Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

I just don't understand how these people have platforms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I used to live in Boston. I have a friend who is a published novelist and poet, and he was somewhat obsessed with teaching/being a part of Grubb Street. He thought that his personal appearance was what was keeping them from accepting him, and I thought he was paranoid. But now I think maybe there was something to what he said.

Also, I took one class through Grubb Street in person, and it was lackluster. The teacher was not a published novelist "yet"; she was very young and it was her first year out of her MFA program. She wasn't very good (but she was cute and perky, so now I am wondering...).

I also paid for one of the Grubb Street staff to read my novel and give a report, and now I regret that. It took a lot of courage to show my book to someone, and I felt so vulnerable, wondering if the reader was going to show passages to other staff and laugh at me. Now I am guessing that this very well could have happened. (The reader I chose was not one of the people mentioned in this scandal).

Ouch! I really feel your last paragraph. That weighs on me too. But don't let it eat at you, and don't let it make you hide your work from others in the future. Maybe this story will wake some people up and bring back the true professionals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I just don't understand how these people have platforms.

He is a self-identified "not nice person" who engages in toxic rhetoric regularly to ease his own internal turmoil, just like Roxane Gay. You know, spread the hate. Misery loves company. That sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's interesting that ripping off someone else's experience is literally a plot point in Little Fires Everywhere.

Maybe it's a through line in the author's life?

[Anonymous]

Yup 12:50 I (the pp) agree. I've been in several writing workshops, though long ago because I can't stomach them now. There is no way I would read this and say it was anywhere near finished. She didn't even vary her sentence length - it was really blah.

I've read so much on this, I can't keep it straight...but somewhere it said that Larson wanted Chuntao to be unsympathetic to act as a purity test for white readers to see if they would automatically resonate with Rose. In my mind, it even failed that. Chuntao wasn't that unlikable and didn't possess any agency or kickass assuredness (hmm, like Ng maybe) that you love to hate. Nope.

So many wonderful unpublished writers out there, and this. SMH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I think you are right. Really thoughtful post.

Awhile ago, long before this story, I saw an interesting discussion about how a lot of current bourgeois liberal DEI efforts and language are strongly anti-union and anti-working-class, because the bourgeois promoters of that rhetoric are actually deeply invested in preventing solidarity across working class racially divided populations. In other words, if you engage in dialogue that fosters suspicion amongst race-divided groups, they will never be strong enough together to truly change the class structures that overwhelmingly favor the bourgeois who are promoting the DEI rhetoric. Being a Good White Person (or in the case of Gay, a Good Black Person) is actually a way of killing any chance of changing the societal class structures that actually prevent many poor people of all races from significant life improvement.

I am not sure what to think about all of that (like many discussions of race, it is, to my mind, interesting but not complete), but I feel like I see elements of the above in the behavior of the Chunky Monkeys. They don't care about race, not really. But they care extremely deeply about maintaining their power as against a working class interloper who is scrabbling into their exclusive world. Hence the suggestion of the white writers to weaponize race to keep a working class writer down, and why Ng and Gay, two wealth and influential POC, were so willing to use race so cynically. Viewed from a world in which they desperately want to slam the door shut to any threats to their wealth and influence, their actions have a twisted consistency.

[Anonymous]

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

I'm not willing to give him any money whatsoever connected with his behavior, which now seems both sexist and possibly unethical.

[Anonymous]

Is Kolker the victim now? He didn't want to pursue but what was he going to do -- there was a white woman in tears, lord help him.

[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.

You are clueless. What Larsen did is plagiarism.

At least Dorland did donate a kidney.

Larsen has caused a lot of pain and trauma. She's such a lovely person that I'd bet she's proud of that.

So many people participated in this vile bullying and not one of them acted like an adult and spoke up against it. There's no evidence that any of these creeps tried to point out to Larsen that she was acting in an obsessive unhealthy manner.

These writing groups are clearly nasty pits of vipers.

[Anonymous]

I saw on Twitter that it was actually Larson who talked with Kolker first, not Dorland, so yet one more fact now in dispute. Is there any merit to this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, Roxane Gay tweeted condescendingly at the kidneygate account on Twitter and then deleted the tweet.

She clearly had egg on her face with that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where can I actually read the short story, entitled “The Kindest” by Sonya Larson?

Ooh thanks to PP now I Can read it! https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.206189/gov.uscourts.mad.206189.1.3.pdf

Here I am so interested in this story but Larson is no writer. No wonder she had to do something cruel to get attention. That story so boring. The subject should be interesting but she makes it dull with no real talent for dialog. Wow. What a b*****

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is Kolker the victim now? He didn't want to pursue but what was he going to do -- there was a white woman in tears, lord help him.

Jesus. What a terrible person he is also turning out to be.

[Anonymous]

I don’t love Ng as a writer either. So feel sorry for me. But at least people read her stuff. Larson the worst wanna be.