Literary Clusterfucks 2013

:)

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.

Yeah, this thing is manufactured to create Twitter discourse.

dolman the kidney donor also apparently pitched the story to NYT herself

like, lmao lady calm tf down

haha i kind of suspected that

I think she basically had 2 things in her life she felt good about, the writing group and the kidney donation, and sure she was weird about the latter, but then the group turned out to be backstabbing arseholes who stole the kidney thing, no wonder she lost it.

a (strange) woman on the verge of a (litigious) breakdown

god i felt so much secondhand embarrassment reading that article. larson is a fucking idiot for ever using that letter verbatim - she appears to be a pretty seasoned writer, shouldn't she know better?? but dorland is just... too much. its weird as fuck to notice your writer friends aren't acknowledging your so-called altruistic donation and call them out about it. who does that?? that's so cringey and completely lacking in self awareness. and then the way she just harped on about it to larson in repeated emails and texts before she even knew her letter had been used.

technically, i think larson is in the wrong, but dorland is even more unlikeable than her. i think i'm also heavily biased because i've been dealing with a coworker who is like dorland, but ratcheted up by a 1000.

kidney bean

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.

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, 6 October 2021 02:05 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this totally

i couldn't give a rats ass about the legal whatnots of this and the story sounds pretty awful to be honest and while I agree that dorland sounds like a nightmare, this larson character sounds much more horrible. Like i would probably give dorling a wide berth but there is something very duplicitous and predatory about larson's behaviour and the cosiness of the grub street club that sounds very familiar. it seems obvious that dorling is a fragile, difficult character who it is not wise or kind to treat in the way larson did here but fundamentally it seems unjustified to write such a thin and judgemental story; her 'borrowing' craven and dressed up in far more self-righteousness and justification than the original dorling facebook messages. she at least did give someone her fn kidney. also as tracer hand has pointed out her very silly comment about moby dick either shows she has never read it or that she fundamentally knows that she nabbed a juicy story from facebook and that her story's primary interest is its tabloid salaciousness.

anyway because i am shallow and mean i enjoyed reading this

otm

“Kind of a nightmare” is exactly the phrase I would have used for dorling but the writers group is more like “basically the worst people in the world”

Good artists/worst people

haha i mean i could go along with that but sometimes people are mediocre artists and rubbish people

the cycle of novels i am basing on ilx will make proust look like custos

^^^ x1000

whoops, xpost

But that too