Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Writers take themselves so seriously. Good lord.

Law school professors: hold our beers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Writers take themselves so seriously. Good lord.

Law school professors: hold our beers.

Substitute any highly sought after profession that involves a lot of education (formal or not) and work and a little luck:

professional human rights activists
Bishops of any church
Supreme Court Justices
Famous song writers and singers
high level state department employees

and on and on

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another important fact:

“Dawn had hoped all along that a member of her recipient's family would also donate a kidney (that did not match with their loved one) to another stranger. Sure enough, inspired by her extraordinary act of kindness, the recipient's wife donated the gift of life to a young mother in Oregon the same day as Dawn's procedure.“

https://www.nba.com/lakers/laker-for-a-day

Also, apparently Dawn’s original letter was not for the recipient, but the potential person at the end of the donation chain, which really changed how the letter itself is interpreted.

I’m being genuine when I say that reading this story earlier this week has me considering it.

You’re not the only one. I am team Dorland even though I think she’s kind of awful. But I didn’t realize people unrelated to patients in need donated kidneys. If I didn’t have kids, I would consider it. As it is they are healthy but just in case I need to give a kidney to one of them…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great deep dive into timeline of events!

https://rottenindenmark.org/2021/10/10/identifying-the-bad-art-friend-is-easy/

I like this take and largely agree with him that Sonja starts out as the villain but that Dorland eventually joins her in the mud and you can’t ignore that.

I have a lot of empathy for Dorland because I experienced something somewhat similar a while back, and I cannot describe here how strong that feeling of wanting redemption/revenge is. In my case, the women who hurt me were unquestionably friends, as well as professional colleagues. What they did felt like a deep rejection of me both personally and professionally and it messed me up a lot— I still talk about this situation in therapy years later. Reading Bad Art Friend and threads like this are both triggering and cathartic. I have accepted that this will probably be something that marks me in one way or another for the rest of my life.

So I understand why Dorland went scorched earth in trying to get back at Sonja. I know that feeling of righteous rage so well I can taste it. But the difference between Dawn and I is that I ultimately didn’t go down that road. I had some private fits about it, I demanded loyalty from my closest friends (something I am now both embarrassed by and also still feel was necessary?), but that’s where it ended. I cut those women out of my life, distanced myself from anyone who might support them, and did my best to move on. It sucked! I still fantasize about them getting their comeuppance, and still sometimes check in on them online to see if karma has done any work on my behalf.

But I didn’t sue and I didn’t go public and watching what Dorland is going through now, I am glad I had the sense to move on.

[Anonymous]

I’m a WOC and I find it offensive that these other WOC, Celeste Ng, Larson, etc, are playing the race card. They call Dawn a white savior. Mistrust Dawn’s motives all you want, but would a white person’s kidney even have a good chance of matching with a POC (medically speaking). I know sometimes I’ve been asked to be tested for compatibility with a stranger of my same ethnic background because of the greater likelihood of a match. I doubt Dawn is foolish enough to believe that she was helping out someone not white. And it’s lazy of the Chunky Monkeys to label Dawn a white savior when they couldn’t come right out and so they don’t like her because she was uncool.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

I don’t think Dorland was in the wrong to sue, and I also think the weight of public replies are vindicating her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Dorland was in the wrong to sue, and I also think the weight of public replies are vindicating her.

Wait I fell into it: Dorland didn’t sue, Larson did and Dorland asking for a cease and desist seems incredibly appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These people all come off horribly.

Yes. I went to college with a lot of people who became successful literary writers and was feeling bad earlier this week because, thus far, I haven't received any Pulitzer prize nods or MacArthur grants or whatever like my classmates have.

But at least I'm not Sonya Larson! Middling success, poor writing AND famous for being petty. That's quite a trio. So thanks, Sonya. The schadenfreude I feel towards you is a gift that keeps on giving with each new and more embarrassing detail.

