Anonymous wrote:

I read the NYT article first, without reading anything else prior, and I came out of it Team Dorland, with maybe some reservations, as in: "unless there's some info missing, I'm on Dawn's side."

So I think there was enough there, because I wasn't predisposed, though I might have biases.

THEN, I read all the other stuff and I was like, holy hell, what upside-down hell are we living in, that Sonya Effing Larson is treated as a victim when she 1) plagiarized and 2) was a horrible human being? I went from Team Dorland with reservations to Team Dorland and mad as hell.

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside: I had never heard of Chip Flunk, but I looked him up and read about his $800K advance novel, "Cape May." It's about a young and innocent Georgia couple who meet an older, sophisticated couple while honeymooning in NJ. I don't know why I like this premise, maybe because it sounds messy!! And involves emasculation, probably. I'm going to hold myself back from paying money for it.

Hi Chip! We’re not sad that no one cared about your book

Ha ha! Srsly. This book was a flop and mocked on Twittet's Men Writing Women.

How did this mofo get that advance. Make it make sense, please.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside: I had never heard of Chip Flunk, but I looked him up and read about his $800K advance novel, "Cape May." It's about a young and innocent Georgia couple who meet an older, sophisticated couple while honeymooning in NJ. I don't know why I like this premise, maybe because it sounds messy!! And involves emasculation, probably. I'm going to hold myself back from paying money for it.

Hi Chip! We’re not sad that no one cared about your book

Ha ha! Srsly. This book was a flop and mocked on Twittet's Men Writing Women.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh great, now Lithub is weighing in today and doubling down on the white woman tears. I seriously want to burn down the entire mainstream literary establishment right now. I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know to stop buying their books. So, is it fine for a POC to plagiarize a white woman? It seems a resounding YES. The only issue here is that Dawn didn't quietly oblige.

An excerpt:

"For me, Dorland’s claims conjure memories of white women abusing the legal system to protect their own privilege. As one scholar observed, history contains endless examples of white women weaponizing their tears and feminine fragility. We know some white women abuse the criminal justice system to threaten and intimidate people of color. But we often forget the history of white women abusing the civil system to achieve equally as pernicious ends. Scholars have studied this issue, with interesting research interrogating white women’s allegations of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) is a civil claim that provides compensation for the intentional infliction, by extreme and outrageous conduct, of severe emotional distress. In these claims, plaintiffs, like Dorland, must prove that the defendant’s conduct “goes beyond all possible bounds of decency, and is regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”"

https://lithub.com/dorland-v-larson-on-the-legal-disputes-at-the-heart-of-bad-art-friend/

Why didn’t he just name-drop Emmitt Till? You know, for “context.”

This man is a clown. Sonya made claims in her lawsuit that conflict has caused her distress, sleepless nights, weight loss, etc. Is she enacting feminine fragility in order to achieve her ends too? Maybe Dorland's claims don't meet the legal threshold for IIED; that doesn't mean they were malicious.

I keep dropping in my Karen argument, and I guess the cheese stands alone, but I contend that the slant most of us are reacting to simply would not be feasible in any prior cultural moment. He is framing the argument as if de facto a white woman claiming this tort against a person of color has no claim to stand on. (I’m the PP who has mentioned in one of my too-many posts that I am mixed, too, but present as white, as Larson does to me, but that’s a convo for another day.**) PP, I did not know that Larson made similar counterclaims about her emotional stage. How ridiculous. Look at how ridiculous this is! We’re in a place where everyone who might fill out the census form as Dawn Dorland did is not an actual person, but an Amy Cooper unless proven otherwise. Can we please call it like it is?

** let’s make that day today. Kolker made clear that he read at least some of Larson’s stuff, and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t her uh searing description of her protagonist’s Asian identity focus on “dark hair” and “doll-like wrists”? Okay, Sonya. I see you.

Anonymous wrote:Aside: I had never heard of Chip Flunk, but I looked him up and read about his $800K advance novel, "Cape May." It's about a young and innocent Georgia couple who meet an older, sophisticated couple while honeymooning in NJ. I don't know why I like this premise, maybe because it sounds messy!! And involves emasculation, probably. I'm going to hold myself back from paying money for it.

Hi Chip! We’re not sad that no one cared about your book

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh great, now Lithub is weighing in today and doubling down on the white woman tears. I seriously want to burn down the entire mainstream literary establishment right now. I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know to stop buying their books. So, is it fine for a POC to plagiarize a white woman? It seems a resounding YES. The only issue here is that Dawn didn't quietly oblige.

