Literary Clusterfucks 2013

I would be an amazing op ed writer. Shakey might even do the “treesh rip”/ “not really” thing

I’m not saying she is good. I’m questioning the relative energy we spend as a society discussing scandals. There will always be someone to get mad at—justifiably—an endless reserve

perhaps a thread with 'clusterfucks' in the title is not for you

Having a new young journalist ghostwrite your book, and having that book turn out to be full of plagiarism is an excellent way to prove that new young journalists suck

Noted. It goes beyond clusterfuck threads though

xp

It seems like there is more going on than just holding people accoutable—people seem to truly live for this shit.

Yes we should just sit back and let ppl lie and generally destroy other ppl.

You may have a fair larger point but Jill abramson is IMO a very poor hill to die on

as noted last time, plagiarizing is the dumbest thing to do because in this day and age you will get caught and you will suffer for it

Reading more about it. Definitely bizarre judgment.

there have been so many of these "my research assistant fucked up" plagiarism excuses for these celebrity non-fic writers that I'd be tempted to tell them to write the books themselves, but of course that would cut into tv and twitter time.

It's like an artist studio, the named artist guides the younger artists as they actually put paint on the canvas and then gives it a once-over before signing their name on the finished work

I think the main takeaway from things like this I've discovered over the years that if someone spends a considerable amount of time presenting a public face as an author or doing speaking tours/social obligations while being highly paid, most likely they're doing brand management and whatever vocation they are presenting is the work they have others do

re: Mallory. A view from the publishing front.

https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/this-expose-of-a-crime-writer-is-a-damning-indictment-of-the-way-publishing-treats-women/249724

Also, given that so many people do awful things and get away with them ALL THE FUCKING TIME, it's nice to see at least a few of them possibly beginning to go down in flames.

I feel like if Andrew Cunanan didn’t murder anyone he would have gone into publishing

his first victim was probably Todd Loren, so that coulda been a coin-flip

lol @ Luna comparison .... if Mallory posted on ilx with that kind of writing style I would have totally started at least one obliquely titled parody thread about what a douche he sounds like

lol i just realised that the new yorker piece abt the so-called "famous" (ilx: LET IT GO MARK) novelist is i4n p4rk3r so everyone saying biting the story as a let-down now has my support

backstory: he turned down a couple of my proposals in the late 80s and then joined the new yorker staff so he is cancelled for all time, this beef will nevah die

It’s a bad piece! Picks the wrong targets, only scratches the worthwhile ones, and sidelines the victims. It’s a vanity fair feature at best.

Another YA author "self-cancellation": https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/ya-book-scandal-kosoko-jackson-a-place-for-wolves-explained.html

I have to think this level of self-defeating has to burn itself out at some point? Alternatively, YA as a genre could be reexamined--that piece points out most YA readers are adults and these outrage drives are led by them too.

it's probably true that this kind of second-hand outrage is a far more pernicious bourgie indulgence than using an ethnic war as a setting could be

I say we cancel fiction altogether just in case.

Is anyone writing a dystopian YA novel about the dystopian YA community

— Elisa Gabbert (@egabbert) March 5, 2019

lol

(independent of anything i love elisa gabbert)

otm

“I have to be absolutely fucking honest here, everybody,” the review opened, in the hyperbolic voice of its genre. “I’ve never been so disgusted in my life.”... (The reviewer nonetheless gave the book two stars out of five because “it was ownvoices and well done.”)

sO dIsGUsTeD!

The issue in this one is that black queer authors shouldn’t write about the kosovo war?

Or is it that war stories shouldn’t be love stories? (This is about two young men that fall in love during the kosovo war).

Seems like a good premise honestly

Why are people who exclusively consume culture made for children always so angry about it

It’s not about the fact it’s YA. They have an ideology they’re promoting. It just took root in this community in an especially uncompromising way.

so why did it take root in THIS community in an especially uncompromising way? seems like it is about YA to some degree

it fully is about YA and the kind of adults who are into YA

maybe YA tends to be more about identity than other types of literature

maybe YA has to be morally uncompromised because it is for children, who are less capable of parsing ambiguity and contradiction

(not my perspective, the theoretical perspective of YA critics)

i guess. and also young readers are in a phase of life where they want to see people like themselves reflected in stories, so the critics want to make sure they're encountering "authentic" representations.

In his statement, Jackson invoked his young readership by mentioning the “responsibility that comes with introducing readers to certain topics.”

these people are wildly self-important

i think the idea of promoting diverse stories so young readers don't feel marginalized is 100% laudable, btw, which is why i think the idea of a war book with gay protagonists who fall in love sounds great. what is insidious is the constant policing of who has the right to tell what story

considering how difficult it is to get a book published, i can't even fathom the amount of pressure a person must feel from this "community" to the point where they'd willingly cancel their own book

bury goodreads in the sea imo

can authors (first time authors no less) really unilaterally cancel publication? do they have to pay back advances? reimburse the publisher for costs accrued to that point, etc?

maybe ppl who've never been so disgusted in their lives as when they were reading a book they still gave TWO STARS on goodreads should rethink their life decisions

does anyone here know much about what the cultural revolution was like in china? was the vibe similar? obviously the stakes were extremely different

It’s the forced public apologies that creep me out.

YA does have a legacy of addressing more serious social issues. But now it seems to be hamstrung by that tradition, exacerbated by this reductive identity politics that no one can speak for any person, even fictionally, with an identity they don't have direct experience with. Having been indoctrinated in the 90s "race/gender/identity is a social construct" school of thought, this new determinism is pretty shocking to me. I don't want to play naive, but I think it's bad to imply that imagining the lives of others is basically impossible and in fact a form of violence.

people that YELP GOODREAD are scumbags