You've got to be kidneying - Bad Art Friend thread, part 2

I would have used "Real Housewives of MFA", but this title will do!

Oohhh, good one, R1! Ah, damn, well the way things are going there'll probably be a part 3, so let's use yours for that!

Actually, it was mine, from the previous thread, OP and R1. You are both BAD Art Friends. Expect to hear from my lawyers. #RealHousewivesoftheMFAs

Haha, sorry about that R3, I didn't realise.

Oh, wait, why am I apologising? I should be accusing you of being a white saviour, attacking a POC like me! (my great, great, great grandfather was Chinese after all!). Calling all Chunky Monkeys!

This has been one of my favorite DL threads in a long time.

And, again, I have to credit the writer of the article. These are people and a community I could easily have blown off and not read the article. There whole thing is so narrow and so specific. But, the article and conversation about the article teases out how even if we don't identify with either of these women , there's still plenty in this tale that relates to everyone -- pettiness, meanness, neediness, longing, ambition, self-reflection (or lack thereof), to name a few things.

R5, you said it perfectly. As I was readin the article, part of me was like: "why AM I reading this?" but the writer did such a good job with the portrayals of the characters and the issues do resonate with people (plagiarism, bullying, erroneous use of racial narratives, altruism etc). I feel everyone reading it KNOWS these types of people, whether being in writer's groups themselves or not. There's something universal about it. And it is continually unravelling and revealing more.

Something I think the writer did well were the subtle jabs at Larson. People on Twitter are claiming the article is harder on Dawn than Sonya. I think he exposed Sonya very well, so the points made creep up on you.

R6, the whole article is a slow build up to the shock reveal of the text messages. It shows that Dawn’s intuitive suspicions were right.

R1 here, I apologize for not giving attribution for the zinger immediately, not that I could on a totally anonymous forum.

I didn't write it, don't lawyer up or call the New York Times!@!

"There whole thing is so narrow ..."

I meant "The whole thing is so narrow ..." "Their" would also work.

[quote] Dawn has a LOT of issues

I don't know her. I think we came up with a reason for inquiring about not participating in the Facebook group. Is she super fruity? I think the quote about how she expected writers to care could be out of context .. She genuinely thought they might be interested but they very consciously avoided the subject because they knew Sonya was shanking her. The quote about writer's being service oriented...That's unfortunate. What workshop was it where we learned writers do good?

*writers*

Sonya had no ideas of her own

Here's the story! The Kindest. It's ok. It hits some required elements. It's competent, I'm not going to say it's bad. There's some interest in the first page with short clippy sentences. It fades. Why is the recipient so distrustful? Is it because of Race TM? The white character is a little holy then a little clueless then a little emotional. Nothing earth shattering here. A good story certainly not a great story. Nothing reaching the level of a surprise or anything we haven't heard before.

That's their take on white women: holy, clueless, emotional. Rote.

Really can’t believe Ng was such a bitch in all this: “DAWN DORLAND AND HER ONE KIDNEY CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES!”

It's funny because Ng may end up coming out of this all as being seen as the worst of the lot, and yet a few days ago she was all holier than thou about it all, acting like she was above everything. Turns out she was not only in the midst of it, she was encouraging the worst aspects of it.

"You and your one kidney can kiss my ass."

Ng truly is the worst. I hope she gets cancelled.

[quote] That's their take on white women: holy, clueless, emotional. Rote.

Wait’ll they a load-a me!

Ng is completely the ringleader. The Regina George.

I'm reading Ng's wikipedia and it is mentioned that her favorite book in childhood was Harriet the Spy.

I remember that book well from my own childhood. It taught me to be very careful what I wrote about others because they might find out about it and there could be consequences.

Is anyone else curious about the male contingent of the Chunky Monkey gang? Colossal pricks, I'm sure.

[quote]I remember that book well from my own childhood. It taught me to be very careful what I wrote about others because they might find out about it and there could be consequences.

Oh my god, that is perfect! Everything about this story gets better and better!

[quote]Ng is completely the ringleader. The Regina George.

I saw someone on Twitter ask her: "On Wednesdays, do you wear pink?"

I know some of these people. Whitney Scharer in particular (one of the CMs who was quoted in the NYTimes article about "I'm now following with creepy fascination." I have been in social situations with her. She wrote a mediocre book called Age of Light that got a huge advance ($1 million) but as far as I can see flopped. She was coolly friendly but I can definitely see her as a closet mean girl. A few of the people she surrounded herself with were blatant shit talkers about just about anyone who crossed their paths. She seems more like the sort of wishy-washy person who would feel guilty that everyone was being mean but would never stand up for someone for fear she'd be tossed out of the herd.

GrubStreet seems like a toxic shitstew of Wesleyan and Dartmouth grads who have grown up in privilege and all the best private and prep schools in the Northeast. And yes, most of them are from family money and/or are married to big time breadwinners and have the leisure time and money (and nannies) to play "starving artist."

