Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what The Atlantic says about BAF by the way:


It was funny—in the “weird” sense—that The Closer landed on Netflix the same week a New York Times story headlined “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?” went viral. That article told the story of a writer who altruistically donated her kidney to a stranger, and of the Facebook friend who plundered the experience for her fiction. Switching perspectives and told out of chronological order, “Bad Art Friend” was deliberately written to deny the reader an obvious victim and villain. Some commentators nevertheless found it easy to assign blame: Dawn Dorland is a white woman, and Sonya Larson a mixed-race one, so Dorland was crying white tears and Larson had a genuine grievance. Dorland’s kidney donation was needy, entitled, and cringeworthy—as white women tend to be, according to the stereotype—and she probably tried to sabotage Larson’s career. “Some white women have way too much free time,” the writer Roxane Gay declared. Case closed.

Except there are other ways to frame the power dynamics involved: Dorland the unsuccessful writer versus Larson the published author. Dorland the earnest but irritating do-gooder versus Larson the Facebook lurker who mocked her “friend” with the cool kids from her writing clique. In some versions of the matchup, both women look bad: Dorland the control freak, intent on revenge, versus Larson the alleged plagiarist, who ineptly covered her tracks. Notably, the story never answers the question posed in its title. It was a Rorschach test.

I'm sorry, but I think that is a flatly ridiculous take meant to excuse bad journalism.

+1. These people come across as so sheltered, so privileged, so deeply unaware. I'm assuming they or any of their loved ones have ever been in critical medical need. Perhaps the greatest privilege of all.

The fact that they are even entertaining the narrative that Dorland did something wrong by donating her kidney is just ... wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what The Atlantic says about BAF by the way:


It was funny—in the “weird” sense—that The Closer landed on Netflix the same week a New York Times story headlined “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?” went viral. That article told the story of a writer who altruistically donated her kidney to a stranger, and of the Facebook friend who plundered the experience for her fiction. Switching perspectives and told out of chronological order, “Bad Art Friend” was deliberately written to deny the reader an obvious victim and villain. Some commentators nevertheless found it easy to assign blame: Dawn Dorland is a white woman, and Sonya Larson a mixed-race one, so Dorland was crying white tears and Larson had a genuine grievance. Dorland’s kidney donation was needy, entitled, and cringeworthy—as white women tend to be, according to the stereotype—and she probably tried to sabotage Larson’s career. “Some white women have way too much free time,” the writer Roxane Gay declared. Case closed.

Except there are other ways to frame the power dynamics involved: Dorland the unsuccessful writer versus Larson the published author. Dorland the earnest but irritating do-gooder versus Larson the Facebook lurker who mocked her “friend” with the cool kids from her writing clique. In some versions of the matchup, both women look bad: Dorland the control freak, intent on revenge, versus Larson the alleged plagiarist, who ineptly covered her tracks. Notably, the story never answers the question posed in its title. It was a Rorschach test.

I'm sorry, but I think that is a flatly ridiculous take meant to excuse bad journalism.

The fact that they are even entertaining the narrative that Dorland did something wrong by donating her kidney is just ... wow.

+1. These people come across as so sheltered, so privileged, so deeply unaware. I'm assuming they or any of their loved ones have ever been in critical medical need. Perhaps the greatest privilege of all.

[Anonymous]

Not sure if anyone is reading this thread or thinking about this story anymore. But I just had a thought I wanted to share.

A lot of people really want to "both sides" this and I think I understand why. I think a lot of people wind up identifying with Sonya Larson and her friends because they've done something like that before. They've encountered someone who rubbed them the wrong way. An outsider. And instead of (a) ignoring them, or (b) actually being empathetic, they've done the easier thing -- cruelty, piling on, ostracizing. Not everyone has done this (I haven't) but enough people have that they can see themselves in it.

But people don't like feeling guilty, they don't like recognizing a nasty, unpleasant part of their personality in someone else. So they need to be able to say "well Dawn also brought this on herself" or "well Dawn's later behavior is just as bad" because it makes the guilt easier. If you can both sides it, then no one is really guilty.

