Literary Clusterfucks 2013

(also, jodi picoult and jennifer weiner and roxane gay... don't write YA?)

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine), Friday, November 15, 2019 10:24 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

True. It does seem like most of these situations begin with YA though. There is something about that milieu.

― treeship., Friday, November 15, 2019 10:29 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

For Weiner, at least, didn't this begin with her crusade against the Chick Lit label, or the NYTBR ignoring of writers marketed as Chick Lit?

It surprised me when mark said it started as an insult on the metal thread. I thought it originated with Tom's DJ night. xp

first use was by Steppenwolf in Magic Carpet Ride

Ha

I only know Roxane Gay from the one time Sarah Silverman interviewed her - she seemed alright. what's ppl's beef with her?

poor judgment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/15/sarah-dessen-south-dakota-college-student-ya-novel-backlash-twitter/

Some of the authors who supported Dessen said they didn’t know the young woman’s name had been made public and denounced the harassment Nelson received.

“I thought she was anonymous,” Gay told The Post. “People shouldn’t be harassing her. That’s unacceptable.”

I love the idea that scribbling out a name is a guarantee of anonymity when the article takes five seconds to Google.

young woman's name was made public when she talked to the newspaper

author's work was made public when it was published by her publisher

The first Poptimism club night was in 2005, shortly before I moved to London, I think? I think it was called "Club FT" before that.

The second Jennifer Wiener tweet is completely OTM, of course - but that's poorly applied in this situation.

i don't think i have ever seen a reporter apologize for writing a story, at least when it didn't involve getting facts wrong:

Hey Sarah! I'm the writer of this story, and I definitely didn't mean to be cruel by including this quote.
I am so sorry.
Common Read has specific set of criteria, and many, many novels wouldn't make the cut.

— KatherineGrandstrand (@kgrandstrandAAN) November 12, 2019

lol then you haven't been reading the rest of twitter this past week

pretty sound ~take~

I would like to talk about this episode, in which several young adult fiction writers with huge followings collectively dunked on a college student who opined in a local South Dakota paper that college students should be reading at a higher level than YA. https://t.co/UojWCOCd06

— christmas cheer liz bruenig (@ebruenig) November 14, 2019

That was the article that bumped this thread ffs

something about a cultural ourobouros

i think j. was referring to the tweet thread

oh oops

Elizabeth Bruenig is great

Holy shit the north dakota journalist apologizing to the YA tyrant. xp

Someone in THAT thread accused the reporter, who was apologizing, of having “internalized misogyny” simply because she published a quote from a source.

this is all just popular-girl playground shit tbh

I would probably read a YA book about YA author drama.

sarah dessen is a really popular girl and some dork (who the fuck are you?) has dared speak against her. that dork shall pay!!!

that is literally all that has happened here

Dessen has 269,000 followers on Twitter, btw, just for those who might not know how popular her books really are.

I can understand how YA authors feel devalued by being labelled as writing books only fit for immature audiences. otoh, that YA label also helps them to acquire an audience and sell their books. if the YA marketing niche didn't exist and they had to simply compete for attention in the general fiction marketplace, the great majority of them would not have career to be defensive about. but, whatever you do, don't tell them that.

it really is just a bunch of privileged white women and their friends dunking on a recent college grad because she dared question the literary merit of their output. i'd say it's unbelievable that this is a national news story, but it isn't, because these ghouls will do anything to make a buck off their shitty pulp.

Apologies for the pvmic but it’s all so infuriatingly American to boot.

fuck why'd you have to take on the most popular girl in the school, daaaaamn

reckon there's cachet in this yet for young b nelson though, she's spoken up for Criticism and Real Literature, and gone viral doing so. a promising future awaits. maybe even a popular one

that said the aesthetics of s dessen sicking her gang onto this poor kid are monstrous, just like high school

It's all so dumb. Other writers group hugging Desser ("it's SO AWFUL and UNFAIR what this teenager said about your books"), journalists apologizing (wtf), others trying to make this about YA, about feminism/misogyny etc, about voices and stories not being heard... When, like LJ said, an overly sensitive highly popular person picked on an unknown teenager and reaped the cuddles and kind words that were sent to her en masse. Ugh.

table otm

it's SO AWFUL and UNFAIR what this teenager said about your books

I'm sorry but why does everyone keep making this 2017 college graduate into a teenager?

Like "A bunch of famous women ganged up on a 23 or 24 year old" doesn't sound bad enough?

I think this happened when she was a junior in college

yeah, but the article where she bragged about it is recent

I was of the impression this happened when she was a teenager, so

Not that it matters a whole lot.

powerful overlap energy with the taytay thread rn

but that one involves the most popular girl on the planet

but yeah, there people are suggesting she's sending suicide bomber stans at Big Machine

GTFOH with 'bragged'

i'll stay thanks

President Keyes, are you Jennifer Weiner?

I think president keyes has a valid point—trying to construct this former student into the “perfect victim” falls into the same kind of trap the YA twitter mob does, exaggerating power discrepancies for emotional effect

i'll take that, sure, but it's not like she was "wrong" or insulting in her original statements.

these Ashleys or Heathers or whatever, well, they're all wrong. Period.

i dislike this popular girl framing

where is ed champion when we need him

(j/k!)

The “popular girl” thing feels like a dodgy take imo I think it just seems like your typical twitter callout/pile-on/fallout that happens pretty frequently in a lot of different contexts for reasons both legit and dumb.

I think it’s more to do with the cannibalistic mob atmosphere of Twitter we all love so much than it does “popular girls”

So yeah otm.

I absolutely messed up. When I responded to Dessen’s tweet I didn’t read the article just the screenshot. I related to a fellow author feeling the sting of criticism. I had no idea the young woman was not anonymous or was being harassed. I apologize for my part in all this.

— roxane gay (@rgay) November 15, 2019

lol oh shit gotta protect the brand