R22, seeing that Harriet the Spy reference was totally my Jessica Fletcher moment. It all made sense.

I can see Celeste advancing on me, raising a first edition of Harriet the Spy and saying my story's at an end, only for Sheriff Amos and Grady to appear at the last minute.

Seriously, there are some really truly spooky parallels here. A window to the madness.

Damn, Ng really is one of the cuntiiest cunts who ever cunted. She's even worse than Larson

BTW, the NYT article how has over 2500 comments and DL is only at 600+

come on peeps, we got a reputation to uphold.

[quote]GrubStreet seems like a toxic shitstew of Wesleyan and Dartmouth grads who have grown up in privilege and all the best private and prep schools in the Northeast. And yes, most of them are from family money and/or are married to big time breadwinners and have the leisure time and money (and nannies) to play "starving artist."

Yeah, this sounds about right. Also, those outside the community who still jumped in immediately to make it all about race and to defend Larson are all of similar backgrounds too (I'm talking Roxane, Tressie, Randa). It totally starts falling into place - they know they are really privileged people and so they will do anything to make themselves out to be the victim if at all possible. And interestingly for people always preaching at others to 'do better' they have a hard time not punching down themselves.

The Roxane crew must be dumbfounded that not all people of color are playing along with their "white savior/entitlement" take on the situation. I've seen quite a few posts on social media from non-white people critical of Roxane and her compatriots. Some of them have been posted here.

I see the male Chunky Monkeys as cucked losers. Middling straight white guys with beer guts whose only hope is clinging on to Ng's higher level of fame and more marketable identity metrics. First we have sap Gabe who's messing up his job to keep Queen Celeste free from negative feedback. Protect the Queen, Gabe!

Then we have Chip Cheek who thinks Dawn is charming and sunny but couldn't possibly cross Sonya. Lines have been drawn!

Actually if you read the story ("The Kindest") which is posted for free on the first thread, the protagonist comes off looking like an ungrateful, unfeeling bitch.

She just can't bring herself to show a smidgen of gratitude for the kidney donor for one afternoon. Must be based on Larson, even unwittingly.

That Gabe comment was so funny when you see the way people replied to it, haha.

R27, I think the Roxane crew are going to be in for a bit of a surprise over the next few years as their particular brand of lazy race-baiting is no longer going to seem as appropriate, and more like the damaging race relations thing that it is. And once that happens, people might also start to notice that people like Roxane are actually pretty shit writers and can't argue their way out of paper bags.

I was going to say that it might be a downward slide in their careers by then, but honestly, going from writing books that get you noticed to being known almost solely for ranting on Twitter, well, I'd say the job is already very much on the way.

NYT has 2500 comments about this tripe? Dear lord why must everything turn into a Real Wives episode? I barely had enough time this week to outrage about Chappell and now this? Literally exhausted.

R13

[quote] Why is the recipient so distrustful?

Exactly. The protagonist doesn't leave us any room to really feel for her. That's why I feel she's based on Larson, who's afflicted with the same narrowness of character.

That Tressie woman is such a nasty bitch. She was complaining on Twitter that some man "mansplained" bourbon to her. Of course, like always happens with these thin-skinned academics, he just told her some information he thought she might find interesting based on her comments about bourbon, but she couldn't handle that. People might think she wasn't an expert on EVERYTHING! So she's now characterising him as a troll out to get her. He wrote back and explained that he was just trying to share enjoyment of something with her, but she is not having it and has her little followers out, twisting and twisting the argument to make him seem like a troll.

The sooner these insane people are left to just rant on their own with no support, the better.

Tressie: This guy just explained bourbon to me. Mind you, this is my bar. But anyway, I’m glad he learned me something

Guy: That’s why I never explain anything to anyone. What if they already know it?? That would make me a bad person. You should just assume that everyone is an expert in everything. Sure, you’ll never spread any knowledge, but at least no one will be able to call you condescending.

Tressie: This is a troll obviously but I have long wondered if there are people who really do not know any other way to communicate (to “spread knowledge”) except to assume that everyone but them is an idiot?

Guy: I’m not a troll. I was just being sarcastic. And, I communicate in tons of different ways. Sharing knowledge is only one of them. And, not knowing that you’re a bourbon expert is different from assuming that you’re stupid. Diff ppl have diff experiences. You could just indicate that you’re knowledgeable about the topic and engage with him on the topic as a peer,rather than roll your eyes & think lowly of him for not assuming your expertise.I feel like this is one of those problems that people looking to feel sorry for themselves create in their minds.

He has a real point with that last line.

Chip Cheek comes across as utterly loathsome. And like he has no dick.

Chip Cheese says he "lives in fear" of getting another text from Dawn.

These people live in such bland, low-stakes bubbles it's almost offensive. They make up drama just to have something to do.