But if you look at it with moral clarity, this doesn't work because whatever Dawn did, she didn't deserve to be treated cruelly. And if you can see she was treated cruelly, it's hard to argue that she "went too far" in fighting back because if someone harms you, are you supposed to just do nothing? If you come to this with clean hands, its pretty much impossible to both sides it because what Dawn did was justified (by Sonya's behavior, which was directed at Dawn and designed to hurt) and what Sonya did was not (since Dawn never did anything to her).

I just feel like if you both sides it, what you are saying is that people you deem annoying or uncool deserve to be punished for it. Or that people who experience cruelty have an obligation to simply turn the other cheek. I don't believe either of those things.

The only person who could have prevented this mess from happening is Sonya. She could have chosen not to engage, written a story less obviously based on Dawn, obviously chosen not to steal Dawn's letter, or even just recognized her mistake and pulled the story, and none of this would have happened. What was Dawn supposed to do to prevent this situation? Not donate her kidney? I guess you could say that she shouldn't have invited the Grub Street people into her support group, but how on Earth could she have known, based on their prior behavior, that they weren't her friends. I just don't think there's any way for Dawn to have anticipated this, but Sonya could have and should have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not sure if anyone is reading this thread or thinking about this story anymore. But I just had a thought I wanted to share.

A lot of people really want to "both sides" this and I think I understand why. I think a lot of people wind up identifying with Sonya Larson and her friends because they've done something like that before. They've encountered someone who rubbed them the wrong way. An outsider. And instead of (a) ignoring them, or (b) actually being empathetic, they've done the easier thing -- cruelty, piling on, ostracizing. Not everyone has done this (I haven't) but enough people have that they can see themselves in it.

But people don't like feeling guilty, they don't like recognizing a nasty, unpleasant part of their personality in someone else. So they need to be able to say "well Dawn also brought this on herself" or "well Dawn's later behavior is just as bad" because it makes the guilt easier. If you can both sides it, then no one is really guilty.

But if you look at it with moral clarity, this doesn't work because whatever Dawn did, she didn't deserve to be treated cruelly. And if you can see she was treated cruelly, it's hard to argue that she "went too far" in fighting back because if someone harms you, are you supposed to just do nothing? If you come to this with clean hands, its pretty much impossible to both sides it because what Dawn did was justified (by Sonya's behavior, which was directed at Dawn and designed to hurt) and what Sonya did was not (since Dawn never did anything to her).

I just feel like if you both sides it, what you are saying is that people you deem annoying or uncool deserve to be punished for it. Or that people who experience cruelty have an obligation to simply turn the other cheek. I don't believe either of those things.

The only person who could have prevented this mess from happening is Sonya. She could have chosen not to engage, written a story less obviously based on Dawn, obviously chosen not to steal Dawn's letter, or even just recognized her mistake and pulled the story, and none of this would have happened. What was Dawn supposed to do to prevent this situation? Not donate her kidney? I guess you could say that she shouldn't have invited the Grub Street people into her support group, but how on Earth could she have known, based on their prior behavior, that they weren't her friends. I just don't think there's any way for Dawn to have anticipated this, but Sonya could have and should have.

Oh, it's still bothering me three weeks after the story first published because it genuinely opened my eyes to how half of our society apparently thinks donating a kidney is cringey or somehow compromised if the person dares speak out about their experience, and is literally OK with plagiarism and also bullying as long as the target is someone who, again, dares to speak about their organ donation in a way they deem lesser.

It's all very infuriating on some primordial level.

[Anonymous]

It's still bothering me, too. Reading Sonya and the Chunky Monkeys' text exchanges was a trigger for me. It floods me with memories of all the mean girls everywhere, from junior high to some of the women I run into at our country club. It makes me want to crawl in a hole and not come out.

[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.

When I go back and reread the original Kolker article, I'm struck by how some of the facts that initially put me off Dorland were not actually from the article, but from the original twitter takes. The idea that Dorland went back to Larson to ask her why she wasn't liking her kidney posts on Facebook? That wasn't in the article. Actually Kolker described the whole letter exchange there pretty accurately, though he didn't print all of the letters. I think he does suggest Dorland got a lawyer first, since he notes she was shopping legal opinions sometime around the Boston book fair thing, and that seems to have been incorrect.

