Literary Clusterfucks 2013

my ilx persona is needs a (third) kidney

So ILX is populated by plagiarists and victims of plagiarism? Bullies and victims of bullying? Organ donors and people who get mad about when people donate organs? Maybe I guess

It's hard to really get a sense of where Dorland falls on the axis of Martin Prince vs. Lisa Simpson but my read on this was that Larson was 100% in the wrong and it felt insane that the media was trying to spin it any other way

― kermit the grouch (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, October 9, 2021 3:24 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

aww I don’t think these binaries are very useful, tho I do basically agree that larson is the worse person. but come on, the stuff dorland did at the beginning particularly is very cringe and is not the sort of thing you want your friends doing

This is this thread's kidner donation!!
Kindly,

This is this thread's kidner donation!!
Kindly,

LMAO

As for “leaving clues” and gaslighting, I don’t find much evidence for that in the NYT story. Larson lying to Dorland to wriggle out of an awkward conversation is not the same thing as gaslighting, which tends to be sustained and deliberate.

I think changing Rose's sign-off from "Warmly," to "Kindly," to even more deliberately mimic Dorland's communication style constitutes "leaving clues". I think that considering that Larson referred to the story as "the kidney story" in her group chats, contemplating just how much she could quote Dorland and have it still be "ethical", and the fact that her friends described their interest in Dorland's Facebook posts as being one of "creepy fascination" contradicts Larson's assertion that "she doesn't care about Dawn". Doesn't LIKE Dawn, sure. Doesn't "care"? it reads like she "cares" a great deal. Larson claiming that the story is about anti-Asian-American racism and alcoholism on her website, when it was previously referred to by herself in group chats as "the kidney story"-- Lawson asserting to the NYT that the story isn't about Dorland-- this is what I mean when I call it gaslighting. This story's mechanism (at least in part) was as blind-critique of Dorland, and the group chat discovery makes this clear, and to claim otherwise-- thus implying that Dorland is "making it all about herself", i.e. is playing into accusations that Dorland is a narcissist-- this is what I mean by gaslighting. You subtweet somebody, then when you're called on it, you do a little darvo and claim that the target of your bullshit is in fact the one who is crazy and self-centred.

Kidner!

Kindly,

Kinder

Now that's gonna be in my head all day

To the tune of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

I don't have any interest in defending Larson as she exhibited very poor behavior. But creating a FB group to commemorate a one year anniversary of an altruistic thing you did and msging people to remind them if they didn't engage with her FB posts is seriously annoying behavior.

You create FB groups to commemorate, like, an anniversary of beating cancer, or a wedding anniversary. Not... something nice you did for someone.

It doesn't diminish her act any. I take a George Bernard Shaw "Major Barbara" approach - she saved/improved someone's life and her motivations would never change that.

But how would we react if someone with DN 'yoIdonatedbonemarrow' joined and posted about it each anniversary, then if people didn't react positively to the thread, sent PMs to remind them/complain?

Otoh, Larson didn't exactly get rich off of this story ...but she seems like an unpleasant person

“Acknowledge my niceness” is a lot easier to deal with than “I like you to your face”

It's a bit of a claim to suggest Larson intended for Dorland to read the story. I was convinced she did the standard cowardly writer move of milking the interesting parts of an acquaintance for content and hoping to god they never find out about it. Always a tightrope act

It’s much more likely the other person is going to find out about if they’re also a writer

That's just expert level tightrope

It sounds like Dorland was not heavily involved in the writing part of the writing scene at that point and might not have heard about it if that random guy didn't spill the beans

I would like to commemorate this day for my selfless act of reading the entirety of a long article that featured a group of writers who called themselves the "Chunky Monkeys" and the phrase "Chunky Monkeys" kept being repeated, and I read the whole thing.

I am now going to go buy several pints of ice cream.

embarrassing admission: for like the first whole half of the article i mistook “grub street” for a food website like, i dunno, “chowhound” and was like, what are all these fiction writers doing on a website about restaurants and recipes, well, whatever just go with it

how many other articles do i have fundamentally wrong conceptions about HOW MANY

Dorland started this whole thing by acting unhinged af, inviting the mockery and scrutiny of those whom she erroneously considered colleagues. The resulting situation sucks for her, and exposes the meanness and pettiness of those supposed colleagues but it also is of her own making.

― I'm a sovereign jazz citizen (the table is the table),

it's one of those unpleasant facts of life -- there are people that just don't like/get along with other people or groups of people. And what do you do about it in the case of adults in a community or group where people are there by choice? ... ILX has the suggest ban function (er FP function).