"I'll take a bland, low-stake bubble."

[quote] Chip Cheek comes across as utterly loathsome. And like he has no dick.

and certainly no balls

I looked at Adam Stumacher's Twitter and he's exactly what you'd expect.

Odds are, what these men really fear is the day that they cease to please as the pet males of the group.

I bet it keeps them awake at night. One false move and down they'll go.

This all could have made a fantastic set-up for a Murder, She Wrote. Which of this motley crew would be Jessica's niece? Who would be the murder victim? We already know Celeste is the killer.

I do wonder if any of the Cunty Monkeys are now wondering what's been said about them in secret DMs.

Heroine Deborah Porter. She minced no words when shutting down this foolishness. If only other institutions would have the backbone to stand up to these mentally ill Harpies.

R29 the charming and sunny looks like sarcasm in context.

What horrible thing did Dawn do to these people besides be needy and annoying? The way they talk about her you'd think she ran someone's child over with a lawnmower.

Gabe isn't a Monkey but piece of shit Christopher Castellani is and he's all in for Dawn to go down

I suspect the males in this group are an even bigger mess than the females. They've given on masculinity and had planned to make their mark as intellectuals in return for giving up manly pursuits, but no mark has been made and jmunder their wimpy exteriors suspect they're furious that the world hasn't recognized their genius and they have to kiss the assess of people like Celeste just to keep hope alive. But they do it, because their self-image demands that they think of themselves as unrecognized genius writers, and not a middle manager or high school teacher or whatever their day job is.

Bit I would also guess that they're much less involved with the mean-girling in the group than the women.

R41 Holy shit, Deborah! Better looking than any actress who could play her. And not a single fuck to give.

Allison Janney as Deborah Porter. She'd nail that role.

R41, that's Debbie Porter? She looks smashing in that outfit! She already was the MVP of this whole stupid mess, but that pic just upped the ante.

And R39, you have me crying with laughter. Is Jessica's niece the one mentioned above (or was it on the previous thread) who had very little personality and seemed to be in fear of the other Cunty Monkeys (TM R40)? Whitney, was it?

r45, r47, yes that's her, but the pic is from 2013...

Chip Cheek mentions online during that "publishing paid me" movement that he got an $800,000 advance on his book in 2019. $800K! Why the hell are these people so concerned with Dawn Dorland for, again? Jeez.

Can someone post the email that is getting Deborah so much praise?

r50, the tweet at the link below shows Deborah's final letter to Sonya on this topic. There were other letters to Deborah from her supporters, but the tweets with those letters are no longer available.

R47, yeah, Whitney is a good choice for Jessica's niece.

Sonya really has to be the murder victim, probably at some sort of book fair. We need to cast big with her. We're talking Kathleen Beller or Stacey Nelkin big.

Deborah will be one of the tertiary suspects and we'll all be convinced Dawn did it until the last ten minutes, when Jessica makes the Harriet the Spy connection with Celeste.

There's room for at least one or two male suspects in the form of Chip Cheek and Castellani.

Who is the guy who started it all by "innocently" posting to Dorland asking if she had read the story about somebody donating their kidney? Master level shit stirring there.

Can a person named "Chip Cheek" possibly be straight??

I love it R52! In all seriousness, it really does sound perfect for the plot of an episode of Murder, She Wrote.

That guy is Tom Meek, R53. He was all over Twitter a couple of days ago, begging everyone to believe him that he didn't realise what was going on. He may well have been telling the truth. His story is that he is not part of the Monkeys at all, and he thought Dorland knew about the story. He stated that he thought he was the last one to find out about something everyone else already knew about, which is why he wrote to Dawn.

Oh by the way R52, can we have Deborah turn some of her sassy energy on Jessica herself? I picture a Deborah that don't have no time to be caught up in no murder with these other idiots.

Thanks r55. I was busy this week and was aware of this story but didn't read it until today so am catching up.

Meek is part of the Grub Street crew, but he doesn't appear to be part of Larson's clique. He tagged Larson when he posted the message to Dorland asking about the story, so it looks like he really was clueless.

The guy's name is Chip Creek, not Chip Cheek.

I prefer Chip Cheese as somebody said above.

Ironic that the Chunky Monkeys are mainly white folks

Debbie Porter looks sort of like Jodie Foster. How would that work?

The male writers are reasonably successful--Larson was clearly the bottom of the Chunky Monkey heap. I assume that this story and the others about the main character were kind of being pulled together as a quasi-novel about being Asian in America (cuz that's never been done before . . .). It's not surprising, really, that she followed Ng's advice. Ng, by far, is the most successful of them--bestseller and a television series. Ng comes off as arrogant as hell with her idiotic advice about plagiarism.

R56, I could see Deborah being acerbic to Jessica, at least initially.

Deborah, played by Jessica Walter.

