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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry to spam! Don't know how to embed tweets

https://mobile.twitter.com/philosipede/status/1448224322242236418[/quote]

Wrong link smh

https://mobile.twitter.com/PMatzko/status/1448075901028143110[/quote]

I appreciate your effort to get it right because that thread really spoke to me. He nails it. A quick summary because I think these points are so key:

1) Dawn is annoying to Sonya and others because she doesn't understand the social code of UMC writing circles. She doesn't know how to "humble brag" about her kidney donation in that way where you make sure everyone knows what you did but in a way that makes it seem like you don't want anyone to know (even though you obviously do). She is earnest and honest instead of calculating about the way she presents herself, and that comes off as grating. She can't code switch because the code is foreign to her and they don't teach this stuff at public schools in rural Iowa. You have to learn it from parents and peers. But the time Dawn is in this environment, her personality is what it is and it's too late for her to learn how to fit in with the cool kids.

and

2) When you are poor, your "good name" is sometimes the only currency you have. Which helps explain why Dawn's response to being humiliated in this way seems so overzealous. To Dawn, having the one thing she's ever done that she felt was uncomplicatedly good (the purest evidence of her worth as a person) ridiculed by people she admired was like having all her money stolen from the accounts, or being physically maimed. It tore right at her fundamental sense of self. You can argue she overreacted but if you don't understand the importance of reputation and social standing to someone from a poor background, that's a value judgement that ignores Dawn's values.[/quote]

This is incredibly insightful. The question of class permeates all of this, but the Chunky Monkeys cannot recognize it because it seems many base not only their sense of self but all of their work on questions focused around identity politics.

Datalounge has a couple of really interesting threads about this, and people there have pointed out that post-professional groups created after attaining MFAs, like most in the CMs, put extraordinary effort into networking because of the limited opportunities in big-deal publishing. That has to reach backwards and infect the work, and also assured that genuine talents who don’t fit into that because they don’t have the degree or the particular social affect will not only get nothing from such groups, but will be damaged by participating. [/quote]

Could you link the threads?

I feel like I understand better now why so many books that get talked up by the literary establishment leave me flat. Maybe their publication has nothing to do with merit. If you have to navigate this toxic world to get the $800k advances, that is going to winnow out a lot of talent. [/quote]

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