Not to make this about ILX and how ILX self-polices and factions and cliques etc., but, the emails between other group members being negative about Dorland ... this is so ordinary to me. Like, I feel that what seems so insane about this whole thing is how banal and ordinary it began.

didn't really want to read that nyt article, was hoping not to have to, but first of all:

"When she noticed classmates cooing over Marilynne Robinson’s novel “Housekeeping,” she picked up a copy. After inhaling its story of an eccentric small-town upbringing told with sensitive, all-seeing narration, she knew she wanted to become a writer."

That is fucking awful. Housekeeping was so more than that

embarrassing admission: for like the first whole half of the article i mistook “grub street” for a food website like, i dunno, “chowhound” and was like, what are all these fiction writers doing on a website about restaurants and recipes, well, whatever just go with it

If it makes you feel any better, Grub Street *is* also the name of a food website. It's New York magazine's food vertical.

The email conversations among the (lol) “chunky monkeys” made me think of the I think you should Leave insider trading sketch.

JUST LEAVE IT

The dialysis patients are angry. pic.twitter.com/RbYPAqgWa7

— Sharon Adarlo (@sadarlo1) October 9, 2021

unlike your ilx persona, mine stands with them^^^

“Abdulrazak, congratulations on your Nobel Prize. We just have a few questions: Team Dorland or Team Larsen? Do you consider yourself a good or bad art friend? How often do you smash that like button? Are groupchats sacred?”

— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) October 7, 2021

inordinately mad that i tried to know as little about this as possible and now it's been optioned

whoever upthread said this should be a coen brothers movie was otm

down at the Grub Street muse and the marketplace literary conferenceeeee 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

— 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒸𝒶 🌪🥩🍸💸 (@TamingofdeSchuh) October 10, 2021

I’m at the Grub Street muse
I’m at the marketplace literary conference
I’m at the combination Grub Street muse and marketplace literary conference

thank you Dan, for making the post I was afraid to make.

fgti, I must admit that I fear we would not get along at all in real life, which is fine, but believe it or not, the more I read about this story, the more I believe Dorland is the cause of all of this.

I also don't understand these subtweet analogies because I'm not on Twitter. What is a subtweet?

whoever upthread said this should be a coen brothers movie was otm

Unfortunate that they already used "Burn After Reading."

Nice

Most ilxors fine irl ime btw

Same! I've enjoyed my time meeting ilxors in real life, every time!

this story is a rorshach test. whichever person you sympathize with more is the one you secretly believe yourself to resemble. or rather, you are afraid that you are annoying in the way that person is annoying. so for me i sympathize with dorland and abhor larson but it's only because i cringe on behalf of the former and recoil in fear from the latter.

in some cases, though, the identification is too strong and the reader of the story sides with their perceived opposite instead. a kind of defense. that can happen.

but both figures are so irritating in ways that are very recognizable, very contemporary, which is why this is a good viral story.

What about thinking everyone is awful, including thinkpiece writers

everyone thinks that.

what i am saying is, deep down, there is one of the two you despise more than the other.

chunky monkey is my least favorite Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor

Ok fair xp

The one I despise least is the one who literally donated a kidney to save someone's life. But did it in an annoying way

what i am saying is, deep down, there is one of the two you despise more than the other.

― treeship., Sunday, October 10, 2021 3:41 PM (three minutes ago)

idk -- I can see parts of myself in both, and also how I would have dealt with the situation were I in either position. And I would not have made the choices they made.

I remember a few years back, there was this woman who really annoyed me, and I wrote a song with lyrics that were totally references to stuff she wrote on social media. And then I thought, am I okay with people knowing this? How would I respond if I was performing this song and she was there, or someone I liked who was friends with her? And I decided, this is not a battle I want to fight. And I changed the lyrics.

Obviously it's sort of hilarious how mad it all is. But I'm glad someone got a kidney out of it. We should make it a rule that all literary clusterfucks need to kick off with an organ donation otherwise they don't count.

and next time it should be a penis

They should make that the literary motto - the penis! Mightier than the sword!

Who would receive the penis

I imagine every single writer of fiction has thought about using some real-life incident that would likely hurt the real-life person - and then decided against it, or camouflaged it to the extent no one would ever know. Larson didn't do that, she did the exact opposite: with the warmly/kindly switch, she deliberately identified Dorland to those in the know. Dorland is a complete and utter nightmare - but I'm not sure she did anything as morally egregious as that.

i still regret using Budd Dwyer in my novel

dorland seems like someone who is clinging to a story about herself--that she is unusually selfless--and even is cultivating a forced sense of naivete, of innocence, that flatters her sense of herself as "too pure for the world". she seems annoying. but larson was sort of sadistic in the way she went about puncturing these cherished illusions of dorland's. there isn't a way to look at her actions and not see the aggression there.