Literary Clusterfucks 2013

otm

Isn't that pretty much the traditional version of the cool kids table too?

ilx has a dorland-to-larson ratio of about 1:1 which is what keeps it exciting

which are you crut

i think i’m a dorland (inwardly needy just not outwardly so lol)

you're being too self-deprecating there, VG

well i know i’m not a mean girl like larson

i'm not sure that many of us are actually dorlands or larsons tbh though i guess there must be some

archetypes is all we’re talking here

xps i'm needy and oblivious like dorland but my organs are d-tier at best

So ILX is populated by plagiarists and victims of plagiarism? Bullies and victims of bullying? Organ donors and people who get mad about when people donate organs? Maybe I guess

It's hard to really get a sense of where Dorland falls on the axis of Martin Prince vs. Lisa Simpson but my read on this was that Larson was 100% in the wrong and it felt insane that the media was trying to spin it any other way

Being a needy dork doesn’t mean Dorland automatically deserves sympathy or empathy from anyone who’s not her therapist.

And Larson isn’t obliged to like or patron someone who gets on her and other people’s nerves (which is unrelated to the question of whether Larson is a nice person or not.).

From the article, I didn’t get any sense of scale a about how big this literary clique was – was it possible that Larson thought her story could slip under the radar without Dorland seeing it? In which case, not great but fine. If Dorland seeing the story was inevitable, then that’s pretty bad.

(When she wrote it, that is, not when it got picked for a citywide story festival!)

Sometimes- a lot of the time- being gormlessly annoying is quite enough of a sin in adult life tbh

I don't think Dorland was expecting (or deserving of) sympathy and/or praise from Larson-- hoping for it, sure. I would imagine that the majority of the 30 participants in that private Facebook group were obliging Dorland with sympathy and praise. I think what Dorland was expecting was to not have her writing plagiarized, to get a truthful answer from Larson if the latter was using her presence on a private Facebook group as source material for a story. Larson lied, Larson was not only writing the story but was writing it to deliberately troll Dorland, Larson was not only using Dorland as source material for her short story but was brazenly plagiarizing Dorland's work and was leaving clues to ensure that Dorland would read the story and be gaslit by the subtweetiness of it. A media friend of mine said "the people out there who are expressing any sympathy/solidarity with Larson are just telling on themselves"

i'm a gemini:)

I think it’s perfectly okay to use someone as source material, even to the extent of using a (small) chunk of their Facebook post, and then sell that story. I think it’s cowardly and mean to release that story if you know for sure that person is vulnerable and likely to read it, without warning them in advance.

Having said that I disagree that Dorland was “brazen plagiarised” - it was just a Facebook paragraph. As for “leaving clues” and gaslighting, I don’t find much evidence for that in the NYT story. Larson lying to Dorland to wriggle out of an awkward conversation is not the same thing as gaslighting, which tends to be sustained and deliberate. I think the final draft of the short story, as the NYT mentions, is less about the donor than it is about the mixed-race lead character, so Larson was mostly correct to tell Dorland the story wasn’t about her.

(I haven’t read the short story though! Just going by what it says in the NYT feature.)

These corrections are actually pretty interesting! If true they make Dorland seem a little less narcisstic and spiteful

https://www.gawker.com/media/all-the-corrections-dawn-dorland-sent-us-about-the-blogs-we-wrote-about-the-bad-art-friend-story

she needs to stop explaining herself
like, for the love of god, please

Ha, I think her comedic persistence is finally making me like her

I wouldn't call it plagiarism; a nasty parody that takes language directly from the thing it's parodying should be called something else, I think.

my ilx persona is needs a (third) kidney

So ILX is populated by plagiarists and victims of plagiarism? Bullies and victims of bullying? Organ donors and people who get mad about when people donate organs? Maybe I guess

It's hard to really get a sense of where Dorland falls on the axis of Martin Prince vs. Lisa Simpson but my read on this was that Larson was 100% in the wrong and it felt insane that the media was trying to spin it any other way

― kermit the grouch (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, October 9, 2021 3:24 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

aww I don’t think these binaries are very useful, tho I do basically agree that larson is the worse person. but come on, the stuff dorland did at the beginning particularly is very cringe and is not the sort of thing you want your friends doing

This is this thread's kidner donation!!
Kindly,

This is this thread's kidner donation!!
Kindly,

LMAO

As for “leaving clues” and gaslighting, I don’t find much evidence for that in the NYT story. Larson lying to Dorland to wriggle out of an awkward conversation is not the same thing as gaslighting, which tends to be sustained and deliberate.

