Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DAWN DORLAND WINS THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION!

I guess I’m in the minority and don’t agree that this was in any way plagiarism nor that DD comes out looking like anything other than the Karen she was being mocked for being.

Then you don’t know the meaning of “plagiarism” or “Karen”.

I mean, do I like Sonya and would I be friends with her? Probably not. But making DD a character in her story, even quoting the real FB letter, is NOT plagiarism. Don’t be friends or share stuff with writers if you don’t want to find yourself in one of their stories. And DD is cringey and clearly donated her kidney for validation.

OMG you are wrong about plagiarism, and who are you to say why any other person "clearly" did something, especially something so massive as donating a kidney? Do you know DD?

Have you done anything that actually matters? If so, how would you feel if others in your neighborhood started saying you suck and you did that thing for some shitty reason?

[Anonymous]

Let me add the second part of the Datalounge thread - it wasn’t linked in part III:

https://www.datalounge.com/thread/29484341-you-ve-got-to-be-kidneying-bad-art-friend-thread-part-2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let me add the second part of the Datalounge thread - it wasn’t linked in part III:

https://www.datalounge.com/thread/29484341-you-ve-got-to-be-kidneying-bad-art-friend-thread-part-2

Part I:

https://www.datalounge.com/thread/29460982-who-is-the-‘bad-art-friend-’

[Anonymous]

I’m really enjoying the Datalounge links—thanks for posting.

I can’t recall if anyone posted the MetaFilter discussion? https://www.metafilter.com/192846/Do-writers-not-care-about-my-kidney-donation#8158275

Nothing new in terms of developments, but like our DCUM thread, includes lots of very thoughtful posts from excellent writers, many of whom are pros. Is there an award category somewhere to recognize the best forum discussions threads each year? There should be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't help but think what fact(s) would have to be different for Ng to call out the actual plagiarism?

I'm horrified, but also deeply curious at the human behavior at play here.

It is simple. I've met so many people like this. Their values are very straightforward.

If someone they like does a think that could be considered wrong, it's justified.

If someone they don't like does anything (even a think you might think an unequivocal good, like donating a kidney), it's not justified.

The end. Simple.

Bingo. Just like every person who voted for Trump. Every single odious act was given a pass because they liked him.

People are small minded, mean, egotistical (and unwilling to admit wrongdoing, so they double down on their bad takes) and hubristic.

[Anonymous]

I agree with this take. I think the NYT is one of the biggest disappointments in this entire sordid affair. They are tarnished in my mind. I'm even debating my long-time subscription. The whole thread is interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anyone ready to drop $99 to report back on what Robert Wolker and his editor say about how they put together Bad Art Friend?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think Sonya Larson is not only a bad art friend, but a bad artist. I write in the literary genre, and I've been in the position of helping to select works for honors equivalent to BASS. Larson's story demonstrates she is not curious enough to be a good artist; she assigns a facile motive to her kidney donor. Larson's story demonstrates she is not precise enough to be a good artist; every detail of the donation was transparently unresearched. Larson's story demonstrates she does not have the empathy to be a good artist; the characters of the two women are only superficially explored. Larson's story demonstrates she does not have the creativity to be a good artist; the story is structured in a derivative manner, and there is not one iota of profundity, beauty, or mystery in the prose.

Why does she write? I've never understood "literary" writers who have so little feeling for language.

WTH did I just read?! I can't believe BASS was going to distribute that could-have-been-written-by-an-8th-grader story to the whole of Boston? It's a poorly-drawn caricature with crappy dialogue and unbelievable details (after the Angel-appeared surgery, she had time to take a bus to Target, then paint the baseboards, and also have an Olive Garden gc lying around...mkay). Wow.

[Anonymous]

I'm 12:14 pp and I didn't read "The Kindest" earlier because I assumed it would be brilliant - à la Yiyun Li, a master of the short story. Not even close. Did Larson get an MFA?

Larson didn't want to settle over this piece of crap writing; that is SO clearly a poorly-written rant. I'm cheering you on Dawn - never give it up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A local Boston mag thesis on Grub Street: "But the message received this week by anyone tempted to dip their toes into writerly communities in any serious way boils down to a warning: watch your back."

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/10/12/grubstreet-bad-art-friend/

Finally, a response from a Boston outlet that isn’t on GrubStreet’s payroll and/or sucking them off.

[Anonymous]

Larson seems like an ugly evil person. It’s not easy to give a KIDNEY. For God sake. And then of course the race card. Evil awful person.

