Literary Clusterfucks 2013

I'm not going to waste one of my free NYT articles on this, but if the story starts with someone upset at the lack of acknowledgment of their selflessness in donating a kidney, that is a person who should donate a second kidney ASAP.

i wonder what it is about dawn that is so offensive to this group. i can see that she is self-centered but loads of people are.

Based on her reaction to not being feted for a kidney donation that had nothing to do with any other person involved in this story (or writer's group... or anyone but the kidney's new owner and their family), I can see quite easily why she'd be strongly disliked.

The proper response is to just make that person dead to you and your social circle, though, rather than continuing to interact in any way.

The New Yorker's review of the short story in question: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-story-at-the-center-of-the-bad-art-friend-saga

Tldr: "the prose is bad"

Thank you for your submission. We are sorry to inform you that your short story "The Donor" does not meet the needs of The New Yorker at this time. Or at any other time until hell freezes over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OrxQ5cKaOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HN0rqVJT4U

tl;dr: Larson engages in a protracted fantasy where Rose/Dawn makes racist comments to her recipient and starts crying and blurts out "you take care of [the kidney]"

This sounds like a sociopath is having trouble engaging with an act of empathy and is finding ways to fantasize a scenario where the donor is herself sociopathic

Sonya: Dude, I could write pages and pages more about Dawn. Or at least about this particular narcissistic dynamic, especially as it relates to race. The woman is a goldmine!!!

Allison: She really is. I live in fear of falling on her side of the line of the *white woman engages with race* fence.

Sonya: That will never ever happen to you, because you are actually self-aware!!!

Allison: I hope that is true but I will remain on my guard.

Looooooooool

The Heidi Moore thread that treeship linked seems like it settles this pretty definitely in favour of Dorland - but the account is now locked, which seems grim.

the way larson clings to the racial dynamics to maintain her own sense of superiority is fascinating to me

In fact, “The Kindest” falls short in precisely the ways the saga laid out in the Times Magazine piece might lead us to expect: it makes a cartoon of the donor character, and it over-relies on identity-inflected hand-waving. Also, the prose is bad.

yeeeee

re: this thread, I don't think there are many Larson defenders here, but I think she isn't getting talked about more in the thread because it seems pretty open-and-shut - she's an abusive asshole. (Twittersphere, on the other hand, seems more invested in being captain save-an-author).

Dorland seems to get more attention because there are some that don't think she did was a big deal. and no, I wouldn't put Dorland's actions on the scale of what Larson did whatsoever, and I don't think her donation is diminished by her need for attention, because as i've mentioned, a life was saved. who cares why.

but being someone who has been friends with several emotional vampires over the years, they can be exhausting and actually have a deleterious effect on your mental health. Unlike Larson, a lot of them don't necessarily understand that they're doing it to you, and no, they don't deserve to be mocked behind your back (being open and honest with them can help the behavior).

but I'm pretty sure I know what ILX would do to a Dorland if they showed up here instead of a FB group.

that being said, I am enjoying watching Larson get taken down many pegs this last week

Yeah I’ve changed my mind and come to the conclusion Larson is the asshole here.

...So Dawn the Kidney Person comes off as a washed up writer desperate to validate her sad existence with Facebook likes. Which okay...but she did deliberately limit her kidney news to a small private group (30 out of 1,000+ friends)... pic.twitter.com/iOaaC9sxbK

— Dan Nguyen (everyone you love decomposing to bones (@dancow) October 8, 2021

this resulting in larson getting her story reviewed and panned by the new yorker is hilarious

hah yeah.

I don't think this from Michael Hobbes has been posted yet, but I thought it was good: https://rottenindenmark.org/2021/10/10/identifying-the-bad-art-friend-is-easy

I will admit that my initial sympathies leaned toward Larson, based in part on the way Dorland was depicted in the NYT article. Like, it seemed like she was haranguing everyone she knew to ask why they hadn't asked her about the kidney donation, and I thought "Chill out, no one has an obligation to you." But some of the evidence revealed in the lawsuits suggests that Dorland may have specifically reached out to Larson because she suspected Larson was "lurking for the lulz" (as someone else put it).

Yes, the fact that this was a limited audience changes things a lot.

Oh, "lurking for the lulz" is from that Dan Nguyen thread.

Btw, the size of the Facebook group is in dispute. Hobbes: "Dawn says this group contains 20-30 people, Sonya says it includes 250-300 and a screenshot in the legal filings (from years after it’s set up) shows it with 68 members."

Weirdly, I think this kind of matters! If it was really only 20-30 people, and most people were close friends/family who were actively interacting with the posts, I don't think it would be weird to reach out to someone who wasn't and say "Hey, are you actually interested in this, I can't tell." If it's 250-300, then there are probably a fair number of acquaintances, most people probably aren't interacting with the posts on a regular basis, and it would be weird to contact any one of those people to say "Yo, what's up."