But he does include sympathetic details about Dorland. For example, the fact that she didn't read the story right away even when she found a paid for version, which was basically out of Dorland's goodness and trust. “I did what I thought was artistically and emotionally healthy,” she said. “And also, it’s kind of what she had asked me to do.” Moreover, Kolker's quotes from Dorland are generally some of the most insightful parts of the article. On Dorland's reactions to seeing the mean girl texts and email, he wrote: "But there also was something clarifying about it. Now more than ever, she believes that 'The Kindest' was personal. 'I think she wanted me to read her story,' Dorland said, 'and for me and possibly no one else to recognize my letter.'"

I don't think Kolker quotes Larson saying anything this insightful. Maybe her comments about race, from that perspective. He also doesn't pull his punches about her plagiarism: Kolker puts the letter language Larson stole, in the early audible release, side by side with Dorland's letter, showing that of course the language was actually stolen. Like, he made the plagiarism pretty clear, without stating it outright in a way that the paper might be legally liable for. And he includes the letter excerpt where Larson says that she stole sentences word for word and felt like a good artist but a shitty friend.

There are some places where I think that if Kolker had excerpted MORE from the letters and texts he would have given a fuller, more correct portrayal. For example, when Larson was writing to audible about needing to rerecord the letter, he includes the part about her having taken some sentences from a real life letter but not her next sentence about not wanting to take those sentences out, for moral/ethical reasons. Keeping that in would have shown her admitting her mistake. Maybe it was space, or editing.

I remember the article coming out, and reading a lot of "takes" about it on twitter, and feeling like the "takes" weren't really hitting with the way I felt about the article, and then doing some reading on my own about it until I felt really powerfully in favor of Dorland. That's just me, though, and I can totally understand you guys feeling Kolker should not have written this from both perspectives at all.

Great analysis.
Also great is the emotional-role analysis above.

One thing:
Kolker wrote this from both perspectives because that was the revenue-maximizing thing to do.

The issue with the NYT is that it is a billion-dollar media corporation, that does hard investigative news alongside lifestyle stuff alongside horrible bothsides info-tainment political news. Look at Maggie Haberman or Peter Baker— they are effectively ESPN talking heads who write about politicians rather than athletes. And the NYT does this because it makes money and because they are a huge for-profit conglomerate that is now diversifying into Netflix culture stories (“Framing Britney”) and other media.

The NYT does a lot of great things. But it has to make money. And entertaining narratives make money.

Ownership of most American “news” by big media conglomerates— CNN to MSNBC, NYT to Politico to WaPo — is sinking our democracy.

NP - I disagree with your assessment of the bolded. The article stated, or at least strongly implied that Dawn reached out to Sonia because she had not reacted to any of her Facebook posts. Here is the quote with background information omitted:

But just after the surgery, when she checked Facebook, Dorland noticed some people she’d invited into the group hadn’t seemed to react to any of her posts. On July 20, she wrote an email to one of them: a writer named Sonya Larson.

....

Over email, on July 21, 2015, Larson answered Dorland’s message with a chirpy reply — “How have you been, my dear?” Dorland replied with a rundown of her next writing residencies and workshops, and as casually as possible, asked: “I think you’re aware that I donated my kidney this summer. Right?”

Only then did Larson gush: “Ah, yes — I did see on Facebook that you donated your kidney. What a tremendous thing!”

The author absolutely wanted to reader to think that the purpose of Dorland's email was to inquire about why Larson had not reacted to her kidney donation.

Eh, I don't agree with you, I think Kolker was fair about this. And frankly I think it's possible or likely that Dorland wrote to Larson in part -- maybe in large part -- because she had a bad feeling about what was going on with Larson's reading the facebook posts and not responding to any of them. The way I read about this letter on Twitter, it sounded like Dorland busted out with "WHY AREN'T YOU LIKING MY KIDNEY POSTS ON FACEBOOK?" and her email wasn't like that at all, it was much more measured and friendly and more of a check in. I think Kolker presented it fairly. It's Twitter that didn't read the whole letter and leaped into overdrive, imo.

[Anonymous]

Donating a kidney is definitely not the cringy part. That is absolutely not the issue.

