, but she pretty much plagiarized the entire thing:

pic.twitter.com/5W10pIffMD

— Brenna Twohy (@brennatwohy) December 1, 2018

click through to thread.

no, for sure, i'm not saying what she did wasn't bad. it's totally cool for her work to get pulled from all these poetry sites and stuff. i just think the language about her being evil and removing flesh and bones from artists was way over the top and kind of sadistic.

it's the glee in the persecution that bothers me. and since it's a group phenomenon it disturbs me more than the existence of one plagiarizer.

I'm fine with the (apparently quite witty) vitriol of the plagiarised poets

The problem is other people chipping in, having their say

and as ever, this is the real menace

It's so fucking arrogant and selfish. I'm so sorry, Brenna. xo

— Jamie Caroline (@JamesCaroline) December 1, 2018

anyway treesh im so sorry u had to go thru this, anything u need just ask x

anyone who co-opts the style of someone who says ‘i myself’ in a tweet is a fool

yeah, though I find twitter mobs in general tend to be over the top and sadistic. plenty of women get called worse, and that's even without doing anything wrong.

xposts lol imago