His name is Chip Cheek, not Creek, per Publisher's Weekly. Mainly white? Sort of. There are four women of color: De Leon, Ng, Larson, and Talusan. There are two white women and one white trans person, Alexandria/ Alex ( "they" pronouns.) And 4 white men.

Amy Ryan for Deborah Porter.

WTF? Why is this thread grayed out? And no I am not the OP. Have the Chunky Monkeys arrived or is Lipstick Alley here?

A couple of Chunky Monkeys are DLers?

The absolute audacity of that Christopher guy to say that Dawn is in the wrong for refusing to let "infinitely better writers" steal her stuff and use it as their own.

It sure was eye-opening to see all these online writing outlets scream over and over that Dawn was the crazy person in the wrong here, while almost everyone else sees the writers as being the real problem.

Did those low-level lwriters have a "genius must be served" attitude, then?

Monumentally pretentious of them if they did, but I've come to believe that not even undeniable earthshaking genius should be "served",or allowed to get away with breaking society's rules or bad behavior. In fact, I think thay if anything they should be held to a higher standard of ethics, not a lower one, they can do so much more damage than the rest of us. And no, this won't affect their ability to produce, not in most fields anyway. They're smart enough to figure how to follow the rules and still work, if they must.

Where and when did he say that R68?

The leaked email linked at r43, r70.

[quote]There are four women of color: De Leon, Ng, Larson, and [bold]Talusan[/bold].

Wait, hold up. There's a THIRD Talusan involved somehow in this mess, one that isn't Meredith or Dumplings?

Oh yeah R63. If we're going full Murder, She Wrote cheese, I think after the reveal we need a bit of a smiling acknowledgment from Deborah of Jessica's powers.

FLETCHER: ...Sonya may have stolen Dawn's story, but all along there was someone behind her, pushing her to do more, to DESTROY Dawn once and for all. (turning to Ng) You hated her, didn't you Celeste? You wanted to see Dawn reduced to nothing, to never grace the halls of GrubStreet again.

NG: Me? (nervous laughter) Haha, you must be mad!

FLETCHER: ...But Sonya was getting cold feet. She didn't want to continue with your plan. And so you got scared. You could see your career going down in flames if she told anyone. The loss of your large advances. The cancellation of your hit show Tiny Little Burning Fires of Doom in the Palisades. And so you STRUCK OUT. You killed Sonya in a fit of rage and tried to pin the whole thing on Dawn!

NG: Yes! I did it! That annoying woman and her damn kidneys, stealing all the limelight from what should be MY hour, MY week, MY year! How dare someone like her want to join a group as exclusive as the Cunty Monkeys! Yes I killed Sonya to frame Dawn and I would do it again!

Celeste Ng as the Queen Bee.

Who is he hell got this thread greyed out?. It's a perfect topic for DL. Is Ng's publisher attempting to scrub clean her reputation!

Hint: It ain't gonna work

In an era of virtue signaling (see Ng’s Twitter feed for a textbook example), Dawn is a virtue doer.

Yet the mean girls looked past that and focused on finding fault with her message about her act, which by the sounds of it, was tied into her recovery from a traumatic childhood… a catharsis she thought worthy of sharing with a group that presumably engaged in much introspection.

This is less about plagiarism than it is cruel mockery.

Listen, can I see myself exchanging a text with an eye roll? Sure. But I’d like to believe that, after getting that out of my system, my friends and I would pivot to what a great thing it was that Dawn did.

R74, I regret that I have but one W&W to give you!

Now I want to write a bitchy roman a clef murder mystery about a group of writers, and if someone sctually did it'd be infinitely more fun to read than anything these twats will ever produce.

R76, try changing your settings to Asbestos Eyeballs, it's in Settings at the top of the page.

If the OP got a few ignores or FFs here and there, this thread might get grayed out for those who have content settings in the middle of the slider or lower. My experience is that if you're on Asbestos Eyeballs, you see almost everything, regardless of how many ignores or FFs there have been.

Re settings: I’ve noticed that DL will frequently reset my Flaming Eyeballs back to the middle of the slider. I have to reset it a few times weekly.

That was the dynamic I suspected, R62. Larson was stalking and mocking Dorland because it got her Ng’s approval. Attacking an outsider confirmed that she was part of the group.

Someone questioned in the 1st thread why dawn couldn't just take a hint. All I can say is that A lot of people who go into both fiction writing and elite media have a certain personality type where they will be warm, gregarious and friendly to people's faces then immediately make bitchy remarks the minute they leave the room. If you've met this type extensively you know the deal but I think for certain personalities it can be deeply confusing. It's why people are often shocked when they are interviewed by a journalist or writer for a profile and they are painted in an unflattering light. When someone is being outwardly nice you don't always pick up on their motivations. These writers in the chunky monkey posse all seem to possess that character trait. They're almost predatory in a way, constantly mining people they meet for ideas.