Since Dorland seemingly didn't contact Larson until Larson had already started working on the story, maybe she just has a sixth sense about evil people

She didn’t trust her and with good reason

Keyes otm

it's definitely apparent that the NYT story was structured in a way to do exactly what it did - maximize virality by setting larson/dorland on some sort of equal ground and encouraging everyone to treat it like a moral puzzle, and it did so by playing into the public's natural tendency to ostracize weirdos and cling to nasty social groups. plaxico/james/others itt were right about that. and that honestly seems designed to play into expected twitter social behavior, but it sort of flipped around and now the sleuthy twitter obsessives are probably leaning too far into "dorland is the hero of this story and can do no wrong." people are really eating up every single lawyerly thing dorland's lawyers are putting out and ignoring things she actually said/did on record, and constructing their own canon narrative based on hunches - things twitter people are known to do when it comes to these social scandals. for example, i don't think there's actually much proof at all that dorland approached larson because she was suspicious larson was using her facebook posts for some evil, but that's become canon in some quarters now. including this thread apparently lol. it's still possible that larson is a horrible bully of a person and dorland is still an emotional vampire narcissist, you don't need to rewrite any of that for larson to still be the bad guy in the story.

larson and her friends certainly come off worse and worse the more their chats are revealed though, just awful people and an awful dynamic, another reason i'm glad i gave up on trying to be a 'writer'

the thing that really gets me about the chunky monkeys is how this behavior is all filtered through the toxic positivity of emotional/friend/career support, the idea that this is all warranted because it's friends and colleagues SUPPORTIVELY SPEAKING IN ALL CAPS and having each other's backs (because the serious literature writing industry is a hellscape and this sort of soul-sucking social grouping is the only thing people can do to try to get a leg up in it i guess)

I like the Hobbes piece that jaymc posted!

I had an early-morning dream of an SNL sketch where Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Andy Samberg describe escalating acts of altruism around a water cooler-- "hey guys I just got back from a marathon!" "hey guys I'm a year sober!" "hey guys I just participated in an anti-racism march!" "hey guys I just donated 25% of my net income this year to help trans people!" and the punch line is Samberg screaming "well I just donated a kidney to a stranger!", and the room gets quiet and Hader says "you are so going down for that"

That will never ever happen to you, because you are actually self-aware!!!

this could be a perfect parody of all the writer group-chats i'm aware of, it's incredible

So much so that if you wrote a satirical short story about toxic intra-writer dynamics it would be a shame not to use that line

It’s just too good

Tbh, I think that my bias against Dorland mostly has to do with my utter antipathy toward overly performative "acts of selflessness." Throughout my life, having dealt with chronic illness both as a witness and as the afflicted, I've seen a lot of people engage in this kind of behavior, and it is abhorrent in the extreme, to my sensibilities. As far as she is an outcast from this group of writers, I feel some empathy for her. But it ends with this public kidney waving bullshit.

I like the Hobbes piece that jaymc posted!

I had an early-morning dream of an SNL sketch where Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Andy Samberg describe escalating acts of altruism around a water cooler-- "hey guys I just got back from a marathon!" "hey guys I'm a year sober!" "hey guys I just participated in an anti-racism march!" "hey guys I just donated 25% of my net income this year to help trans people!" and the punch line is Samberg screaming "well I just donated a kidney to a stranger!", and the room gets quiet and Hader says "you are so going down for that"

― kermit the grouch (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, October 11, 2021 8:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

this thread is good again

honestly I think fgti's sketch is the story that Larson should have written ...

Tbh, I think that my bias against Dorland mostly has to do with my utter antipathy toward overly performative "acts of selflessness."

yeah, I don't know if my antipathy is "utter" but it is something that definitely grates on me from time to time. I have to tell myself, "at least they aren't bragging about doing something shitty."

But I think it's interesting (to me at least) that people feel compelled to take sides, that the "moral puzzle" requires side-taking.

It reminds me of like an episode of Judge Judy or People's Court where both parties are chastised, required to make amends, and sent on their way and advised not to pursue this further and waste the court's time

Actually -- wait -- I know exactly what specific thing this reminds me of -- and it was a case before the San Francisco Planning Commission Board of Appeals involving a two-member HOA and whether one of the owners was allowed to modify the garage to their unit without permission of the other

I can only imagine how bitter that fight must have been and the very thought makes my whole body want to pucker.

neither owner was present at the hearing -- only the lawyers

Now imagining Amanda Palmer donating her kidney.

Now imagining Amanda Palmer donating her kidney.

― jaymc, Monday, October 11, 2021 11:55 AM (twenty-seven seconds ago)

it would destroy the internet tbh

I don't think an actual narcissist would ever donate a kidney

And: I was told today that "starting a Facebook group to keep your friends updated" is precisely what the living organ donor people recommend that you do lol

i am guessing that this is meant for people that are actually friends in the, "we take turns driving carpool, have monthly potlucks, exchange gifts on birthdays and holidays" sense ... and not like in the "professional networking" sense.

it's more of like a "in case you were wondering if I'm going to be up to hosting book group at my house next week" and less of a marketing strategy. ... otoh, people can choose to leave FB groups

I think mentioning it on LinkedIn is what you're taught to do, in order to inspire other people to donate. she got criticized for that too but that's something they actually suggest you do.

various religious denominations teach you to mention your affiliation publicly and encourage others to join ... like, yes, of course, they are going to suggest you essentially proselytize ... it's up to the individual to determine when they should actually do so.

I don't think an actual narcissist would ever donate a kidney

on the bright side i do think that dorland being received as the hero of this story will actually lead a few more people to consider living organ donation.

the dumbest and grossest thing about larson and friends were the "what do you expect me to do, GIVE AWAY A BODY PART??" conversation.... like yeah that's what living organ donation is and what its boosters are trying to get more people to do

Gary Gilmore donated his eyes to science iirc

narcissus fell in love not with himself but with his reflection

Narcissism is a slippery word. People use it to just mean “self-involved” but it also evokes narcissistic personality disorder in people’s minds. Sometimes there is a motte and bailey aspect to this.