Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort.

Sure, but people aren't looking at the filings, they are looking at the documents produced primarily by Larson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me in all of this is how irresponsible the NYT author (Kolker) was in the retelling. What if this entire issue had been handled in arbitration (which Larsen refused, Dorland was okay with), meaning there would be no public documents? We would just have had the NYT timeline and framing, not the original source documents, which tell a wildly different story than what the NYT published.

It is bothering me how divergent the actual evidence is from the NYT narrative. In the NYT, Dawn sounds crazy, clinging, annoying, etc. Problematic in many ways. But when you read the actual evidence -- produced by Larsen herself in litigation! -- suddenly that largely falls away. You end up with a vulnerable woman who painfully starts to piece together, over years of time, how she's been maltreated and gaslit, someone who doesn't look anything like what Kolker portrayed.

If the hard evidence hadn't been there for us to assess on our own, how destroyed would Dorland have been by the NYT article? How complicit is the NYT in this entire affair?

larsen refused arbitration? when she was the one who plagiarized? why did nobody advise her to settle asap?

Yes. Dorland requested arbitration. Larson refused.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

This! It doesn't seem to be just a case of "different framing". The communications and the timing of them on both sides paint an completely different picture than what Kolker describes. Did he miss factual evidence, have a bias, or what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort.

While that is true (lawyer here), people aren't talking about the pleadings in this case. They are talking about the evidence, i.e. the record of emails/texts both between Dorland and Larsen, and then between Larsen and others.

They outline several factual issues that are not mentioned or obscured in Kolker piece. These are facts not in dispute, not legal arguments. Stuff like the timeline and places where Larsen was clearly lying to Dorland. There's no nuance there -- Larsen was saying one thing to Dorland while saying the opposite to her friends, and in some cases telling her friends that she was in fact lying to Dorland.

Kolker is an investigative journalist. It is frustrating that he took Larsen's account of her motivations and the sequence of events as factual, when there was evidence available that undermines that narrative. And I'll also note that most of what is in the court evidence back sup what Dorland says about her own motivations in a way that makes them more understandable, but Kolker chose not to include that evidence (and thus made it seem like Dorland was the one obscuring the truth).

When I read those emails between Dorland and Larsen in full, as opposed to the snippets and descriptions in Kolker's piece, my conclusions were completely opposite. That's a huge problem! It means he inaccurately represented this key exchange between them in a way that is, in your phrasing, a distortion. Why would he do that? If the goal was to present "both sides" and let readers decide, why present that key exchange in a way that supports Larsen's narrative, when the emails themselves show that Larsen was being duplicitous. I don't get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort.

Dawn did not communicate with SL for years, even as SL remained focused on her. SL's text exchanges with her bullying clique speak for themselves. They aren't even artful or nuance, just mean as hell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort.

Sure, but people aren't looking at the filings, they are looking at the documents produced primarily by Larson.

I’m the PP who wrote that this - meaning the blue-check Twitter reaction - was supported by the false idea that Dorland was a Karen who stalked Larson, and that Larson in turn tries to do emotional labor to aid this horrible white chick. This is what Ng, Gay, and Northam all said, to thousands of Twitter likes. This is a real phenomenon, in that even private citizens with some social media presence, want to do anything to not seem like One Of Those White Women. Without this environment, even if folks didn’t see the pleadings (if Larson decided to accept Dorland’s saner suggestion of arbitration), there is a better chance the cruel and dishonest social dynamic would have been spotted more quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It appears Dawn is actually a really talented writer. In my estimation, at least.

https://greenmountainsreview.com/do-us-part/

Yes, I think it's really good!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort.

Dawn did not communicate with SL for years, even as SL remained focused on her. SL's text exchanges with her bullying clique speak for themselves. They aren't even artful or nuance, just mean as hell.

My impression is that Dawn was reaching out to SL's employers, schools, publishers, etc during some of that period... Isn't that why she's coming up on the text exchanges?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don't know think anything will happen to any of the authors. Dorland will remain traumatized. The rest will continue like nothing happened. Maybe they'll offer a half-hearted apology. The independent GrubStreet investigation will do a little gentle finger shaking. Maybe some MFA programs will add this incident to their plagiarism training. But otherwise, I don't think anything will change.

