Literary Clusterfucks 2013

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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.

book publisher wants to sell book shocker.

I'm not surprised that the book publisher wants to sell the book. I'm surprised that Valdes is willing to go along with it.

Basically what you are saying is that she should have destroyed herself professionally in the way you approve of rather than the way she chose without knowing the details of what went down between her and her publisher that is generating all of this weird doublespeak.

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.

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 4:45 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm 1000% sure that this is the position of nobody in this thread

this is like her eighth book. it's not going to destroy her career.

Is it more likely that she is doing her press tour for her book because she still thinks it's awesome or because a VP of Legal is telling her she has to or she will get sued into oblivion and she hasn't retained counsel yet

tbh i think it's very unlikely that the VP of Legal is threatening to sue her for writing that she was abused. it's certainly possible, but would be such a huge PR fuckup for the publisher if it got out.

Penguin Threatened to Sue Author for Saying She Was Abused

^ this is not a headline that Gotham/Penguin wants to see