Literary Clusterfucks 2013

I'm still having a hard time with the fact that here is a 43-year-old educated liberal woman and longtime professional author who has even been married before (supposedly to a perfectly nice, non-abusive guy) who suddenly decided to buy into an absurd domineering cowboy fantasy, pitched a book about it, and then when the relationship turned out to be horribly abusive (which I am not doubting) did not feel any responsibility to pull the plug on the project or at least try to change its dimensions.

fucked up situations fuck people up

some of you guys seem to be ignoring that if she doesn't promote the book in some way, this will affect her ability to earn money. this isn't the (sexist imo) "this is about money!" trope that people sometimes push around controversies like these - it's "if I take the moral high road, it will have a material effect on me." people will do/say all sorts of things where their health and well-being are concerned - just renouncing the book and saying "don't buy or read it" would be an honest and moral decision, and would also be working tangibly against self-interest.

imo there's probably also pressures on her besides the economic/publishing ones, as evidenced by the backlash against her blog post (i.e. the same pressures faced by all survivors of rape/abuse)

Mordy I actually think you are cool poster on a lot of topics but please shut the fuck up maybe walk away from this thread

Hurting 2, have you ever been in an abusive relationship? Serious q, not meaning any condescension/card-pulling. Finding oneself in such a relationship and having all kinds of personal fallout as a result have literally nothing to do with one's intelligence, experience, etc. It is a very complex dynamic.

I have been advised not to discuss any of this publicly, to just accept this cold shoulder and lack of support as my penance for the crime of being openly broken up with the cowboy when I should have just pretended we were still together long enough to sell books. I have tried to be cooperative, but as the early reviews come rolling in for the book I feel compelled to come clean — totally clean — with my readers. I do this because I think it will help to make sense of a book that in many ways just doesn’t make sense to healthy people, and because I believe very firmly that the truth is the only currency a writer has, and that if there is any hope of redeeming this book and making it meaningful it lies in the full story of my relationship with the cowboy and not just in the candy-coated version that appears in the book.

I don't think there is a way of reconciling these words, that she said, with the consequent coverup. Apparently truth is not the ONLY currency this writer has.

ranger than fiction

I hope she has a lawyer at this point

Mordy you too could maybe benefit from thinking a little harder about the dynamics of abusive relationships and their many effects of the survivor

y'all are barred from ilf btw

on the survivor

I don't get the impression that anyone in this thread is angry. I'm certainly not angry.

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also I am very angry! I am angry about a culture that makes excuses for rape and abuse and silences its victims.

I'm sorry silby, but this is - despite emily's assertion to the contrary - a serious issue for me. It goes to the heart of honesty in writing and journalism. I don't know that she is or isn't lying about the abuse but I do know that this is a writer with a memoir reviewed in major serious literary review outlets that has undermined the validity of her (on its own controversial) book w/out staying true to that assertion.

Xps, Penguin also publishes this:

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781405910644,00.html

It's what sells, though. Any agent coming along with the cowboy book and a pitch of Ree Drummond meets EL James would get their hand bitten off by most publishers.

The best course of action would be to cancel her engagements for a few days and work out a way forward everyone is comfortable with. It's not as though they can put the cat back in the bag.

I don't want to silence her! I want her to stand up for what she wrote on her blog. Not go on the radio and pretend that she had a great love affair with this cowboy!

my guess is she's spent it already and can't give it back

She probably got the advance like two years ago, how much do you think is left now? Probably not much.

I keep telling myself "man, if someone gave me hundreds of thousands of dollars, I could make that stretch so far" but in the back of my head I know that I'd basically pay off all of my outstanding debts and then go on a wildly expensive gambling trip to Kuala Lampur

Abuse is not an excuse for perpetuating abuse, which is what pushing this book on her audience is doing.

If she doesn't stand by the abuse/rape charge, it's despicable that she made it.
― Canaille help you (Michael White), Thursday, January 10, 2013 9:09 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post

this is a while along in the thread but just so we're clear: this is a fucking inexcusable thing to say.

Maybe she claimed to be bisexual for attention; maybe, given that her 'i am not bisexual and you are lying, please take it down' phase seems to have happened during the cowboy relationship, it was important to her to deny it because of the relationship she was then in. We don't know! But "this woman has in the past claimed things about her identity and then retracted them" is not a solid reason to accuse her of lying about abuse.

