Literary Clusterfucks 2013

"This is akin to putting a neo-Nazi in charge of a UN human rights committee," she wrote

lmao astonishing

it's true that neo-Nazis spend most of their time calling out other people's racism

good thing they never put horrible human rights abusers in charge of UN human rights committees amirite

do we start a new thread when we hit 2,014 clusterfucks?

feels like we're close

I appreciate that the story about a genre fiction scandal is being reported by an organ whose name sounds like a genre fiction scandal

omg wins

lmao

Good on Nora Roberts though.

No longer a member of Romance Writers of America, the best-selling writer said that she became disillusioned in 2005, when top leaders drafted a statement defining romance as between a man and a woman

bigotry is not funny, but the use of 'romance' throughout that article as if the RWA is legislating romance itself is kind of lol

better than the SFWA, which defines Science as "a thing girls don't like."

? SFWA is currently headed by a woman and I'm had women among its founding members (Kate Wilhelm at the very least, iirc)

which is not to claim that SF wasn't a deeply sexist genre for decades but still

I'm

is joke aiui

Nora Roberts's statement isn't totally accurate, but it was definitely a bad move from RWA.
https://allaboutromance.com/defining-romance-does-rwa-finally-have-it-right/

lol wins

2005 was a fiery time for the RWA. It seems as if someone at RWA got tired of telling people that romance fiction isn’t just “smut for women” and tried making romance more respectable.

i read a lot of romance as an adolescent BECAUSE i discovered that it was smut for women. discovered in the MOST PERTINENT POSSIBLE WAY

2020 off with a bang in the SFF field:

http://file770.com/clarkesworld-removes-isabel-falls-story/

Literacy was a mistake.

That being said, 'I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter' is a well-known alt-right catchphrase. If the story isn't intent on deconstructing that association, I'd say it's fair to file it under 'transphobic'.

well good thing they removed the story so we can't see whether it was or not

In the above image, a commenter reports that Fall is a trans woman who has requested that her story be withdrawn, wants her payment donated to charity, was trying to subvert anti-trans rhetoric, and is withdrawing all future work. A later comment says that she's not doing well.

— whistling in the dark (@M_L_Clark) January 14, 2020

I read it, am very certain it was intent on deconstructing that association.

I have no idea why people write anything other than transparently unequivocal first-person sentences they'd abide by in a court of law.

You can read it archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200115052857/http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fall_01_20/

Writing where the genres identify as 'communities', such as YA, sci fi, romance, are always the ones that go apeshit.

The conclusion: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/fall_01_20/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/books/american-dirt-jeanine-cummins-book-tour.html

Victorian poet Michael Field was nominated as poet laureate: then it was discovered he was actually two lesbians writing under a pseudonym.

Literature academic @drsarahparker explains. https://t.co/unYQ2uRhrs

— The Conversation (@ConversationUK) February 3, 2020

https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2020/02/harriet-beecher-stowe-lord-byron-incest-atlantic

xpost -- funnily enough, I was just thinking of Michael Field the other day -- read a biography about their life and work some years back.

https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/representation-matters-penguin-diverse-editions.html

This week, Penguin Random House and Barnes & Noble announced their collaborative effort to, as they put it, “champion the need for diversity in literature.” Timed to Black History Month, the “Diverse Editions” initiative, would have sold a “reimagined collection” of classics “re-outfitted” with covers featuring non-white protagonists. The insides of these books, which includes titles such as Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, Moby Dick, and Frankenstein (in which not Dr. Frankenstein, but his inhuman creature is rendered as a black masculine Neanderthal with a fade), were to remain as is. According to the press release, the works were selected with the assistance of an A.I. tasked with mining the text of “100 classic literature books” in order to pick out occasions in which a main character’s race is kept opaque — “assumed” rather than stated plainly. Diverse Editions was rightfully ridiculed for thinking canonical exclusion ought to be remedied cover-first. Days later, after a public backlash, the effort was scrapped.

actually i have read in thomas dunn's 'loneliness as a way of life' an argument that ishmael is pip therefore ishmael is black

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/world/europe/gabriel-matzneff-pedophilia-france.html#click=https://t.co/hmXrZY3yQY

Only in France...

You thought Dennis Cooper was fiction huh

Still talking about Matzneff on the 11th of February 2020? Damn, the NYT is late af.

To clarify: The Guardian published an article about it not too long after the news broke in France.

According to the press release, the works were selected with the assistance of an A.I.

glad to see tay is still getting work

j. do you have a copy of the ishmael-is-pip piece, it sounds my kind of thing but i can only find firewalled copies of it

(pausing only to note that its author is called not dunn but dumm) (so even more my kind of thing amirite)

Yeah, pom, but NYT got an interview with Metzeff. It's a good article. Delves into the network surrounding him a bit.

Ah, fair enough. I'll check it out then.

Surprised the American Dirt fiasco hasn't cropped up here yet

I brought it up via a NYT link some time ago but nobody felt like discussing it. Old hat by now, I suppose.

mark: haven't read the article but i snagged a copy of the book for you, check fb dms.

ooh thank you :)

the entire romance writers of america board of directors has now resigned

I find myself wondering if this mass resignation was due to ethical considerations or because what they thought would be a prestige citation on their CV wasn't fun anymore.

xpost -- funnily enough, I was just thinking of Michael Field the other day -- read a biography about their life and work some years back.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, February 4, 2020 9:15 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

reading about Michael Field and their milieu is very interesting, i mean even if you ignore the whole incestuous auntie/niece victorian poetry duo aspect. their family were southcottians with links also to radical politics, which can take you down some interesting rabbit-holes

oh aye, they ended up converting to catholicism also iirc?

probably first use of "paranormal MPreg romances" in the nytimes

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/business/omegaverse-erotica-copyright.html

I am sorry I was not aware of "cockygate" until now, that sounds like a good one.