Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

They posted all of my critical comments but still the fact that neither Kolker nor the times will own their part in this is infuriating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The NYT got exactly what they wanted. More publicity.

Do they report their subscriber numbers and changes to those numbers somewhere?

I wish there were enough of us to make a difference. I have a feeling they are laughing at the readers who are upset about this and I'd bet they assume this is a "Karen" type of outrage. It's sexism and misogyny.

DP. It seems my $204 a year isn’t that important to them. I needed to reduce my number of monthly subscriptions anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The NYT got exactly what they wanted. More publicity.

Do they report their subscriber numbers and changes to those numbers somewhere?

I wish there were enough of us to make a difference. I have a feeling they are laughing at the readers who are upset about this and I'd bet they assume this is a "Karen" type of outrage. It's sexism and misogyny.

DP. It seems my $204 a year isn’t that important to them. I needed to reduce my number of monthly subscriptions anyway.

Maybe we should start another threat suggesting news sources to support and pay for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Book agents aren’t stupid — I would bet cold hard money one has already signed Dawn, and that in due time, we will hear about a book of hers coming out. Maybe memoir, maybe fiction, who knows, but I will be buying, and I know others in here will be too.

The discovery shows Dawn writing to an agent and mentioning sending novel pages, so it is quite possible she already has representation. If so, that was another way Kolker's articles slammed her. They implied she was less talented than Sonya Larson, though it seems she may have been getting fellowships and residencies, as well as agent, through her novel pages. And, as we've already gone over here, a lot of Sonya's successes seem dubious given that they were facilitated by powerful friends.

I know from one of the screenshots of Dawn's Facebook that she was selected for one of the Tin House residencies. I'm a writer and have applied to that residency several times and never been accepted. But all but one of the writers I know personally who have done that residency have published books, many of them originating from the residency.

I know it's hard for people outside of the litfic world to conceptualize, but Dawn is actually fairly successful within this world. Not as successful as the CMs, but that is an elite level. To make a comparison, if litfic were the NFL, Celeste Ng is a starting quarterback, most of the other CMs are on active team rosters, and Dorland is on a practice squad and might get pulled up to the roster. It's easy, if you aren't a football player or don't care about football to scoff and say the player on the practice squad has failed. But if you are familiar with the industry, you understand that getting to that point means having a stellar high school and college career, getting drafted, and surviving NFL training camps and doing well enough to join an organization. Is it as impressive as being Tom Brady? No. But almost nobody is Tom Brady. It's still very, very impressive and more successful than 99.999% of people who aspire to become a professional football player.

I noticed in the discovery messages that Sonya and one of the other Chunky Monkey were hoping The Kindest would be published before Tin House. I didn't understand the reference at first because Sonya hadn't been published there, but now it is clear they wanted Dawn to see the story and be hurt so that she would feel bad during the residency.

I'm honestly starting to wonder how much of this animus was predicated on jealousy. That is, Sonya was jealous of Dawn and spiteful about it, not the other way around as Kolker tried to insinuate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Kolker (and Grubstreet, and Gay and Rosner and Twitter at large) decided Dorland was the wrong kind of woman. A woman doing feminine things, like making sacrifices, caring about people, nurturing relationships, communicating. And Larson was the right kind of woman, the one acting like Salinger or Hemingway or any of the man male writers who have used and abused their personal relationships in the name of their art.

this is some truth right here

Not to make a sea of blue but excellent analysis.

[Anonymous]

To me it seems clear that Larson was VERY jealous of Dorland. Also as she wrote her spite story it came to her that she’s not a very good (certainly not a professional level ) writer. So she had to include a real writers words. Whatever the consequences. She thought popularity would save her from judgement. Almost but not quite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To me it seems clear that Larson was VERY jealous of Dorland. Also as she wrote her spite story it came to her that she’s not a very good (certainly not a professional level ) writer. So she had to include a real writers words. Whatever the consequences. She thought popularity would save her from judgement. Almost but not quite.

I also feel that Larson was jealous of Dorland

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it seems clear that Larson was VERY jealous of Dorland. Also as she wrote her spite story it came to her that she’s not a very good (certainly not a professional level ) writer. So she had to include a real writers words. Whatever the consequences. She thought popularity would save her from judgement. Almost but not quite.

I also feel that Larson was jealous of Dorland

Same. I can't figure out why. Maybe Dorland is the better writer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it seems clear that Larson was VERY jealous of Dorland. Also as she wrote her spite story it came to her that she’s not a very good (certainly not a professional level ) writer. So she had to include a real writers words. Whatever the consequences. She thought popularity would save her from judgement. Almost but not quite.

