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[quote=Anonymous]I mean, "The Kindest" won the Boston One Book/One City contest.  When they accepted it they sad something like "it was by far the best submission that we received."

Note that it is clearly badly researched from a kidney donation standpoint, but query whether the lit fic people judging lit fic submissions have any more of a clue about kidney donation than Larson does.  But in terms of writing and effect of the story emotionally on people, I think it was effective.

I didn't think it was badly written.  It's maybe easy to say it was now that Larson is on one side and we are on the other, battle lines drawn.  BUT -- a story told from the perspective of a marginalized person who is supposed to be grateful for the performative but also real charity of a person who is well off certainly has something to say.  If we removed the kidney and Dawn Dorland altogether from this story, I would like it.  I would feel bad for the main character who is expected to perform niceness for their charitable benefactor but who has trouble with it, can't wholly bring themselves to mean it.  (I remember this issue in The Bell Jar a little, with older lady and the main character.)

The whole problem with the story, for me, is that (1) the details about how the protagonist gets the kidney are off, it wholly obfuscates the normal waiting time and makes it seem easy, which I guess is what Larson wants to believe to marginalize Larson's sacrifice; and (2) the fact that the story was targeted at Dorland -- character initially titled Dawn and circulated around the CMs for lols and feedback, then even after the plagiarism was found Larson had to sign it with "kindly" as if to make clear that the character was based on Dorland (it was really to refer back to the title, she could have signed the letter "With kindness" etc) -- to take her down a notch really backfires under these facts when it does seem that Dorland was nothing but kind (wasn't being self-aggrandizing but was doing normal things kidney donors are told to do to spread the word and encourage kidney donations).

Two other notes:  First, so much of this drama could have been saved if Larson had (a) either been a better "friend" to Dorland and just asked her about her kidney donation and learned the true facts behind it and behind the media that Dorland was doing about it or (b) listened to her actual friend, Chunky Monkey Calvin Hennick I think (him or Chris Castelani) who advised Lawson that before he published any story that took details from the lives of people he knew, he always ran the story with them before he published, not to give them the right to object to anything, but to give them a heads up.  Larson didn't do (b) here, but if she had it would have compelled her, surely, to rewrite that damned letter because of the very obvious plagiarism that was in there that she wouldn't want Dorland to see.  Showing Dorland the story up front might have made her think about Dorland in a human way before completing the draft, as well, which surely would have been a good thing in a story where she set Dorland up as such a villain.

And second, I think that the people who are still friends with Larson are moved by the fact that Dorland's attorney effectively prevented the already-printed story from winning and being used/talked about in the One Book/One City fair, prevented Larson from printing or using the story in any way going forward for fear of further legal issues, and prevented an author of color from benefitting from a story that was about this issue of white women taking over the voices of non-white women and using their power to wring out feelings and compromises from women of color that they didn't want to give.  That's THEIR side of the story -- and to be fair from this perspective they are not talking nonsense.  Are they?  Clearly for us the other, more persuasive side is OBVIOUS PLAGIARISM which even women of color shouldn't be able to benefit from, surely, WTF?  But at this point in the printing history, the plagiarism by most fair readings has been removed, and Dorland still wanted to insert something about that or kidney donation or etc. into the story.  She probably doesn't get to do that, and that DOES totally play into Larson's narrative about a white woman usurping Larson's/ her character's narrative.  Larson should get to go on and use this story (if she dares, ha!) for other literary or contest submissions or whatever.  Right?  Does she get to recover her potential lost profits, even?  I don't know.

I really wish someone would set up a GoFundMe for Dorland's legal expenses -- I would totally contribute!

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