Meh you can’t really say without context, and either way it’s by far the lesser of two evils
I can’t read the original thing due to the paywall, but if someone who thinks you’re their friend adds you to a group talking about their surgery and you don’t engage at all, isn’t that a bit pass agg too?
It could be yeah, for sure. It’s a little harder to parse that kind of thing though. If someone’s already getting a lot of attention/praise for something you might think ‘why add to it’ and you certainly wouldn’t think that you’re going to be asked to explain your silence.
In this case the eventual answer was that she wasn’t her friend at all and was kind of following her story out of a kind of ‘creeped-out fascination’ (roughly paraphrasing). If the article is to be believed anyway.
Sure but surely we know by now that perverse incentives mean that Bad Things get lauded as Good by industry insiders because the person who made or did the Bad Thing is a fellow insider. In this instance, Lawson’s story completely fails to grasp the concept of a chain donation (which doesn’t just save one life, but can save many lives along the chain. Maybe her failure to grasp this increased her antipathy towards Dorland, who was doing an unambiguously wonderful thing) and is based on the terrible premise that someone can get into a car crash and then wake up later with a new kidney. In the story, the donor meets the ungrateful recipient of her kidney and is disappointed not to be considered her white saviour, but this isn’t what Dorland did - she met the person at the end of the donor chain, who met her because they consented to doing so (if they hadn’t, she wouldn’t have known who they were).
No but that’s very different from plagiarising verbatim (and only changing it when she realised she could be sued) a letter someone has written about their own kidney donation? Coupled with the whatsapp chats she clearly had Dorland in mind with her white saviour character, and the denial of this is what is gaslighting.
But Dorland knew her and the people in the chat, iirc she was part of GrubStreet. So yeah very obviously it was bullying. It will have had a significant impact on her life given these people would have had significant influence over her ability to publish her writing. Later on when she complained to GrubStreet HR, one of the people participating in the viscious group chat was one of the people investigating her complaint.
It’s in the story, I can’t remember. Something to do with defamation of character.
From the group chats that are part of the court documents
Of course not but it’s about the way that influence from real life is conceptualised and therefore represented on the page. An extractive logic turns an aspect real life into a fungible commodity to be used for the writer’s own ends (ultimately, to make a profit). Whereas reflecting on real life situations to inflect work with some kind of wisdom is altogether a different approach and fundamentally less capitalist. The way the writers talked about cannibalising reality to make art came across as gleeful, as revelling in their unique ability to commodify reality. I hated it.
Classic Caroline
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Think this is a big part of the whole mess, the torturous and incestuous marketplace of American literary culture. It seems like all writing - all writing worth this kind of navel gazing - is mediated though academic workshops and writing centres (what is this GrubStreet thing?), everyone is just on the make trying to teach courses and run seminars and curate programmes. Why write a book when you can get a PhD and teach other people not to write books. The whole set up is sus as hell. No one even likes short stories!
Wonder how all this came about. Hmm.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-iowa-flattened-literature/
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We can’t possibly know that, but it seems fairly clear that there’s a pathway there of gaining a rep in your city > getting onto some kind of festival > getting a book deal > publishing nationally. If a particular group holds outsized influence in your local area then they could very easily stop you getting onto the first step (particularly if you’ve invested your time in good faith, thinking they’ll help you out). FWIW I would feel extremely uncomfortable being in a group of people where they were talking about another person in that sort of way.
No but it’s badly researched, that much is true. There was a phrase I was looking for earlier but couldn’t think of with regards to why a bad story might get good press, it’s called regulatory capture and it basically just describes the world we live in these days.
I gave a scenario in which artistic creation doesn’t have that very capitalist logic to it. But nevertheless the fact that we live in a capitalist society does mean that all art becomes shaped by the structures and incentives created by capitalism, yeah. But art doesn’t have to embrace those incentives, if it does then it’s bad art no matter how studiously crafted
Re. Anna Delvey, mentioned in the OP:
https://twitter.com/vulture/status/1462814831925473280
I’ll admit that I was wrong on this one - it’s going to be a TV series, not a film…
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbdBsBWFvKP/?utm_medium=copy_link
Stopped paying her rent, didn’t she
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Ooh can we post instagram links on here now?!
There was also this semi pointless article about her leaving NYC which confirms she was an utter slob and did in fact sub let her apartment
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Every time I read more about this I just hate the world a bit more
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what an insufferable article.
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Think I hit a bit obsessed by all this for about a week a few years ago
Good use of time
It’s a bit bizzare that these keep getting written, but then again I am reading them. It’s a bit like staring into the void
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