I also feel that Larson was jealous of Dorland

Same. I can't figure out why. Maybe Dorland is the better writer.

I don’t think so. I don’t think she thought Dorland was a better writer, either. I think she legit thought Dorland was giving away her liver in part for attention and did springboard her story from there. I think she completely misread Dorland, because it was like she just couldn’t grok someone truly being that selfless without some ulterior motive — so she had to ascribe one to her. It was a failure of Larson’s human understanding.

I don’t read her insults of Dorland in the texts as jealousy — except in the way that my mom would tell me the richer girls were picking on me because they were jealous. Ha ha.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if Kolker wrote the piece overcompensating for the fact that he got the story tip from Dorland, so tried to give some slant to Larson, also. I don't really believe that he understood Dorland the way we do and wrote the story that way, anyway. Thinking it's more probable that he didn't read all the legal filings and also that his story may have gotten changed around a bit in editing (he suggests it did but I don't know which side it might have favored more in the original draft form). I suspect that he did maybe see things from both sides. He does after all write stories about female harassment etc. that misogynists probably wouldn't bother spending their time on, I don't personally think he's a misogynist.

Characterizing women who stand up for themselves as needy, extra, or emotional is not a good look in 2021.

I agree but I think we are far from this type of misogyny going away.

One of the take-aways I have from this whole thing is that we are still stuck in the misogynist viewpoint that there are "good" women and "bad" women. The 2021 spin on this is that "good" women deserve to be treated fairly (like a man!) and that "bad" women may be treated in a sexist way because we still live in a sexist culture that believes feminine traits are inherently bad.

So Dorland is portrayed as needy specifically because she is making an emotional claim. She is far less concerned with the theft of intellectual property that she might have profited off of than she is in simply having been treated poorly. She is upset over the abuse of her friendship. She is saying that Larson hurt her, and she wants recompense for being hurt. Since emotionality is considered (falsely) a feminine trait, Kolker feels comfortable portraying it as needy and cloying.

But Larson's approach to the conflict is based in a professional interest. She is a writer; she wrote something. She isn't personally hurt by Dorland's actions. Instead, she is alleging that Dorland has deprived her of income, has interfered with her career. Since we still treat economic interests and work as "masculine" concepts, Kolker portrays Larson as rational, calm, independent.

But of course, if you read the court documents, you can see why these dichotomies are inaccurate. Not only offensive, but wrong. Though her claim is based in an emotional harm, Dorland's actions are carefully thought out and executed. Whether she is writing to Larson directly or reaching out to Boston Book Festival or Grubstreet or another professional organization, her communications are clear, with remarkably little sentiment. She is honest that her interest is an emotional one, but she is rational about describing that emotion and asking for generally very basic things.

Meanwhile, the emails and texts between the CMs show Larson to be incredibly emotional, seemingly blinded by her dislike of Dorland. The CMs commentary about Dorland is petty, small-minded, bitter, and untempered by reason. You might expect at some point for someone to say "well, she did donate a kidney to a stranger and that's a laudable thing." But they can't even manage that level of objectivity. And it's not limited to the women on these threads -- the men are largely as bad, with a couple small exceptions.

Kolker (and Grubstreet, and Gay and Rosner and Twitter at large) decided Dorland was the wrong kind of woman. A woman doing feminine things, like making sacrifices, caring about people, nurturing relationships, communicating. And Larson was the right kind of woman, the one acting like Salinger or Hemingway or any of the man male writers who have used and abused their personal relationships in the name of their art.

Great, thoughtful analysis.

Yes! Agree 100%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Book agents aren’t stupid — I would bet cold hard money one has already signed Dawn, and that in due time, we will hear about a book of hers coming out. Maybe memoir, maybe fiction, who knows, but I will be buying, and I know others in here will be too.

The discovery shows Dawn writing to an agent and mentioning sending novel pages, so it is quite possible she already has representation. If so, that was another way Kolker's articles slammed her. They implied she was less talented than Sonya Larson, though it seems she may have been getting fellowships and residencies, as well as agent, through her novel pages. And, as we've already gone over here, a lot of Sonya's successes seem dubious given that they were facilitated by powerful friends.

I know from one of the screenshots of Dawn's Facebook that she was selected for one of the Tin House residencies. I'm a writer and have applied to that residency several times and never been accepted. But all but one of the writers I know personally who have done that residency have published books, many of them originating from the residency.