The issue was with the perceived bragging and look at me and asking for attention and validation that Dawn was characterized as doing in the original New York Times story. Upon further review and research it seems that that is not actually what happened.

Not that it makes what they did OK, but sometimes if you’ve encountered this sort of neediness and attention demanding in a person, especially one who may not be the good person they’re trying to portray themselves as being, it raises a flag.

In that way I think it could’ve been a Rorschach test.

[Anonymous]

It still bothers me because of what it reveals about the litfic community and authors who are lauded for literary work, and the gatekeeping and cruelty in the litfic community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Donating a kidney is definitely not the cringy part. That is absolutely not the issue.

The issue was with the perceived bragging and look at me and asking for attention and validation that Dawn was characterized as doing in the original New York Times story. Upon further review and research it seems that that is not actually what happened.

Not that it makes what they did OK, but sometimes if you’ve encountered this sort of neediness and attention demanding in a person, especially one who may not be the good person they’re trying to portray themselves as being, it raises a flag.

In that way I think it could’ve been a Rorschach test.

I do actually think it happened. Dawn posted in the private support group, but she also posted about things to the rest of Facebook. The stuff about being honored at the Laker game and being the the Rose Bowl parade -- that stuff definitely got posted more widely. I am certain there were people who saw it and found it braggy and attention seeking, because it's hard to post anything to social media and not come off that way to at least someone. I don't do social media anymore for this reason. I found other people's posts annoying and I know they found mine annoying. I think these platforms are anti-social in many ways, in that they encourage this type of sharing and inevitably invoke jealous, resentful, eye-rolling responses in others. I think it's better when we know less about each others lives and people are not as encouraged to show off the good stuff in their lives.

I think the reason this aspect of Dawn's behavior doesn't bother me that much, though, is that while I've been really annoyed by similar behavior from other people before, there is a huge difference. In those cases, these were people who had behaved in decidedly unkind ways before, either directly towards me or right in front of me towards people I know. In those cases, I absolutely found the bragging about their "good works" to be revolting because it seemed to be a way to conceal or distract from their interpersonal behavior, which was no good.

But there's no evidence that Dawn every did anything like this to provoke this kind of response. Neither Sonya nor anyone else in her circle can identify anything Dawn ever said or did that would make her somewhat self-congratulatory posts about her kidney donation seem hypocritical. I don't understand why Sonya was so exercised over Dawn's behavior on Facebook given that, by all accounts, Dawn had never been anything but pleasant to her. I don't get why Sonya was inspired to write a take down of Dawn in "The Kindest", or use that letter, when Dawn's only "offense" was doing something that everyone (including Sonya and Celeste Ng and pretty much every person involved in this sordid conflict) does on social media, which is play up the good stuff in your life for likes.

[Anonymous]

The unapologetic distortions from the NYT still bother me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It still bothers me because of what it reveals about the litfic community and authors who are lauded for literary work, and the gatekeeping and cruelty in the litfic community.

YUP me too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The unapologetic distortions from the NYT still bother me.

Yes. I expect them to be imperfect and flawed at times but dang this was really bad and the follow-up was just so stupid on multiple levels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It still bothers me because of what it reveals about the litfic community and authors who are lauded for literary work, and the gatekeeping and cruelty in the litfic community.

YUP me too

It is unfortunate because honestly, I wonder about other litfic authors. Though I guess the nastiness was probably a secret hiding in plain sight for some of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The unapologetic distortions from the NYT still bother me.

Not to mention their cherry picking of comments and not publishing ones that called them and their editors out for their misleading article. Very underwhelming of the Oz behind the curtain.

[Anonymous]

If you’re surprised that the NYT can be overly focused on narrative over truth you’ve never read anything by Peter Baker or Maggie Haberman. They misled a huge slice of the country that Trump wasn’t an autocratic criminal by presenting “both sides” as equal. The former NYT Politics head editor used to be a theater critic for god’s sake.

I also want to respond to the excellent post above saying Sonya had multiple off ramps. Yes, she did.
Moreover, the kidney piece she wrote was a takedown of Dawn! Writing that, I’m sorry, was an intentional effort to put down “DFD” as they called her.