An excerpt:

"For me, Dorland’s claims conjure memories of white women abusing the legal system to protect their own privilege. As one scholar observed, history contains endless examples of white women weaponizing their tears and feminine fragility. We know some white women abuse the criminal justice system to threaten and intimidate people of color. But we often forget the history of white women abusing the civil system to achieve equally as pernicious ends. Scholars have studied this issue, with interesting research interrogating white women’s allegations of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) is a civil claim that provides compensation for the intentional infliction, by extreme and outrageous conduct, of severe emotional distress. In these claims, plaintiffs, like Dorland, must prove that the defendant’s conduct “goes beyond all possible bounds of decency, and is regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”"

https://lithub.com/dorland-v-larson-on-the-legal-disputes-at-the-heart-of-bad-art-friend/

Why didn’t he just name-drop Emmitt Till? You know, for “context.”

This man is a clown. Sonya made claims in her lawsuit that conflict has caused her distress, sleepless nights, weight loss, etc. Is she enacting feminine fragility in order to achieve her ends too? Maybe Dorland's claims don't meet the legal threshold for IIED; that doesn't mean they were malicious.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh great, now Lithub is weighing in today and doubling down on the white woman tears. I seriously want to burn down the entire mainstream literary establishment right now. I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know to stop buying their books. So, is it fine for a POC to plagiarize a white woman? It seems a resounding YES. The only issue here is that Dawn didn't quietly oblige.

An excerpt:

"For me, Dorland’s claims conjure memories of white women abusing the legal system to protect their own privilege. As one scholar observed, history contains endless examples of white women weaponizing their tears and feminine fragility. We know some white women abuse the criminal justice system to threaten and intimidate people of color. But we often forget the history of white women abusing the civil system to achieve equally as pernicious ends. Scholars have studied this issue, with interesting research interrogating white women’s allegations of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) is a civil claim that provides compensation for the intentional infliction, by extreme and outrageous conduct, of severe emotional distress. In these claims, plaintiffs, like Dorland, must prove that the defendant’s conduct “goes beyond all possible bounds of decency, and is regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”"

https://lithub.com/dorland-v-larson-on-the-legal-disputes-at-the-heart-of-bad-art-friend/

.

I would not have expected otherwise. LitHub is one of the voices of the literary establishment.

If LitHub does not find this to be an issue of race, it then has to turn a harsh and critical lens on its core audience and supporters, and they just aren't going to do that. It is better for LitHub to throw up a flimsy explanation that everyone sees for the sham it is than criticize LitHub's audience. It was the white Chunky Monkeys who pushed for that narrative, and many POC are angry about that, but LitHub caters to a small, mostly white, literary establishment audience and that's who this is written for.

I'm pp and I find this intellectually dishonest, which is why it's so upsetting. But, like Dawn, I'm naive in this probably. I also find it problematic because race inequity is a real issue and when you are dishonest and hypocritical it risks so much harm to people who really are being abused by a white person or system. It's basically creating a double standard: POC can steal from white people, but the reverse is not sanctioned. That message will burn people.

Aside: I had never heard of Chip Flunk, but I looked him up and read about his $800K advance novel, "Cape May." It's about a young and innocent Georgia couple who meet an older, sophisticated couple while honeymooning in NJ. I don't know why I like this premise, maybe because it sounds messy!! And involves emasculation, probably. I'm going to hold myself back from paying money for it.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

I mean, this conflict occurred over many years. I think this is the rough timeline relevant to your comment:

Dorland donates kidney (and Larsen et al talk about it endlessly in their group chat, clearly interested)

Around the same time -- Larsen writes first draft of her kidney story AND Dorland reaches out to ask if she wants to be removed from FB group due to recent odd behavior (looking at FB posts but not acknowledging or pretending like she didn't know about the kidney donation). There's some back and forth that ends with Dorland removing her from the group and the part on okayish terms.

- 2 years pass with zero contact from either party during which Larsen sells the story, uses it to obtain an NEA grant, and submits and is selected for Once City One Story -

Dorland reads the story after it's published for free online and discovers it lifts her donor chain letter with very little alteration, at which point she hires a lawyer and starts contacting publishers and others about the issue.

But Dorland was a frequent topic of conversation in the text exchanges waaaaay before she started pursuing legal recourse against Larsen. What is amazing is that while Dorland was being pretty aggressive in trying to go after Larsen, Larsen is the one who sued first, and that lawsuit (filed by Larsen) is what led to discovery of the group chats that reveal Larsen's clearly unhealthy obsession (yes, obsession) with Dorland dating back to the kidney donation and before she even wrote the short story. It's also what winds up clearly showing Larsen based the story on Dorland, that early drafts included Dorland's letter unedited, that even details like changing the sign off to "Kindly" were intended to provoke Dorland.