I think changing Rose's sign-off from "Warmly," to "Kindly," to even more deliberately mimic Dorland's communication style constitutes "leaving clues". I think that considering that Larson referred to the story as "the kidney story" in her group chats, contemplating just how much she could quote Dorland and have it still be "ethical", and the fact that her friends described their interest in Dorland's Facebook posts as being one of "creepy fascination" contradicts Larson's assertion that "she doesn't care about Dawn". Doesn't LIKE Dawn, sure. Doesn't "care"? it reads like she "cares" a great deal. Larson claiming that the story is about anti-Asian-American racism and alcoholism on her website, when it was previously referred to by herself in group chats as "the kidney story"-- Lawson asserting to the NYT that the story isn't about Dorland-- this is what I mean when I call it gaslighting. This story's mechanism (at least in part) was as blind-critique of Dorland, and the group chat discovery makes this clear, and to claim otherwise-- thus implying that Dorland is "making it all about herself", i.e. is playing into accusations that Dorland is a narcissist-- this is what I mean by gaslighting. You subtweet somebody, then when you're called on it, you do a little darvo and claim that the target of your bullshit is in fact the one who is crazy and self-centred.

Kidner!

Kindly,

Kinder

Now that's gonna be in my head all day

To the tune of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

I don't have any interest in defending Larson as she exhibited very poor behavior. But creating a FB group to commemorate a one year anniversary of an altruistic thing you did and msging people to remind them if they didn't engage with her FB posts is seriously annoying behavior.

You create FB groups to commemorate, like, an anniversary of beating cancer, or a wedding anniversary. Not... something nice you did for someone.

It doesn't diminish her act any. I take a George Bernard Shaw "Major Barbara" approach - she saved/improved someone's life and her motivations would never change that.

But how would we react if someone with DN 'yoIdonatedbonemarrow' joined and posted about it each anniversary, then if people didn't react positively to the thread, sent PMs to remind them/complain?

Otoh, Larson didn't exactly get rich off of this story ...but she seems like an unpleasant person

“Acknowledge my niceness” is a lot easier to deal with than “I like you to your face”

It's a bit of a claim to suggest Larson intended for Dorland to read the story. I was convinced she did the standard cowardly writer move of milking the interesting parts of an acquaintance for content and hoping to god they never find out about it. Always a tightrope act

It’s much more likely the other person is going to find out about if they’re also a writer

That's just expert level tightrope

It sounds like Dorland was not heavily involved in the writing part of the writing scene at that point and might not have heard about it if that random guy didn't spill the beans

I would like to commemorate this day for my selfless act of reading the entirety of a long article that featured a group of writers who called themselves the "Chunky Monkeys" and the phrase "Chunky Monkeys" kept being repeated, and I read the whole thing.

I am now going to go buy several pints of ice cream.

embarrassing admission: for like the first whole half of the article i mistook “grub street” for a food website like, i dunno, “chowhound” and was like, what are all these fiction writers doing on a website about restaurants and recipes, well, whatever just go with it

how many other articles do i have fundamentally wrong conceptions about HOW MANY

Dorland started this whole thing by acting unhinged af, inviting the mockery and scrutiny of those whom she erroneously considered colleagues. The resulting situation sucks for her, and exposes the meanness and pettiness of those supposed colleagues but it also is of her own making.

― I'm a sovereign jazz citizen (the table is the table),

it's one of those unpleasant facts of life -- there are people that just don't like/get along with other people or groups of people. And what do you do about it in the case of adults in a community or group where people are there by choice? ... ILX has the suggest ban function (er FP function).

Not to make this about ILX and how ILX self-polices and factions and cliques etc., but, the emails between other group members being negative about Dorland ... this is so ordinary to me. Like, I feel that what seems so insane about this whole thing is how banal and ordinary it began.

didn't really want to read that nyt article, was hoping not to have to, but first of all:

"When she noticed classmates cooing over Marilynne Robinson’s novel “Housekeeping,” she picked up a copy. After inhaling its story of an eccentric small-town upbringing told with sensitive, all-seeing narration, she knew she wanted to become a writer."

That is fucking awful. Housekeeping was so more than that

embarrassing admission: for like the first whole half of the article i mistook “grub street” for a food website like, i dunno, “chowhound” and was like, what are all these fiction writers doing on a website about restaurants and recipes, well, whatever just go with it

If it makes you feel any better, Grub Street *is* also the name of a food website. It's New York magazine's food vertical.

The email conversations among the (lol) “chunky monkeys” made me think of the I think you should Leave insider trading sketch.

JUST LEAVE IT

The dialysis patients are angry. pic.twitter.com/RbYPAqgWa7

— Sharon Adarlo (@sadarlo1) October 9, 2021

unlike your ilx persona, mine stands with them^^^

“Abdulrazak, congratulations on your Nobel Prize. We just have a few questions: Team Dorland or Team Larsen? Do you consider yourself a good or bad art friend? How often do you smash that like button? Are groupchats sacred?”

— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) October 7, 2021

inordinately mad that i tried to know as little about this as possible and now it's been optioned

whoever upthread said this should be a coen brothers movie was otm

down at the Grub Street muse and the marketplace literary conferenceeeee 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

— 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒸𝒶 🌪🥩🍸💸 (@TamingofdeSchuh) October 10, 2021

I’m at the Grub Street muse
I’m at the marketplace literary conference
I’m at the combination Grub Street muse and marketplace literary conference

thank you Dan, for making the post I was afraid to make.