I could be wrong, but I think this will have lasting consequences for the CMs. Maybe not financial, but there is and will be a cloud of shame. And every time they are on a forum or a book tour, a little part of them will wonder if someone in the audience will quote the group chat or ask them about this. This stench is going to linger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me in all of this is how irresponsible the NYT author (Kolker) was in the retelling. What if this entire issue had been handled in arbitration (which Larsen refused, Dorland was okay with), meaning there would be no public documents? We would just have had the NYT timeline and framing, not the original source documents, which tell a wildly different story than what the NYT published.

It is bothering me how divergent the actual evidence is from the NYT narrative. In the NYT, Dawn sounds crazy, clinging, annoying, etc. Problematic in many ways. But when you read the actual evidence -- produced by Larsen herself in litigation! -- suddenly that largely falls away. You end up with a vulnerable woman who painfully starts to piece together, over years of time, how she's been maltreated and gaslit, someone who doesn't look anything like what Kolker portrayed.

If the hard evidence hadn't been there for us to assess on our own, how destroyed would Dorland have been by the NYT article? How complicit is the NYT in this entire affair?

so -- while I get what you are saying -- I do think this is where you have to accept that no media outlet, no reporter, etc is perfect, and that every bit of reporting you read is imperfect and to some degree biased.

i'm a reporter and i would have done this article differently, but fwiw, i'm the same poster who upthread said we need to remember that kolker is a dude, and by being a dude, simply cannot have the same level of true understanding of what mean girl bullyfests involve and look like, or perhaps even the ability to recognize the mean girl bullyfest as arguably the most compelling part of this story. My bias means seeing the mean girl story.

Kolker's bias in this case, as not just as a man but as a bestselling author, is favoring the larger concepts of who owns an idea; who owns a story; what is and isn't literary license/theft. And I get why he has his biases and I have mine, we both come by them honestly.

Sure, everyone has a bias, but in this case, there is incontrovertible evidence of what actually happened that we can all see. Bias might come in around the edges with any story where there is a framework of undisputed facts, but here, Kolker presumably took a look at the same evidence we all have, yet chose to frame his story in a way that leads the reader away from that same evidence.

There is such profound distrust of the media now, such a deep skepticism that had taken ahold of the country. And normally, I give reporters the benefit of the doubt, because I think they are doing good work that's important for a functional country. But when I read articles like this, where nothing exactly untruthful was said, but yet the factual reality is so very different than what the article conveyed, honestly, I get that skepticism. It especially bothers me because absent the court case, I wouldn't have been skeptical. I would have accepted Kolker's framing entirely, unintentionally compounding what Dorland -- who is the victim here -- went through. And that really bothers me.

So, this is still the same problem. We can have access to the exact same evidence and see different things -- or choose to see different things. We've all watched the Rodney King beating video. The cops are beating him: there is no question. Incontrovertible evidence of what actually happened. But that jury, sworn to follow the law, still let most of the officers off the hook.

Oh, and it would take (mostly white) journalists another 20+ yrs after the OJ trial to finally understand: Maybe the OJ verdict was about 75 yrs of racism by the LAPD? The facts about LAPD's significant and documented racism for decades were always there, too.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be pissed at the article, or that the article is great. I'm saying that even professionals bring bias to the table, and time has a way of changing a narrative. Also, you sound smart, which means you are too smart to be readily accepting 100 percent of Kolker's framing, or anyone's framing, all the time, ever.

Of course I am not accepting everything at 100%, but what can I trust the NYT (the NYT!) with if I can't even trust them to accurately represent a timeline of events where there is incontrovertible evidence of the events? I mean, am I allowed to trust a basic timeline? A chronology?

The answer can't be "haha, jokes on you, always do your own research, reporters amirite?" It can't be that I should expect a reporter to obfuscate actual events in favor of portraying his bias. Or, it should not be, because if we can't trust institutions like the NYT with, at a minimum, factual chronological analysis, what happens to free media?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was appalled when I heard about this story and sided with Dawn, but damn when I read her posts about her donation my eyes roll back so far in my head it hurts.

I would have had a very hard time not being sarcastic to her. Maybe my problem is I know too many women who do charity for attention. One message she sent to Sonya she talked about attending a charity function with Jayne Seymore and being so proud that the doctor who took her kidney mentioned her kidney "just gushing urine". Ugh.

I would have stopped talking to her and avoided her but I know I would have made comments to a mutual friend about her. In any group I've been in there would be at least one adult who would shut the nastiness down so we would only go on so long.

No one in that group admitted that they were the ones doing the stalking. What an empty echo chamber they were.

commenting on your donated kidney "gushing urine" is basically the equivalent of commenting on your baby's cuteness or first smile or first steps. it's what a kidney is supposed to do! it's the whole point of a kidney!