What a saga.

I'll, of course, make it about myself to say, again, I'd stick needles in my eyes before I'd ever be part of a texting group, or have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, what-have-you, accounts.

But, for my entertainment dollar, I'm sure glad others do.

[quote] I barely had enough time this week to outrage about Chappell and now this? Literally exhausted.

You're "literally exhausted" because you've chosen to read about inane internet fights in your free time? You poor thing.

This isn't an insane internet fight, R84, this is the Datalounge equivalent of a catnip creme brulee!

No fighting, just intelligent analysis, and gleeful snark.

[quote] Bit I would also guess that they're much less involved with the mean-girling in the group than the women.

My experience with men like this is in academia rather than writers' circles, and I think that people here are wildly off the mark. These men are just as catty and petty as the women. They belong to a clique that they named, after all.

My experience of men involved with adult mean girls is that the men make some effort to steer clear of intra-female personal feuds. They aren't up on all the nuances, and while they make a show of being above it all, they're really afraid if they put a foot wrong the adult mean girl will turn on them.

Of course if they have a feud of their own, they'll do their best to get the mean girls involved, they're good allies.

R74 is genius. I can hear Jessica shaking her head ever so sadly at Celeste's revealed chicanery.

For what it's worth, I can move the bar to "asbestos eyeballs" on my laptop but not on my phone, and they don't sync up. Oh, tech support!

Now that more facts are known you can bet all the blue checks who piled on Dawn will go silent. Helen Rosner from The New Yorker has tweeted extensively about this, calling Dawn a monster. Strange to see so many “professional” writers excusing plagiarism because “it’s not as bad.”

I would like for one of them to write a story about having your mean texts revealed and becoming the target of an internet pile-on. That to me is a modern-day horror premise worthy of Shirley Jackson or Stephen King.

"Helen Rosner" sounds like a good minor busybody character for the series.

R43 The fact he thought that paragraph was clever or witty just shows what a pisspoor writer he is himself. His editor must be doing some serious work.

Also, that line about "not too late to get a job with the postal service" - because god knows a regular job is the worst thing that could happen to someone. The snobbery of these people.

R68, where did Castelani say that? I slightly know him so I want to see the full ass-holery

R93 Try actually reading the thread

So plagiarism isn’t as bad as donating a kidney.

OK then, Chunky Monkeys.

Who among us hasn’t said/written mean things? It’s human nature.

But when/if one of those things comes to light… particularly a pattern of piling on… I sure hope I would be quick to sheepishly apologize then work to do better.

That these bullies are doubling down on their meanness is extraordinary.

Chip Cheek got an $800k advance? The mind boggles. The publisher really expects/will get a return on investment? To me it seems like there’s such a glut of books out there but what do I know.

All kinds of shady behavior among this crew.

Meek Cheek is a Chunky Monkey.

[quote] Who among us hasn’t said/written mean things? It’s human nature.

I agree. Also, Dorland did go out and contact every place that had, in the present or the past, a professional connection with Larson. That's pretty psycho behavior. I'm on Dorland's side, but the way this group of friends reacted is human nature and we are all guilty of it at one point or another.

As I see it, the problem isn't that they said nasty things, it's that Larson plagiarized and then doubled down.

[quote] Who among us hasn’t said/written mean things?

Everyone vents. It was weaponized to crush this woman they pretend to nothing about. And still insisting nothing was wrong like the jig isn't up, like they're not pouring gas on a fire.

[quote] Also, Dorland did go out and contact every place that had, in the present or the past, a professional connection with Larson

She says she didn't even name Larson in some of the inquiries and was asking them about plagiarism. They drove her crazy, I might have lost it too.

Scorched earth for the gaslighting bitches.

R90 Rosen has now moved the goalposts to: they're both bad but Dorland hired a lawyer first so by some previously undisclosed rule that makes her worse.

I'd like to know what Rosen would do if she believed, even incorrectly, that someone plagiarized her work and was continuously lying about it, since now hiring a lawyer to investigate is now shitty behavior.

I read that Larson actually made the first legal move.

Rosner’s tweet doesn’t specify. She’s just taking pokes from the sidelines.

Larson sued first, but Rosen is referring to Dorland hiring a lawyer to look into her plagiarism/copyright claim and demanding the Boston Book Fair halt distribution of the story. Larson sued after that. Rosen just keeps shifting the goalposts as more info comes out.

Jesse Singal is controversial I gather. Don't know his writing. He managed to get Rosner claiming harassment over this. His thread.

Affluent married women pissed off that someone they considered their social inferior fought back.

They dehumanized her to the point that they deluded themselves that she had no agency of her own.

They've never experienced this and have zero coping mechanisms for it. It's delicious.

At this point, who the hell would want to take classes with any of these people?

