Literary Clusterfucks 2013

if i didn't want to make someone think i was a genuine friend to them i simply wouldn't give them a thoughtful and personal going away gift which i put together myself with many personal touches and references to our shared history

but that's just how amazing of a person sonia is man. she does that even for people she doesn't like. just think what kinds of presents her real friends get!

Haven’t read this thread in a while...

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

― treeship., Sunday, October 10, 2021”

The story is so convoluted though and they both seem awful, as does Robert Kolker

Don’t know why I wasted my time thinking about this

Kolker's story has a lot invested in the "dilemma: which of these two people are the worst?" angle, which is essentially why it went viral. But if you read beyond that, it's pretty clear that it's actually a question of a relatively successful writer and her writer pals punching down on an admittedly annoying and needy less successful writer who can't quite crack the codes to join the clique.

Not gonna lie, the “never been alone in a room together” seems to be such a specific claim as to give the game away

May as well add “yes, we’ve had many meals at restaurants together, yes we’ve gone out for drinks or coffee multiple times, yes we’ve been to each others’ homes in both small and large gatherings”

The whole thing reads to me like an upper middle class horror story—What if the socially inept peers you treat like garbage somehow were able to turn the tables on you? While still be

This pig needs to keep an eye on its friends.

Pig kidney attached to human body in transplant experiment https://t.co/QmCexj5vYb

— WBIR Channel 10 (@wbir) October 20, 2021

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-11-30/alice-sebold-apologizes-anthony-broadwater-rape-conviction
"Alice Sebold’s memoir, ‘Lucky,’ pulled as she apologizes to man wrongly convicted of her rape"

She's awful.

This is particularly shameful:

Sebold, whose subsequent novels “The Lovely Bones” and “The Almost Moon” became major bestsellers, noted that today’s discussion of systemic flaws in the justice system “was not a debate, or a conversation, or even a whisper” in 1981.

What appalling justification, and what absolute ahistoricism— Attica happened in 71. These conversations were definitely happening.

this was only discovered because an executive producer on the film thought the story didn't make sense and hired a p.i. to go through the old case files. it would be... nice... if the same level of scrutiny were applied to every iffy conviction of the past few decades, rather than just those that could negatively affect a hollywood producer's investment.

16 years in prison, christ

for nothing

sandra newman has announced a forthcoming novel, in which all humans with a Y chromosome mysteriously disappear, called ‘the men’

Um … James Tiptree, Jr. and Joanna Russ to thread?

yeah it's an old scifi premise. it's a hornet's nest now though for sure.

I thought the clusterfuck must be about what a tired concept this book has, but ha ha no

Even Stephen King has written this book by now

(as "Sleeping Beauties," 2017)

less a “clusterfuck” & more “nest of fire ants” jeezus

a nest of fire ants is a clusterfuck if you fuck in it

plus a past novel written entirely in AAVE… i… just… words fail

sandra newman has announced a forthcoming novel, in which all humans with a Y chromosome mysteriously disappear, called ‘the men’

― mookieproof, Sunday, March 6, 2022 5:41 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't really know who she is, but she explained that the title is a reference to something more specific within the novel, not to the people who have disappeared.

The book may well turn out to be problematic, but it seems like a lot of assumptions are being made about it based on the title and premise.

I’ll be sure to read this YA novel and engage with the great discourse

The book may well turn out to be problematic, but it seems like a lot of assumptions are being made about it based on the title and premise.

Sometimes a premise is enough, imo.

plus a past novel written entirely in AAVE…

I read some of the excerpts floating around Twitter and I don’t know what the fuck that was but it wasn’t AAVE

More accurate to say it’s written in a goofy made-up lingo by someone who has never heard more than 30 seconds of someone speaking AAVE but thinks they are an expert in it

I’d also like to point out the book vg mentioned has multiple Black characters talking about going back to Massachusetts, only they’ve decided to call it “Massa”

oh no

holy shit

I’d also like to point out the book vg mentioned has multiple Black characters talking about going back to Massachusetts, only they’ve decided to call it “Massa”

― castanuts (DJP), Monday, March 7, 2022 7:21 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes, i saw this. unbelievable...

you wonder why people simply cannot refrain

i don’t really have any thoughts on her new book beyond that it will have to be remarkable to overcome such a hackneyed premise

those excerpts from her previous book that djp mentioned are jaw-dropping tho. not in a good way

wow

oh I see, this is one of those "I had a neural net system write a novel" things

oh, i guess this was the premise

In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off of the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of twenty, they all die of a mysterious disease they call Posies—a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure.

When her brother begins showing signs of the disease, Ice Cream Star sets off on a bold journey to find this cure. Led by a stranger, a captured prisoner named Pasha who becomes her devoted protector and friend, Ice Cream Star plunges into the unknown, risking her freedom and ultimately her life. Traveling hundreds of miles across treacherous, unfamiliar territory, she will experience love, heartbreak, cruelty, terror, and betrayal, fighting with her whole heart and soul to protect the only world she has ever known.

genuinely stunning to imagine writing even one of the sentences in the bit mookie posted

"never had no tato patch nor cornfield" keeps sending me into horrified giggles

like, this patois kept the "nor" construction but got rid of the word "potato"

this made sense to someone

And mind you, they didn't keep the existing word "tater"; they went for "tato"

So yeah, assuming the best of intentions behind all of this, the previous execution is so blindingly bad that I am not going to assume much of the newest effort

how do these weird YA novels I've never heard of (like The Country of Ice Cream Star) has thousands of ratings and reviews on Goodreads?

like 2635 white women who look like your supervisor rated this book and it has an average of 3.62.

goodreads is actually just a front for Big YA

the water is wide
I cannot cross o'er
I never had
no tato patch

omfg

https://www.npr.org/2015/02/16/384112222/ten-hearts-for-the-country-and-language-of-ice-cream-star

Saw that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/books/review/the-country-of-ice-cream-star-by-sandra-newman.html

This is a positive review but it still contains this:

The entire book is written in what we would think of as a patois, but is apparently the standard dialect of the future. At times, this can sound a bit like Jar Jar Binks narrating an audiobook of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”

If you think of dialects as broken versions of "correct" English it's easy to write in dialect, because you don't have to follow rules you don't believe exist.