Literary Clusterfucks 2013

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.

No! It is GROSS and wrong and sad but it is emphatically not the only thing wrong about her situation, the presentation of this continuing story on the internet, or this thread. There are lots of things intersectingly wrong and mean and sad and part of what makes you/ppl sound "angry" or like they have some axe to grind is insisting that of all the things going on, only this woman is in the wrong or being bad.

The publisher is obviously being wrong too, but we shouldn't give a pass on this thing being sold in Borders as non-fiction to spare her feelings (and her bank account). It's sick.

This all could have been avoided if anyone had paid attention to Paula Cole.

Cathi Carol ‏@CathiCarol
@hoodedu @MizAlisa .... A missed opportunity to write about how a normal person can be taken in by an abuser; how to recognize it and leave.

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa
@CathiCarol @hoodedu This is exactly what I want to do. I am passionate about it now. Never thought I'd be "one of those" women...but I was.

She wrote this half an hour ago on her twitter. If this is how she feels she has an obligation to her readers and herself to disavow the current book and ask her publisher to withdraw it from the marketplace.

Borders hasn't existed for a while, son, you musta slept on that one.

damn

lol @ "this terrible woman! why won't she stop perpetuating domestic abuse?"

Uh, wait, what? Part 2? If you are asking the reading public to dip in again, you have to earn our trust the first time. And yet here you are, publicizing a book that is encouraging women to submit themselves to a romantic formula whose end sum is “painful, controlling, emotionally abusive, crazymaking.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/01/10/the_cowboy_and_the_feminist_turns_out_to_be_a_story_about_abuse.html

I imagine Valdes took the post down because her publisher made her. Not really good for sales if it turns out that the message of your love story is setting people up for something close to rape. Believe me, I understand what it’s like to put your heart and soul into a book, particularly if it’s a memoir where you bare the worst of yourself. But as the cowboy would say, Alisa: Stop. It’s over.

This is how I feel, 100% ^

It's good that we cleared that up at least.

But as the cowboy would say, Alisa: Stop. It’s over.

hmm

It seems incredibly shitty to use the language of the person who abused her against her

Yep.

I think defending her right to push this morally abhorrent memoir, even if stemming from a place of understanding and sympathy, ultimately leads you to an untenable ethical position.

Why are you acting like her publisher is being strong armed into pushing her book?

there are subtle variances in the realm of understanding and sympathy that don't involve specifically defending her right to push this memoir.

It seems like the CW itt is that she can't be expected to not push this memoir because the advance was a lot of money.