[Anonymous]

Every penny Larson makes on this should go to the real hero: the kidney donor. How is this difficult?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A local Boston mag thesis on Grub Street: "But the message received this week by anyone tempted to dip their toes into writerly communities in any serious way boils down to a warning: watch your back."

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/10/12/grubstreet-bad-art-friend/

Finally, a response from a Boston outlet that isn’t on GrubStreet’s payroll and/or sucking them off.

I think this was a little off though, considering that most of the discourse still going is on toxic, cruel behavior instead of lawsuits and white lady entitlement
“ about kidneys, lawsuits, white-lady entitlement, the peculiarities of intellectual property in creative fiction, and what exactly makes people drawn to creative writing workshops tick.”

[Anonymous]

I've been wondering something about Dawn's class background and plain way of interacting with people: maybe one of the reasons the Chunky Monkeys maligned her is because she isn't adept at performing allyship/anti-racism as expected in bourgeois liberal writing and academic circles. My read of her is that she isn't so self-conscious of coming across as a Good White Person, which i personally respect as a black woman. The specific way the white writers in this group were salivating over her destruction is very fascinating to me. It's almost as if she was their rural-poor white woman sacrifice to the racial justice gods. I'm reminded of one of Alison Murphy's emails to Sonya in which she sheepishly admitted the campaign against Dawn is her worst nightmare. She pledged to stay on guard to make sure she never becomes (or is found out to be) an entitled White Savior or literary Karen, LOL. Except, this framing of Dawn was manufactured to obfuscate a clear case of plagiarism and, in my opinion, Sonya's envy of Dawn's superior writerly talent and skill. There was so much projection going on; the lack of self-awareness of these bullies is astounding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm 12:14 pp and I didn't read "The Kindest" earlier because I assumed it would be brilliant - à la Yiyun Li, a master of the short story. Not even close. Did Larson get an MFA?

Larson didn't want to settle over this piece of crap writing; that is SO clearly a poorly-written rant. I'm cheering you on Dawn - never give it up!

This. I can't believe she went to bat for this particular piece of writing. I especially find it embarrassing the way her writing group fawns over it and talks about how brilliant it is.

Listen, I've been in a ton of writing groups and workshops and there's always a lot of fawning. It's kind of the name of the game -- people are putting themselves out there, it's a vulnerable position, and there is a great deal of pressure to say nice things about everyone's work. However, in the best writing groups, those "nice things" are highly specific. And, since the point of the group is to actually get better, there is generally also specific criticism to help the writer improve the work. Like if I were reading this story in a writing group, I'd have nice things to say about it -- there are places where the prose is well done, there are character details I like, and I think the plot itself (and its' underlying themes) are interesting and worth exploring.

But I'd have serious issues with the Rose character, who just feels like a joke to me. That would be okay if the story were less about her, if the focus was more on the protagonist and her husband, if the focus were on how this somewhat caustic woman finds a way to be herself after receiving this gift, how she responds to the cultural pressure to become a permanent gratitude machine. I'd love to read a story like that -- just focused on the organ recipient and allowing her to be a deeply flawed, sometimes selfish, sometimes not-particularly-grateful human being. Sounds great.

But the stuff with Rose undermines that because Rose is such a weak foil (and I question the choice to make her a foil at all, it feels predictable and dull). Rose seems to have NO redeeming qualities beyond donating her kidney. And even this is weakly explored because if there were really a person who was terrible in every respect except for this little detail where she donated her kidney to a stranger, I feel like there would be more meat on that character. Rose has no meat. She is a collection of annoying mannerisms and semi-offensive offhand statements. She's vapid and needy, but there's no real exploration of why (and in my experience vapid, needy people always have a why).

So it's embarrassing and cringeworthy to me that the other CMs had so little to say that was specific in those emails and group texts. Maybe they had other feedback that was more in keeping with what I would expect. But so much of what they right here is just "it's amazing!!!!" and... it's not. It's okay. It's a work in progress and it needs work. Even when people offer the criticism that maybe she shouldn't base it so closely on Dawn, the tone is "but of course aside from that detail it's an amazing story!!!" And as someone who has read a lot of other people's short fiction at various stages of readiness for publication, I'm floored. I've read stories that stopped me in my tracks and made me say "This is perfect, change nothing, her his a list of journals I think would make a good home for it." This story is not that, even in it's various published iterations.