She's probably too old now, but Titanic era Francis Fisher was born to play Deborah Porter. At least going by R41's pic of Porter

Who is the bad art friend? The twist is, it’s Celeste. She was the famous one, with the most power and credibility, and she gave her needy friend Sonya terrible advice. Kolker was deft in the way he pointed us in that direction by quoting her in his article and then posing the question in its title. He’d obviously seen the texts, and gave us the clues. No wonder she came out swinging on Twitter. But in doing so she fell into a trap of her own making.

At this point I just feel bad for everybody involved.

There's definitely a bad art friend quality to someone who is already pretty successful advising their still up-and-coming writer friend to not worry about some pesky plagiarism claim because the accuser is just some loser anyway. Sonya being hot shit in their clique was no guarantee that the larger literary world or her potential audience would not be concerned about potential plagiarism (and even if not outright plagiarism, at least questionable conduct). None of these self-centered assholes had the sense to say to Larson that she wouldn't want an accusation like this following her around just as she was beginning to make a name for herself. The fact that Deborah Porter appears to be the first person to tell her, uh, no this is actually pretty fucking serious, is incredibly telling.

Impressive! Some of the top most influential social justice people on twitter delight in using their platform to bully others and trash people! As a group!

[quote]At this point I just feel bad for everybody involved.

Everybody? Why? This was self-imposed by everyone involved except Dawn.

Is there any estimate when the court case will be over? The audience for that judgement just grew exponentially.

This is a good take.

Helen Rosner has locked her account so if you bitches could be so kind as to provide a plot summary?

Here's all the court docs, including in the first few all the shit-talking emails and group texts. These people are fucking psychos and Sonya Larson is LIAR. She lies under oath in the documents.

Dawn's lawyer looks pretty sharp from this layperson's POV based on some of her responses to Sonya's lawyer's claims.

You would lie to if it happened to you. Da Da Da Da DA!

The Cunty Monkey Story:

"Still Spilling The Tea in Boston"

"So Thirsty for That Dirty Water"

"Boston Baked Mean"

Larson got a lot of bad advice, from Ng, of course, but also her lawyer. She should never have sued Dorland. She should have dumped the story, apologized big time to Porter and taken her losses.

A decent lawyer would have advised her to not file, but the lawyer, just looking at the filing, doesn't seem that sharp.

We were lied to yesterday by Celeste. You don't make up nicknames for "strangers". So bizarre. No one has to like anyone. You can fight for your right to bitch and say what you want. It's the commitment to being disrespectful for me.

As said above too, there's a difference between venting and gossiping, and actively going out of your way to hurt someone. It seems like even Larson felt awkward about it going forward, but Ng and some of the other Monkeys really wanted to push her to continue.

Yeah, those “Monkeys” hate Larson. You can take take that to the bank.

It’s fitting that Larson got the frenemy treatment herself after dishing it out to Dawn.

Ng chimed in on a thread about not doing societally expected demure Asian ideals. And then there's not having or losing your moral compass.

Larson, Ng and Talusan really should try reading the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

I almost don't to say it but some of all this is problems women create for each other, right?

A man probably never would have accepted Dawn’s original FB group request.

Or, if he did, he’d never have actually read the postings in the group.

Men don't fuck around on Facebook all day. Or anyone with an actual life, job, interests.

Some actually do.

Amongst all the criticism of Larson on a YouTube video I saw, there was one comment that was like:

"WTH with all these people defending Dawn! ... They might both be bad friends but at least one of them is a good artist!" The user had the word "author" in their name, which explains that, but I did laugh. So being a "good" artist means the end always justifies the means then?

This story really has everything, even an elderly rescue Pitbull.

R108, I don't know a lot about him, but Jesse Singal is one of those people who's points many of the usual suspects we talk about will dismiss immediately because "Jesse Singal" said it.

I believe if I looked into him further, he'd be saying a lot of things I disagree with, but the few things I have noticed him talking about, I thought he put pretty well. But you can't say that because it was said by him. He did a defence of American Dirt for instance, showing how Myriam Gurba's viral rant about the book that started the whole thing was made in bad faith. He was completely right there, but once again, the usual suspects won't listen to anything he writes.

One thing that always makes me cringe is affluent, educated women thinking they're so cool with their naughty language. Back during the two seconds I was on Facebook, I remember seeing a woman I know touting a group called "Smart Women Who Say 'Fuck' A Lot" or some such – ugh. We all curse, but there's something embarrassing about all the profanity in those texts.

See, that is where we differ, R32.

I'm exhilarated after catching up with all 100 splash-on-bitchy comments that I missed last night.

Ready to take on the rest of Sunday afternoon!

The monkey men were just as catty in their emails about Dawn - one saying she could work at the post office if she’s lucky and another who ran into her in LA and planned to use her for contacts.

R121, I don't think Lawson had to dump the story. I'd bet Dorland would have been satisfied with a (seemingly) sincere apology, maybe a small acknowledgment, and removing or rewriting the letter.

