Literary Clusterfucks 2013

or to see ted bundy as a story of white male privilege. just seems off.

I don't think the point about Bundy's white male privilege is wrong, I just think the observation is kind of banal and the piece doesn't have much to say beyond it's initial thesis cuz duh yes of course someone who looked and talked like Bundy did got a pass/did not look "suspicious" to a lot of people

for sure and he used it to his advantage

The police have never been able to confirm how many instances of manspreading he was responsible for

i think it's weird to compare a weird publishing grifter to ted bundy

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, 5 February 2019 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't be too weirded out now Treeship.

The observation is more commonly made around all sorts of figures and everyday in certain corner of the web, but you still have remarks made about Bundy being this good looking guy...like Mallory here, and then some ppl are just waving these fucked up lies as if he is a grifter, that its entertaining, or perhaps not a big deal, like he didn't kill anyone (true, in this case) when the piece itself uses Highsmith and Ripley quite a bit...just a few bits to frame.

But sure The New Yorker is a lot better and more distinguished than The Outline.

not all dangerous psychopaths are murderers of people, some find other things to murder!

Wild but ultimately unsurprising story - seems like a garden variety compulsive liar to me. They just tend to be written about more often when they're in publishing/media because it's easier to find a peer who wants to write about them or finds them fascinating in some way.

The Agatha Christie writer is a real trip - she totally recognised him for who he was early on but instead of shutting him out, chose to massage his ego for her own gain instead.

The bit where he pretended to be his own brother writing to everyone to say he was sick made me think of that time Luna pretended to be some friend of hers saying she'd collapsed and was in hospital, lol.

The excerpts of his "charming" and "self-deprecating" emails made him sound like a huge pain in the hole.

I enjoye this as a HOT LIT GOSSIP story and an OMG CHECK THIS JERK story, but ultimately it made me feel really uncomfortable for the guy's family, like his crimes seemed too small potatoes and too wrapped up in sad mental health issues for this to be worth the full New Yorker exposé treatment. The implication at the end - "oh no, he still lies to his dad, his dad is such a rube" - was pretty distasteful and unsympathetic, as for all we know the dad could be wholly aware of everything but was just being unswaveringly loyal to his son to the journalist because, er, he's his son?

I ended up feeling like the most interesting aspect of the story - the systematic failure of people in the book industry to deal with the problem, and the piratical, privileged nature of publishing - was glossed over too much, although you can understand why the New Yorker might not want to have gone there.

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

Ha yes I got the Cunanan vibe also.

Chuck: its a bit tasteless that hes telling various people his mums dead, his brother's dead, he had cancer he didnt have. Esp in public, and for the benefit of his own career. I mean this isnt criminal, sure, but still.

Oh yeah, no doubt. But I don't think his story is consequential enough to justify this sort of (admittedly super juicy) feature focus. And the glossing over of his mental health issues to create a pantomime villain is pretty awful.

Also holy hell the ending of the book sounds bad.

the book is stupid but i think it’s like a requirement now for bestselling “crime-mystery” novels to be stupid.

I definitely agree there is not quite enough there to justify a huge feature. Reading the story (and seeing the illustration at the top) imagined I was on the road to one big event which was the culmination of all the lies. It never really came, though there's sort of hints that he was more generally sinister in his day to day dealings with people.

I feel like I've prob met people who were like this - maybe in music or whatever. One guy I worked with in a record store who became quite successful in techno - we used to call him "the grifter" - he stole from the till every day to buy his lunch, even after his label was succeeding, he would ask you to cover him for a gig and say the pay was 100 and the promoter would give you the money and it would turn out it was 300 and he'd expected to be given it later.

A year or two later he did some big event at Sonar and I knew one of the acts and if came up casually that he had ripped everyone off.

This is more than a decade ago and he lives in LA now and someone sent me a photo of him standing beside his Lamborghini.