Once you read the group chats and see how they match up with the dates, I feel like it's virtually impossible to view Larsen as a victim because it's obvious she knew from the very beginning that what she was doing was questionable (especially the plagiarizing) but she admits she's doing it in large part based on her very strong negative feelings about Dorland. Before that, Larsen was claiming that the story was only tangentially inspired by Dorland and stuck with a narrative that Dorland was the one who was stalking/obsessed. The chats make it clear that the opposite was true.

Anonymous wrote:Oh great, now Lithub is weighing in today and doubling down on the white woman tears. I seriously want to burn down the entire mainstream literary establishment right now. I will go out of my way to tell everyone I know to stop buying their books. So, is it fine for a POC to plagiarize a white woman? It seems a resounding YES. The only issue here is that Dawn didn't quietly oblige.

An excerpt:

"For me, Dorland’s claims conjure memories of white women abusing the legal system to protect their own privilege. As one scholar observed, history contains endless examples of white women weaponizing their tears and feminine fragility. We know some white women abuse the criminal justice system to threaten and intimidate people of color. But we often forget the history of white women abusing the civil system to achieve equally as pernicious ends. Scholars have studied this issue, with interesting research interrogating white women’s allegations of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) is a civil claim that provides compensation for the intentional infliction, by extreme and outrageous conduct, of severe emotional distress. In these claims, plaintiffs, like Dorland, must prove that the defendant’s conduct “goes beyond all possible bounds of decency, and is regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”"

https://lithub.com/dorland-v-larson-on-the-legal-disputes-at-the-heart-of-bad-art-friend/

Why didn’t he just name-drop Emmitt Till? You know, for “context.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

If I’m not mistaken, she was saying her kidney was working in the recipient. Which is a big deal. Organs are often rejected.

Right, that's pretty exciting.

Segue: I know that Dorland is a mother, because there was some reference to her running into Chip Chunk at a baby music activity in LA, right. Is Sonya a mom? No diss, but I became a person with better things to do (than write stories to make fun of my frenemy, chat endlessly with my friends about my frenemy) after I had a kid. And listen, I DO NOT think mothers are sainted. It's just that moms don't have as much time, LOL.

It sounds like Sonya recently became a mother. I don't know how old she is, maybe forty? Her behavior has continued to be incredibly childish and self-centered. I'm not sure I'm holding out much hope.

I graduated from one of the elite MFAs. There was less backbiting because we were all well-funded and only person I would have identified as a "mean girl." However, she was a mother with two kids.

And Chip Munk is a father and acted like he was in middle school trying to gain points with the cool kids. His story wasn’t even funny or damning of Dawn. He’s a writer. You’d think he would tell a better story about meeting Dawn. Instead, he used a boring anecdote just to be able to say “DFD”.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tangential, but I find Helen Rosner’s reaction to this odd. I know Helen from a college activity and Helen played more of the Dawn role there. It was a competitive oddly hierarchical activity where competitive success created social cache, but obviously lots of other factors played into one’s social standing as well; probably not unlike these writer’s cliques. Anyway, Helen wasn’t as competitively successful as she probably would have liked, wasn’t at an “in” school, wasn’t conventionally attractive and could be sort off putting (sometimes seemingly intentionally so, but then she also seemed to care what people thought and I later heard that she, in fact, had been somewhat hurt by it all). I actually felt kind of bad about it at the time, but didn’t know her that well and was sort of in a weird position vis a vis her for reasons that aren’t super relevant.

Anyway, she moved to NYC at graduation and some of the Sonyas, who moved at the same time, became really good friends of hers, because it turned out that outside of the weird strictures of the activity, they really liked her. They also totally did right by her with respect to friends who still thought of her as a Dawn; always invited her to things, explained to everyone visiting NYC that they were good friends now, etc. I never moved to NYC so that group has never been or become my main friend set and I’ve never gotten to know her really well, but we see each other occasionally, have vacationed together with mutual friends, etc and we have a few close mutual friends in common even now (almost 20 years post college).

By all accounts, she’s great. She’s obviously become quite successful and I, personally, think she’s a fabulous writer. But, she’s still a little bit Dawn when I think of her — because that’s how I first knew her — and even though that’s very much not who she is now, I’m surprised she has so little empathy for actual Dawn. I wonder if her own version of events is totally different or if not empathizing is some sort of defense mechanism.

wow, you've spent a lot of time thinking about her, huh

DP. I missed that post originally but I think it's really interesting. Backstory is always fascinating.