But if Lawson thinks herself so superior to Dorland, that was too much to ask, and instead massive legal fees, the mess of a lawsuit, and the risk of public embarrassment was the better choice.

Yeah, the LA one was awful. Dawn was friendly to him after running into him at a baby music class. The nerve of her!

It kind of read like he was trying to keep his in with the cool kids. It was pretty cringy. I mean, God forbid, anyone try to see Dawn in a multidimensional way . . .

Man, this whole clusterfuck says so much about what's wrong with current literary fiction. How flat and similar so much if it is

It's not just women and male Monkeys. Literary Twitter ( and some journalists, namely Rosner) and FB were appalled by Dawn's actions when the Times piece hit.

Chip had a lot of cheek!

R139 You mean they took the side of two of their own (Larson and Ng, given both were involved in the article) as opposed to someone they'd never heard of? And you think that proves something?

I just see Dawn as needy and super annoying. So be it. But a lot of Larson defenders oddly seem to think that's some sort of crime that warrants plagiarism and stomping on her.

Middlebrow Monsters

I'm reading the The Kindest right now, thanks for the link. I'll repost it

Not surprisingly, Michael Hobbes breaks down the narrative really well.

If you have the time, and since you are reading DL you just might, it’s worth scanning the article again. It’s like re-watching The Sixth Sense: the conclusion was carefully prepared. Both Larson and Ng damn themselves, over and over, with their own words, but, of course, when you first read it they seem just educated and sincere. Then Kolker produces the texts. I find it fascinating, btw, that the literary world is happy to attack Dorland, but not the white, male NYTimes author, when he is really the one who took down both Larson and Ng.

The Kindest was a poorly done story. You can't get a kidney immediately after being a drunk driver, there are tons of rules on who gets a kidney. It was lazy writing, and its only point was to take down the bad white lady. If Larson had taken a minute to look up organ donations, she would also know that the donor can only contact the recipient if they allow it.

All this. They'd do all this for a short story.

Here's Dawn's invite to the Facebook group

Anyone have parts 2 and 3 of The Kindest? Above is a link for Part 1

Simmer down R141. If you read further up the thread, posters were saying this is something women ( or Chunky Men, there are four of them) do. There was a huge defense from Literary Social Media, both men and women, and not all of them know the parties involved. What that proves is how they think. It's circling the wagons. ( I come down on Dawn's side, by the way.)

Holy fuck, GrubStreet is a cesspit.

"Literary Twitter ( and some journalists, namely Rosner) and FB were appalled by Dawn's actions when the Times piece hit."

Of course they were appalled by Dorland, literary fiction writers will defend their supposed right to grab material from real life to their dying breath!

I wonder how many of them have finally realized that the rest of humanity considers writing "fiction" about real people, without their consent, to be hurtful and unethical. They have got to be horrified that the public is taking the side of someone who objected to being caricatured in literary fiction, it strikes at the very heart of everything they believe and practice! Well tough shit on them, if they can't take the trouble to disguise the source of an inspiration to avoid hurting another person's feelings, then they should find something else to do with their lives. Because no, "great art" is NOT more important than the feelings of a real person.

R74 thanks for one the best posts EVAH on DL!

[quote] "great art" is NOT more important

And let me know when we find great art because "The Kindest" sure as fuck ain't it.

Facebook drama. "Like, why didn't you like, like my post"? Pathetic.

[quote] In fact, “The Kindness” falls short in precisely the ways the saga laid out in the Times Magazine piece might lead us to expect: it makes a cartoon of the donor character, and it over-relies on identity-inflected hand-waving. Also, the prose is bad.

Being annoying, needy, attention-seeking, and engaging in Facebook drama isn't annoying, or unethical.

Plagiarism is illegal, and obviously caricaturing real people in literary fiction is unethical.

Oh hell, I meant to say "Being annoying, needy, attention-seeking, and engaging in Facebook drama isn't ILLEGAL, or unethical."

The fact is that Team Larson and the literati have no legal or ethical legs to stand on, they're just circling the wagons to protect one of their own from outside attack, and defending practices that are dubious but accepted within their circle.

R157 That “white lady tears” stuff is so hostile.

[quote]WTF? Why is this thread grayed out? And no I am not the OP. Have the Chunky Monkeys arrived or is Lipstick Alley here?

LSA isn't even talking about this story, which disappointed me because I want to read *everything* I can about it. Fortunately a couple of Twitter accounts are doing nothing BUT talking about it.

r145, it's a well-written piece, except his ultimate conclusion in the Dawn is the bad art friend in the end, and...nope.

r157, great read. Thanks for sharing.

LSA-ers don't read books, so it's of no interest to them. And no one is famous.

R164, they do read books. But there’s no angle that would interest them, I think, except Larson’s vapid claim that she’s a “POC,” which would get her shredded.