I know it's hard for people outside of the litfic world to conceptualize, but Dawn is actually fairly successful within this world. Not as successful as the CMs, but that is an elite level. To make a comparison, if litfic were the NFL, Celeste Ng is a starting quarterback, most of the other CMs are on active team rosters, and Dorland is on a practice squad and might get pulled up to the roster. It's easy, if you aren't a football player or don't care about football to scoff and say the player on the practice squad has failed. But if you are familiar with the industry, you understand that getting to that point means having a stellar high school and college career, getting drafted, and surviving NFL training camps and doing well enough to join an organization. Is it as impressive as being Tom Brady? No. But almost nobody is Tom Brady. It's still very, very impressive and more successful than 99.999% of people who aspire to become a professional football player.

I noticed in the discovery messages that Sonya and one of the other Chunky Monkey were hoping The Kindest would be published before Tin House. I didn't understand the reference at first because Sonya hadn't been published there, but now it is clear they wanted Dawn to see the story and be hurt so that she would feel bad during the residency.

I'm honestly starting to wonder how much of this animus was predicated on jealousy. That is, Sonya was jealous of Dawn and spiteful about it, not the other way around as Kolker tried to insinuate.

Oh wow, I missed that. That's awful! And if true, I do think there is professional jealousy involved.

That doesn't mean they thought Dorland was the better writer. Sometimes people are jealous because they think someone doesn't deserve what they have. In a profession like writing where rewards are so limited (book deals, story acceptances, fellowships, residencies, grants), people get very possessive. If Dawn has a TH residency, that means another writer doesn't. If they didn't think Dawn was worthy of that reward, they are still jealous, just not of her writing.

But I get a clear sense from the CM's comments about Dawn that part of it was that they didn't think she had a worthwhile "voice". Meaning they did not feel like she had something of value to say as a writer. That's a complicated accusation and it's one writers (mostly privately, sometimes publicly) level at each other all the time. And it's a question that is particularly fraught these days because the industry is reckoning with a long history of excluding POC, women, LGBTQ+ persons, immigrants, non-native English speakers, etc. Some groups have been excluded more than others. I get the sense that Larson and Ng felt that in part because Dorland was white, her voice was less valuable. To some extent I get that -- POC experience a ton of discrimination in publishing and that's real.

But it's not like it's easy or straightforward for writers from impoverished backgrounds, or people who come to writing later in life, or people without MFAs. Many older women who find success as writers find it in genre work (romance and mystery in particular) because litfic is so hard to break into. You need "credentials" for litfic, whereas for genre, you just need an audience. Talented writers can find an audience for their work. Most people will never have the right credentials, especially if they weren't born into a class that made them easier to get or didn't start early enough. And Dorland is a part of all that. If she got a residency at Tin House, it's because she writes well and the work she submitted was of interest to the people on staff. That doesn't mean she didn't benefit from being white (thought TH absolutely selects POC and other underrepresented writers). But you don't get picked with crap work. It's a very tough get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To me it seems clear that Larson was VERY jealous of Dorland. Also as she wrote her spite story it came to her that she’s not a very good (certainly not a professional level ) writer. So she had to include a real writers words. Whatever the consequences. She thought popularity would save her from judgement. Almost but not quite.

"Spite story" - well coined.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it seems clear that Larson was VERY jealous of Dorland. Also as she wrote her spite story it came to her that she’s not a very good (certainly not a professional level ) writer. So she had to include a real writers words. Whatever the consequences. She thought popularity would save her from judgement. Almost but not quite.

"Spite story" - well coined.

Total spite story. And - creepy level of spite. It’s fascinating that Dorland was painted as the unwell stalker type. When I’d argue the reverse is true: I mean how unwell and stalkerish is writing and revising and publishing a whole fictional story engineered to hurt someone you don’t like? Yikes.

[Anonymous]

Thank you to the writer PPs who shed light on Tin House and the relative positions of Dorland and Larson. I’m a coward, shy, wannabe writer, and even I thought, way to go, Dawn, when I flicked over that detail days ago.

I’m mulling over the point a different poster (I think?) made about jealousy, and the sense that the CMs believed Dorland had no entitlement to any real opportunities in literary fiction. I think this is correct. I think there’s a certain kind of poison that some of those writers are drinking and eagerly serving up to everyone in their grimy little crew. It’s beyond some right-wing nut job thing about identity politics but there’s an element of that there, where trawling your parents or grandparents lives or god forbid, your own, is innately more legit than attempting research because research is based on ossified power structures over how history is told etc.

Or - or! - maybe that crew is only really suited to memoir turned into fiction lite, and they thought Vance and Westover have already told all the stories. It’s all hilarious in how unimaginative and petty the thinking seems to have been in that circle. Didn’t someone, maybe pages and pages ago, refer to Tom Wolfe advising all writers to turn to research and to live before just trying to write? To avoid that solipsism? I dunno.

[Anonymous]

Celeste Ng has probably never been so appreciative of Alec Baldwin in her life.