Literary Clusterfucks 2013

Thought that was a picture of this guy:
https://www.masslive.com/resizer/mapn3wPr9hYXGOEbE86j6pkt4xc=/700x0/smart/advancelocal-adapter-image-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/image.masslive.com/home/mass-media/width2048/img/breakingnews/photo/2015/10/16/2015-david-kelly-hampshirejpg-dd264a760f4dfa2e.jpg

So rude

Sorry, was not intended to be.

Wondering if silby reads this thread, probably not.

https://www.americamagazine.org/sites/default/files/main_image/2505956.0.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EE2v5ieWwAAY2hK.jpg

?

^ xp plax

Ruffalo as Ashbery biopic, dir. Todd Haynes.

be still my beating heart

Ruffalo toured a friend's apartment in the Mission many years ago. Apparently he's a very nice guy.

my husband saw MR at a coffee shop in silver lake once and freaked out lol

have also def heard my husband talk about the anti-yuppie protest stuff sarahell and tabes were talking about a few days ago, he lived in the mission in the late 90s/2000s

i don’t write poetry or even read tons of it but i do like learning about poetry gossip/clusterfks. B’s not on Twitter so sometimes i find out about stuff before he does lol (eg the danielle rose thing)

I'm also not on Twitter. Better this way.

Oh, I'd come, I remembered, chiefly to see my own reflection.

— John Ashbery (@AshberyEbooks) September 15, 2021

I semi-recently watched the movie where MR plays the West Virginia lawyer (the area is near where my Dad's family was from, though they had moved prior to the plant being built). ... I am always here for MR content

how norm spent his 54th birthday... shitting on bret easton ellis pic.twitter.com/V7Ugk4qb7Z

— 🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌 (@immolations) September 14, 2021

be still my beating heart

― sarahell, Wednesday, 15 September 2021 18:29 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Haha yes!!!

Wondering if silby reads this thread, probably not.

― What Does Blecch Mean to Me? (James Redd and the Blecchs)

You never know

:)

oh boy https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html

That was something

everybody involved in that comes off as completely insane.

otm

also is it just me or is it ~insane~ that this spun so out of control that it went to court? it feels very high school

dolman seems defensive to an unhinged degree & larson seems petty to the point where a different word might need to be invented

(but i love Robert Kolker & it’s a v good article!)

https://my-store-c0e211.creator-spring.com/listing/writers-no-care-about-my-kidne

it’s absolutely high school clique shit perpetuated by hacks who think they’re doing something important.

amazing story

When Larson discusses “The Kindest” now, the idea that it’s about a kidney donation at all seems almost irrelevant. If that hadn’t formed the story’s pretext, she believes, it would have been something else. “It’s like saying that ‘Moby Dick’ is a book about whales,” she said.

i mean i don’t know how long it’s been since she read Moby Dick but i’m finishing it right now and let me tell you that dude fucking loves whales

it's a crazy fucking story for sure

tfw you pay so much attention to the subtext you just ignore the text part completely

Iirc Moby Dick is about a white supremicist who beats his wife

I left that conference with this question: Do writers not care about my kidney donation?

I think I can answer that for you!

Everyone involved should option the story rights to whichever Coen brother is still making movies.

Dorland seems like way too earnest a person to be hanging around with fiction writers

If you directly ask someone to explain why they haven't clicked "like" on your social media post your name is going on the ostracon, sorry

I left that conference with this question: Do writers not care about my kidney donation? pic.twitter.com/eKqBcJ8RKv

— allison (@allisongeroi) October 5, 2021

lmao

he also was really into boats too, i think?

Dorland seems like a moron and Larson seems mean-spirited. Meh.

Tbh I hated Dorland more while reading the article, tho.

Why am I not being recognized for this fully selfless act that I have done?

On the one hand literally no-one's life is improved by this story existing or anyone thinking about it for an appreciable amount of time.

On the other hand

“I think I’m DONE with the kidney story but I feel nervous about sending it out b/c it literally has sentences that I verbatim grabbed from Dawn’s letter on FB. I’ve tried to change it but I can’t seem to — that letter was just too damn good. I’m not sure what to do … feeling morally compromised/like a good artist but a shitty person.”

Like, if you can't rewrite the letter then you're also a pretty shitty artist?

ffs just rewrite it! stupidest game of chicken ever

Isn't part of the point of Kidney Person (and Cat Person) about digital culture? The literary world has always been filled with those angered by ungrateful borrowers; it's just that electronic connectivity makes the borrowing easier and viral coverage makes the grievances louder.

— Steven Zeitchik (@zeitchikWaPo) October 5, 2021

Just ask the recipient to tattoo your name above their surgery scar - 'Kidney Provided By Kidney Person.'

Embarrassed kidney recipient returns kidney to kidney person following kidney donation literary Clusterfuck

"Dialysis was less of a pain than this bullshit."

I see why people are bringing up Cat Person, but I don't really see the comparison.

Kidney Person is - leaving aside all the Facebook/group chat drama - a pretty standard case of someone writing an unflattering story directly inspired by someone they know, where they try to scrub identifiable details but ultimately everyone can tell. The letter makes it a bit more complicated, but this is still the kind of line that writers step over all the time.

Cat Person, on the other hand, is a very weird stalking story in which the writer seems to have gone out of their way to dig up identifying details about a specific person they don't know and use those details in a way that makes her instantly recognizable to people who know her. Very different and much worse imo.

This is classic shitty bully in-group taking advantage of feckless awkward needy loser, and for once not getting away with it, so for that alone I hope Dorland wins.

haha well said

true

Before clicking on the article I read the ilx commentary on it and decided it wasn't worth pursuing.