I think so too and I appreciate the PP sharing her experience and observations

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tangential, but I find Helen Rosner’s reaction to this odd. I know Helen from a college activity and Helen played more of the Dawn role there. It was a competitive oddly hierarchical activity where competitive success created social cache, but obviously lots of other factors played into one’s social standing as well; probably not unlike these writer’s cliques. Anyway, Helen wasn’t as competitively successful as she probably would have liked, wasn’t at an “in” school, wasn’t conventionally attractive and could be sort off putting (sometimes seemingly intentionally so, but then she also seemed to care what people thought and I later heard that she, in fact, had been somewhat hurt by it all). I actually felt kind of bad about it at the time, but didn’t know her that well and was sort of in a weird position vis a vis her for reasons that aren’t super relevant.

Anyway, she moved to NYC at graduation and some of the Sonyas, who moved at the same time, became really good friends of hers, because it turned out that outside of the weird strictures of the activity, they really liked her. They also totally did right by her with respect to friends who still thought of her as a Dawn; always invited her to things, explained to everyone visiting NYC that they were good friends now, etc. I never moved to NYC so that group has never been or become my main friend set and I’ve never gotten to know her really well, but we see each other occasionally, have vacationed together with mutual friends, etc and we have a few close mutual friends in common even now (almost 20 years post college).

By all accounts, she’s great. She’s obviously become quite successful and I, personally, think she’s a fabulous writer. But, she’s still a little bit Dawn when I think of her — because that’s how I first knew her — and even though that’s very much not who she is now, I’m surprised she has so little empathy for actual Dawn. I wonder if her own version of events is totally different or if not empathizing is some sort of defense mechanism.

wow, you've spent a lot of time thinking about her, huh

DP. I missed that post originally but I think it's really interesting. Backstory is always fascinating.

Anonymous wrote:Tangential, but I find Helen Rosner’s reaction to this odd. I know Helen from a college activity and Helen played more of the Dawn role there. It was a competitive oddly hierarchical activity where competitive success created social cache, but obviously lots of other factors played into one’s social standing as well; probably not unlike these writer’s cliques. Anyway, Helen wasn’t as competitively successful as she probably would have liked, wasn’t at an “in” school, wasn’t conventionally attractive and could be sort off putting (sometimes seemingly intentionally so, but then she also seemed to care what people thought and I later heard that she, in fact, had been somewhat hurt by it all). I actually felt kind of bad about it at the time, but didn’t know her that well and was sort of in a weird position vis a vis her for reasons that aren’t super relevant.

Anyway, she moved to NYC at graduation and some of the Sonyas, who moved at the same time, became really good friends of hers, because it turned out that outside of the weird strictures of the activity, they really liked her. They also totally did right by her with respect to friends who still thought of her as a Dawn; always invited her to things, explained to everyone visiting NYC that they were good friends now, etc. I never moved to NYC so that group has never been or become my main friend set and I’ve never gotten to know her really well, but we see each other occasionally, have vacationed together with mutual friends, etc and we have a few close mutual friends in common even now (almost 20 years post college).

By all accounts, she’s great. She’s obviously become quite successful and I, personally, think she’s a fabulous writer. But, she’s still a little bit Dawn when I think of her — because that’s how I first knew her — and even though that’s very much not who she is now, I’m surprised she has so little empathy for actual Dawn. I wonder if her own version of events is totally different or if not empathizing is some sort of defense mechanism.

wow, you've spent a lot of time thinking about her, huh

Anonymous wrote:

shan1212 wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

An ironic end would be Sonya Larson, depressed and desperate for penance and public rehabilitation ... decides to donate a kidney!

Hahahahaha.

That may be the only thing she could do to right this ship at this point! I would laugh, but I would also clap for the person getting their new kidney!

It would be a perfect O Henry ending to all this. Then Dawn can write a beautiful, compassionate novel about it.

If Sonya Larson won't oblige this perfect O Henry ending, maybe the righting of the ship would be a huge increase in kidney donations!!

How about it, ready to donate a kidney? I read some comments that were like, "oh but I've got to keep my kidney because I have children and maybe one day they need my kidney" Which is fairly compelling, but I don't know the numbers on how likely that is. I wonder how often it has happened that someone a) gave a kidney and b) came to regret it because of health reasons pertaining to themselves or their husband/children.

I actually am now interested in learning a lot more about kidney donation. It's like, if you could save a life by having a low-risk operation, does that sound good to you? Why or why not, OK I guess this should be a different thread. LET'S ALL DONATE KIDNEYS!!! Put it in Dawn's name.