So in a way I can understand the motivation behind publishing this piece even if blow by blow it all feels sort of small. Maybe industries should start exposing their grifters. I mean presumably this will lead to lots of stuff the writer couldn't find out or verify coming out.

(sorry written on my phone)

I enjoye this as a HOT LIT GOSSIP story and an OMG CHECK THIS JERK story, but ultimately it made me feel really uncomfortable for the guy's family, like his crimes seemed too small potatoes and too wrapped up in sad mental health issues for this to be worth the full New Yorker exposé treatment. The implication at the end - "oh no, he still lies to his dad, his dad is such a rube" - was pretty distasteful and unsympathetic, as for all we know the dad could be wholly aware of everything but was just being unswaveringly loyal to his son to the journalist because, er, he's his son?

I ended up feeling like the most interesting aspect of the story - the systematic failure of people in the book industry to deal with the problem, and the piratical, privileged nature of publishing - was glossed over too much, although you can understand why the New Yorker might not want to have gone there.

― Chuck_Tatum

i agree that the systemic failure is the big story here and it's certainly possible, though i'm not in any position to judge, that the guy may not be in full control of the crazy shit he says. mentally ill or no, he is still _responsible_ for his actions, and it is neither cruel or unfair to report the pertinent facts regarding his past words and actions. the behavior can't be addressed without combating our tendency to overlook or excuse it (which is _particularly prevalent_ when it's a well-heeled white guy doing it, i've found).

i was entertained but it's funny that all this guy's ridiculous machinations got him to the point where he could be....a successful derivative thriller writer? seems like he was aiming much higher for a while.

Million bucks for writing a shit book, plus who knows how much dosh for film rights? More than many con-artists manage.

yeah he and his publisher seem to have done pretty well and (I’m guessing) unlike the last clusterfuck to make this thread (the weird YA twitter thing) there’s probably little overlap between those enjoying the NYer schadenfreude and those who would actually buy the book or see the movie

Turns out that Mallory article was indirectly responsible for this further cluster:

So apparently some famous writer was disgraced this week and a venerable literary organization asked me to fill in for him at a dinner to raise money for imperiled writers around the world.

You won’t believe what ensued.

— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) February 6, 2019

possibly dont read and boost stuff based on the authors biography idk

is he actually "famous" for any reason except just being disgraced? i assumed the anand thread was abt someone else *actually* famous (and also disgraced)

he has a #1 bestselling novel

he's the author of a #1 New York Times Bestseller which has been adapted into a Hollywood film so that's fairly famous?

ok fair enough, stand down mark s

(i still feel like "some famous writer" ought to mean ppl who don't read books might have heard of him but probably i shd take this to the "annoy the shit out of you" where it can be the only sensible post)

omg that tweetthread is even better than the Mallory story

So, Jill Abramson.

On top of everything else, Jody Rosen noticed this this morning:

Update. (Thanks @danreilly11.) NB: Abramson credits her assistant “with helping her with...writing.” What? pic.twitter.com/blmC43dcon

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) February 7, 2019

Further update: “He drafted portions of this book.” I turn to the Acknowledgements whenever I read a nonfiction book. This isn’t a sentence one generally encounters. This fact should have appeared in every review. Staggering on its own, plagiarism aside. pic.twitter.com/UuTfpa93xI

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) February 7, 2019

What was Jill Abramson’s “brilliant young friend and assistant” paid for co-writing her book? Again, Simon & Schuster paid a million bucks for this thing.

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) February 7, 2019

So I guess she is bad now too

Yes.

I’m a little disturbed at how scandals have become the new American pasttime. It seems like there is more going on than just holding people accoutable—people seem to truly live for this shit.

Gawker died and then the world became Gawker

trenchant

Treesh have you considered writing opeds

We talk about disgraced people on ilx all day long

I mean if you write a book all about how new young journalists are inept and unprepared to cover their beats, and it turns out you both plagiarized it and had a lot of it ghosted, you're going to have to eat a ration of shit.

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.