Literary Clusterfucks 2013

ok so here is what i can gather from the context

this boyne fellow decided to write a book about a trans person from the pov of a cis person

the first time any trans person got to see any of what this boyne fellow had to say about trans people was when review copies started going out to the press

some of us had some problems with some of the things he was saying and voiced them

boyne reacted by flying into a tizzy and generally behaving badly

i feel like things might have gone better if he'd given any indication, at any point, of actually listening to anything a trans person might have to say?

that's about the size of it

tizzy seems to have involved legal threats against at least one trans critic

Yep, that sums up it.

no no, he needs perfect silence in his mind castle

this thread is why babywitch tumblr are hexing the moon

Babywitch Tumbler is an outtake from Alien Lanes, dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKA7KCIvwGs

I think it’s babywitch tiktok rather than tumblr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuYCX5XK_So

Moving on…

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jul/20/an-author-bought-his-own-book-to-get-higher-on-bestseller-lists-is-that-fair

that's not "news" is it

This is properly hilarious, though:

ATTENTION: Cis author John Boyne, who spun out into transphobia when criticized for his poorly-developed trans novel My Brother's Name Is Jessica, has accidentally put zelda recipes in his new historical fiction book pic.twitter.com/KpHfio6S8h

— Nightling Bug 🗝️ (@NightlingBug) August 3, 2020

omg I saw someone else tweet about that but didn’t clock that it was the same author - that is gold!

Awesome.

kinda sad it's this dumbass because his response was pretty funny... he just didn't really care that much!

I wonder how many proofreaders passed over "Octorok eyeball" without batting an eye.

kinda sad it's this dumbass because his response was pretty funny... he just didn't really care that much!

― avellano medio inglés (f. hazel)

Thing is, if it is historical fiction as stated in the tweet, that's not really very funny. If it were magical realism/fantasy in a historical milieu, then fair enough, we can all have laughs together. And it definitely makes me wonder about proofing/editing - were there instructions not to fact check, or are they massively understaffed, or was there just a huge failure on the part of the editorial team?

Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across fifty countries to a life among the stars in the third, the world will change around them, but their destinies remain the same. It must play out as foretold.

seems to be pretty loose historical fiction

That does sound a lot like Zelda, tbf.

A bit of wiggle room, then. I'd still hope that if you're doing something set in multiple times and places you'd aim for a teeny-tiny bit of accuracy in your portrayals, and not Zelda recipes, but maybe that's just me.

xp lol

I read too much hilariously dumb shit about how language works by ostensibly smart non-linguists to be surprised that most historical fiction is lazily written and wildly inaccurate

and lol jmm you are 100% right

I mean, surely the proofreader at least wanted to check that the singular form of Lizalfos is Lizalfos and not Lizalfo (it is in fact Lizalfos)?

thanking all my teachers in my mfa thesis EXCEPT dean young, who refused to meet with me on campus yet hung out and drank with my male classmates, & whose response to my request for a rec letter was "your work is not part of my workload"—it really is the little things :')

— annelyse gelman (@annelysegelman) August 6, 2020

Thread

Young is one of the notorious ones in this regard, it sucks that so many have been treated unfairly and placed in a hostile environment by writing programs that ignore complaints about him.

That said, Gelman is an awful poet, as are a majority of the people coming out of the UT program— bourgeois careerist twaddle for the New Yorker crowd.

I think a fuckload of "well known" writers who teach in MFA programs don't really view themselves as having a job, but see teaching as an extension of their grad school days of drinking, gossiping, going to readings and parties and trying to sleep with students.

bourgeois careerist twaddle for the New Yorker crowd

Accurate.

Abolish all MFA programs imo (not really, but you know).

Keyes, this is true. Along with the very amazing artists and writers I experienced in my MFA program were a number of men who were not just mediocre artists and writers, but also clearly exploiting their positions of power to get into bed with students...

But generally speaking, I had a very good experience, but I also was involved in the literary community, so knew how many of the people who were instructors acted in the social sphere...

I'm also a little uncaffeinated, pardon weird grammar lol.

I'll also mention, though, that a female prof (whom I never had as an instructor) slapped me on the ass and said I looked like Mick Jagger at a huge drinking party at the campus bar once. I was also intoxicated, but to say that it made me feel uncomfortable is an understatement.

All MFA programs should be required to hire one Brad Thor/Tom Clancy-type writer of airport thrillers, and make that class mandatory.

We were due to publish Dean Young's new book in 2021. We have informed him that we are withdrawing our intent to publish.

In response, we'd like to offer his publication slot to an underrepresented writer, to offer a space he occupied to somebody who hasn't had the access he has https://t.co/xZVdTXy2yn

— Broken Sleep Books (@brokensleep) August 7, 2020

Wow.

They published Prynne! It's like different fecking worlds. I wish more of the people in the US who read Young would also read Prynne— their poetry would be a hell of a lot better.

does the Small Press Distribution thing belong here?

TELL US MORE

like does he have a car

sounds like it should do.

Can we not, sarahell.

We can

https://wearespd.medium.com/statement-from-spd-staff-21ce94bf25e0

xp - I was mostly asking if table wanted to discuss it here tbh

It's way too messy and personal, in a lot of ways.

I support the workers of SPD, and believe that the ED needs to go. I also think that the board needs to be shaken up to more accurately reflect the diversity and leanings of SPD's constituent audience— institutions and stores and individuals who support smaller, independent publishers.

Until those things happen, I don't give a fuck what happens to SPD as an organization— from harboring a Proud Boy fascist motherfucker as a worker for years to this current situation, there's just been too much bullshit to really sweep under the rug.

All that said, the current acts of the original complainant— smearing the board member who wrote the letter from the board as somehow being personally responsible for thousands of people losing their jobs— is a little much.

Poetry Magazine has published a convicted pedophile and former college English prof as part of their prison justice issue.

He had something like half a million images of child porn on various computers and hard drives.

In any case, the internet is fucking exploding over it.

https://twitter.com/search?q=kirk%20nesset&src=typed_query

wtf

I'm 95% for separating the art from the artist (not that I want to rehash this convo here) but ffs that doesn't mean this piece of human filth deserves a countersigned platform. Poetry Magazine, no less!

If Poetry magazine is not platforming poems that endorse, excuse or exonerate this prof's crimes, and they fully disclose his identity and reason for being imprisoned, then they have done as much as is necessary and responsible, imo.

Or, they could just not fucking publish him. FFS.

People choose the strangest hills to die on. Are you going to tell me there was nobody better than the guy with the hard drive full of CSA material?

If it’s really all about the poetry, then publishing this for guy is an instant distraction from all the non-paedos they published in the same issue. Imagine getting the best poem of your life published and nobody notices because it was the same issue Poetry Magazine decided they had to platform Noncey Nesset?