Sister. I also went to college with some people who got MacArthurs and went to high school with a bunch of Emmy winners - and I too have had my very down "where's MY prize?" moments (I know; you don't have to tell me how unsympathetic that is). My book advances have never topped $7500.

And I too have felt a bit of schadenfreude this week seeing what absolute turds these crazy powerful, well paid writers are. And seeing it all happen in public.

DP. How on Earth did a Chip Cheek or Allison Whocares get advances of $800,000 and $1,000,000, respectively, for works that did not sell?

There’s another element here, where being a big deal in the tiny, tiny pond of Grub Street, and being drinking/shit-talking buddies with the Clunky Monkeys greased a smoother path to better/more aggressive agents, better meets/hookups within publishing, better chances at fellowships and on and on. Which makes the refusal of Grub Street and its bigger-named monsters and the Writer Twitter defenses much more morally suspect. It was all personal and all professional at the same time, and they are all shocked that the person they wanted to kick around refused to accept it.

Someone else mentioned how deficient all of these deep, serious artists must be at character study. A person who engages in altruistic donation is not like most of us. Tack on her divinity studies and decision to try and write at least 10 years after others tend to start; this isn’t to canonize her, but doesn’t it suggest a certain unwavering drive? THIS is the person you want to F with? The person who doesn’t get social cues, doesn’t get embarrassed as you since she doesn’t have the right wiring? The character of Dawn is wholly consistent from the first line of the NYT story to the obnoxious letters she wrote to get Sonya fired (lol, ain’t saying it was not largely deserved - no you cannot publish lifted material and shrug it off). She has nothing to be embarrassed about. She is who she is. But those weak, sniveling, not so successful in-groupers are continuing to flail because they are fundamentally EMBARRASSED. Because they have at least two faces apiece, and their talents aren’t that significant.

Oh yeah. I can see “Dawn” as a character with a lot of nuance and interest - even tragedy. Reducing her to “white savior” really belies a massive lack of imagination. Like Dorothea in Middlemarch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I've read so much about this over the past few days and now I am convinced that not only did Dorland do nothing wrong, but that Larson, Ng and the other people in the circle are true monsters.

[Anonymous]

Question that occurred to me today: Has Larson written or published anything *other* than The Kindest?

It seems like if her career were more robust she'd have been more willing to put that story away and work on other projects - and would have included other projects in her NEA grant app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another important fact:

“Dawn had hoped all along that a member of her recipient's family would also donate a kidney (that did not match with their loved one) to another stranger. Sure enough, inspired by her extraordinary act of kindness, the recipient's wife donated the gift of life to a young mother in Oregon the same day as Dawn's procedure.“

https://www.nba.com/lakers/laker-for-a-day

Also, apparently Dawn’s original letter was not for the recipient, but the potential person at the end of the donation chain, which really changed how the letter itself is interpreted.

I’m being genuine when I say that reading this story earlier this week has me considering it.

You’re not the only one. I am team Dorland even though I think she’s kind of awful. But I didn’t realize people unrelated to patients in need donated kidneys. If I didn’t have kids, I would consider it. As it is they are healthy but just in case I need to give a kidney to one of them…

me too. I considered kidney donation but I feel like my #1 job is to stay healthy for my kid. Should probably donate blood! Honestly seeing social media posts of blood donation would probably inspire me to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

she’s actually engaged in really effective advocacy there for kidney donation. I’m impressed. I’m starting to see how very jealous the public recognition must have made the writers. Here she is getting attention for (in their minds) just having a kidney and being weird about it. Whereas they are *writers* who must earn attention through hard work.

[Anonymous]

I wonder who else was in that group and what they have to say about all of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think Dorland was in the wrong to sue, and I also think the weight of public replies are vindicating her.

Wait I fell into it: Dorland didn’t sue, Larson did and Dorland asking for a cease and desist seems incredibly appropriate.

I think Dorland retained a lawyer and tried to resolve without litigation and Larson beat her to it with the slander lawsuit. Dorland sued when she realized she wasn’t getting anywhere by asking Larson to stop publishing or at least giving her credit.