I agree with you mordy but I think what aero is trying to point out is to understand what her motivations might be here, considering what she's been thru (as someone who has been myself, I know how it can fuck up how you deal with everything else)

xp to self - my two paragraphs are not related to each other btw

the timeline on that is very fuzzy to me; the relationship she mentions during that entire back-and-forth is her 12-year marriage, not her new relationship with the cowboy

this letter is sitting at the top of her personal blog right now:

Hello Miss. Valdes I’ve never written anyone famous before, especially a writer; so please be gentle with the way I write. On Wednesday my 14 year old daughter informs me at 7p.m. e.s.t. that she needs a book for school, so I take her to Books a Million. We find the book she needs and I tell her that I’d like to look around for a while. I move over to the new arrivals and start looking around and low and behold is your book. The title catches my eye and I begin to read the inside jacket. I’m a little stunned and unsure about the book, for one thing I thought it was Romance Novel and quickly find out it’s your memoir. I think I should tell you, that, yes I’m a conservative, but one who detest the Republican party. I’m also the only conservative, who is male, but loves to read Romance novels. It’s my guilty Pleasure. Anyways, unsure about what I’m reading, I start the first chapter and am immediately blown away. I bought it! I haven’t been able to put it down. I laughed, I cried, (that’s a little embarrassing, so be merciful) I shouted nooo, I cheered, and I fell in love with your writing. I don’t think I’ve connected with anyone like I have with you. You made me feel like we were old friends and I appreciate that. You gave me hope that people with different points of view, can bridge their differences and simply be nice to one another. I was so moved by this book that I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it. I was sorry to hear about your break up, but I am happy to read you’ve met someone new. I know how bad it hurts when you love someone so much and that love is lost. I pray that this new one works out for you. You deserve it. Miss. Valdes, what ever happens remember, you have a new friend, one of millions who love your writing and hope for the best for you. You brought joy to my heart with this story and I thank you for it. Your friend and fan, Sam

i'm so happy we can understand the motivations of someone who is proud to be shoveling this abusive crap to 14 year olds.

sorry, i misread that. i don't think the 14 year old read it.

I was about to say!

http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/577/002424_14.jpg

Finally, I’d like to thank my post-cowboy boyfriend, Michael D. Gandy, the man I am pretty sure I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, for being supportive of me as I embark upon a tour for this book. It can’t be easy watching the woman you love read from a book that was written as a love letter to a different man. It takes a very strong man indeed to handle a thing like this with grace, and that is exactly what Mike is doing. He even wrote a thank-you letter to the cowboy for making me a better woman, a woman who might have scared an incredible man like Michael off, had I never been “tamed”…

ftr there was basic unanimous agreement that everyone thinks that comment is gross

Yeah barf. and who writes to their partners ex? ffs.

ppl under the sway of charismatic and magnetic sociopaths probably

hopefully now that it's being covered by the atlantic the publishing company is going to give her free reign to discuss it - i don't think they can bury it at this point

tbh she should probably lawyer up, she can probably expect an adversarial relationship with her publisher at this point

and the ex-bf

i'd guess she wants this book to sell and then she wants the book she is presumably currently writing, about how the previous book was founded on a lie, to also sell.

Her youtube of "Steven" is still there. Under her name. Interestingly.

tbh she should probably lawyer up, she can probably expect an adversarial relationship with her publisher at this point

I was going to say that it's like when a book is about to come out (or has already come out) and then is found to be a work of plagiarism and agents and lawyers get involved and the legal dept emails the whole company about not telling outsiders anything...but actually it's not like that at all because one thing this woman is (inexplicably?) not being attacked for is being a pretty bad writer so SOMEONE will be willing to take a chance on her next book, although I would guess not to the tune of this last one.

imho the publisher should pulp this book james frey style and let her keep the advance as an advance on the follow-up book.

awful story

as someone from the southwest, i can attest that cowboys are pretty much invariably total douches

you can't brand them all like that

get off your high horse, daargh

don't make me call stet, son

now THIS is my kind of thread hijack, mane

sometimes you meet one who bucks the trend

cmon mane

I think what tends to separate this particular case of abuse from the typical case is that the abused woman wrote a book and a publisher has published it, wherein she speaks as one with authority and that authority has been legitimized to a large extent, and from that position of authority she speaks not just about herself, but makes broad positive assertions about men, about women, about what their relations should be, and about how her relationship with this cowboy can be taken as a model or a template from which to draw many positive lessons.

Under that circumstance, you cannot simply say that abuse victims often identify with their abuser, often protect them and excuse them, and often assert that they love their abuser and because this is typical, it is excusable, even something we ought to empathize with. Although all this is true enough, it doesn't go far enough, because it doesn't contradict the authority which she has assumed and has been loaned to her by her publisher. One has to point out how toxic her conclusions are, how irrational her actions are, and how utterly bankrupt her recommendations are. Because they are, and they need to be exposed and repudiated.

That isn't being mean or ugly. It is refusing to enable her.

someday we'll look back on this thread and laugh, as if it were a dave chaparral sketch

xp Oh well as long as it's for her own good that's okay then, it can't possibly also be mean or ugly.

Literally Clusterfucks 2013

The only mean and ugly thing is the pro-abuse propaganda currently being sold as a charming memoir about cowboys.