OK, stick to what you know. I have kidney disease and often my kidneys don’t work and won’t “gush urine.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don't know think anything will happen to any of the authors. Dorland will remain traumatized. The rest will continue like nothing happened. Maybe they'll offer a half-hearted apology. The independent GrubStreet investigation will do a little gentle finger shaking. Maybe some MFA programs will add this incident to their plagiarism training. But otherwise, I don't think anything will change.

I could be wrong, but I think this will have lasting consequences for the CMs. Maybe not financial, but there is and will be a cloud of shame. And every time they are on a forum or a book tour, a little part of them will wonder if someone in the audience will quote the group chat or ask them about this. This stench is going to linger.

I mean, certainly the next time Celeste Ng comes out with a new book or does any kind of public event, there will be questions about this that she’ll have to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the court documents were public, how/why did Kolker miss what really happened?

I have wondered the same thing myself. Perhaps he was part of the same literary scene and so took Larson's description as fact, and did not fact check? But then again, I don't think anything he said was overtly untrue, it's just laid out in a way that significantly distorts the truth. I don't know, in other words. But I have wondered.

LOL I thought this board was full of lawyers, not writers. Lawyers of all people should know that court records are fascinating and helpful, but they are never a whole story, and they do not capture emotion, nuance or context. And plenty of court filings are, by design, meant to distort.

While that is true (lawyer here), people aren't talking about the pleadings in this case. They are talking about the evidence, i.e. the record of emails/texts both between Dorland and Larsen, and then between Larsen and others.

They outline several factual issues that are not mentioned or obscured in Kolker piece. These are facts not in dispute, not legal arguments. Stuff like the timeline and places where Larsen was clearly lying to Dorland. There's no nuance there -- Larsen was saying one thing to Dorland while saying the opposite to her friends, and in some cases telling her friends that she was in fact lying to Dorland.

Kolker is an investigative journalist. It is frustrating that he took Larsen's account of her motivations and the sequence of events as factual, when there was evidence available that undermines that narrative. And I'll also note that most of what is in the court evidence back sup what Dorland says about her own motivations in a way that makes them more understandable, but Kolker chose not to include that evidence (and thus made it seem like Dorland was the one obscuring the truth).

When I read those emails between Dorland and Larsen in full, as opposed to the snippets and descriptions in Kolker's piece, my conclusions were completely opposite. That's a huge problem! It means he inaccurately represented this key exchange between them in a way that is, in your phrasing, a distortion. Why would he do that? If the goal was to present "both sides" and let readers decide, why present that key exchange in a way that supports Larsen's narrative, when the emails themselves show that Larsen was being duplicitous. I don't get it.

Same here. I had the exact same response. And it's really problematic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was appalled when I heard about this story and sided with Dawn, but damn when I read her posts about her donation my eyes roll back so far in my head it hurts.

I would have had a very hard time not being sarcastic to her. Maybe my problem is I know too many women who do charity for attention. One message she sent to Sonya she talked about attending a charity function with Jayne Seymore and being so proud that the doctor who took her kidney mentioned her kidney "just gushing urine". Ugh.

I would have stopped talking to her and avoided her but I know I would have made comments to a mutual friend about her. In any group I've been in there would be at least one adult who would shut the nastiness down so we would only go on so long.

No one in that group admitted that they were the ones doing the stalking. What an empty echo chamber they were.

commenting on your donated kidney "gushing urine" is basically the equivalent of commenting on your baby's cuteness or first smile or first steps. it's what a kidney is supposed to do! it's the whole point of a kidney!

OK, stick to what you know. I have kidney disease and often my kidneys don’t work and won’t “gush urine.”

DP. The point is that Dorland's healthy kidney did and she was told that by a doctor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly don't know think anything will happen to any of the authors. Dorland will remain traumatized. The rest will continue like nothing happened. Maybe they'll offer a half-hearted apology. The independent GrubStreet investigation will do a little gentle finger shaking. Maybe some MFA programs will add this incident to their plagiarism training. But otherwise, I don't think anything will change.

I could be wrong, but I think this will have lasting consequences for the CMs. Maybe not financial, but there is and will be a cloud of shame. And every time they are on a forum or a book tour, a little part of them will wonder if someone in the audience will quote the group chat or ask them about this. This stench is going to linger.

I really hope it does, permanently.