Holy. Shit. Triggered by a jumbotron appearance.

In a world full of Sonya Larsons, be a Deborah Porter.

God they rip her to shreds for every fucking thing. ‘In her own odd way she is like Trump’.

I hate the busy beavers excuse me chunky monkeys.

NYT just closed out their comments on the original piece, racking up just shy of 2700 most of them quite critical of the witches coven, aka Grub Hub

Can you post The New Yorker piece R157? Paywall. It looks good.

sorry, not Grub Hub, but Chunky Monkeys

shorter NYer, it's shite, and at $425 bucks she was overpaid

this wasn't paywalled for me

Damn, these bitches probably go on and on and on about cultural appropriation all the time, but when they see actual appropriation they can't recognize it at all. Or worse, it's just totally trivial to them.

What a gang of frauds.

R150

I hope this link works.

damn, this is not working out as I thought

If LSA took an interest in this tempest in a teapot, it could be over the angle of Celeste "POC" Ng being in danger of losing her career because she mean-girled a white woman.

But apparently, not even LSA are defending Ng now.

I don't know much about Jesse Singal r108, but I know the Trans absolutely hate him. And Helen Rosner seems to REALLY hate him. Is she trans?

Thanks, R173, I appreciate it. It's paywalled for some people. "You've Run Out."

R175 here.

I posted the link to the story and no one has thanked me for it yet.

You goddamn bitches. Imma sue your asses!

It’s “goddamnED bitches,” R180.

Grub Street gave Roxane Gay some award. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

(Get a load of r180. Who does she think she is? What does she want, a trophy? What, are we all supposed to post links? Snicker snicker, whisper, whisper. Get out the burn book!)

Haha!

R175 Loved The New Yorker piece. Thank you.

OMG Roxane Gay GOT THE GRUBBIE AWARD the week before this story broke. What the FUCK?

Dawn is not a good writer.

Did she have to give a speech, r186? Did she have to get out of bed to do it?

This whole ridiculous kerfuffle is making me seriously wonder how much plagiarism is tolerated in the world of literary fiction. I mean, all the blue-check writers seem to think that mockery and plagiarism of someone's social media isn't that big a deal.

Obviously, lifting someone else's research and publishing it as your own is not tolerable by anyone's standards, and parody is legal by law. But what about the in-betweens... if you hear something say something delightfully witty on the street and use it in a book, is that plagiarism? How about if you're writing a bubbleheaded teenage girl, and you troll the social media accounts of teen girls for quotes... is that research, or plagiarism? If you use your ex-husband as a model for a fictional villain and use quotes from him, is that either plagiarism or defamation? I consider Larson's actions indefensible, but apparently some literary fiction writers do not, what the hell do they consider to be indefensible?

The Monkeys are humiliated, aren't they? Good. They should let Sonya and Celeste face their crimes.

R189, YES. You are supposed to create a world. To create your characters. To CREATE THEM. Not steal other people's... identities and experiences. An artist creates. This story was an act of destruction- meant to destroy Dawn.

Was this identity theft?

The story doesn't meet the legal or popular definition of identity theft, and I don't think it was meant deliberately destroy Dorland. If it was, Lawson would have made sure she saw the story, but apparently she made at least some effort to keep her from hearing about it.

IMHO it wasn't an act of deliberate destruction, but of dehumanizing, thoughtlessness indifference, dismissing a person and their deeds and feelings as worthy of nothing more than providing story fodder. Which might even be more hurtful than in-your-face cuntery.

I actually don't think it's actionable if a writer simply observes someone's life and writes about it as is. Like sketching the character and world exactly as someone is. That sort of "inspiration" may be unethical depending on your point of view, but I don't think you'd get far legally. This situation involves actual straight plagiarism.

[quote] Dawn is not a good writer.

Didn't hate it. It's a very small sample and a clear attempt at some feeling at least.

Had a feeling the story wasn't great, competent, but not great. There are writers who can write brilliantly coming from a place of utter spite, but Larson doesn't seem like one of them. Plus, hating on a kidney donor is just *yuck*. Ironically, the story would have been better without the whole letter/meeting kidney donor thing. And, yeah, Larson didn't do her research. With 100,000 people on the registry and 6,000 kidneys a year, they don't just pass 'em out to alcoholics. But Larson was trying to degrade Dorland's gift in any way possible.

Also not surprised that Dawn's not much of a writer--that piece is about what I'd expected--well-schooled blah-blah-blah--trying to sound literary, but not actually saying anything. (Why couldn't making fun of her bad writing be enough for that crowd? You know, normal writer bitchiness.)

I also went looking LSA's take, but no such luck, they're not interested. We'll have to make do with pissed-off kidney donors and recipients--I'm enjoying them since they make the Monkeys look like such trivial petty middle-schoolers.

I do wonder why Larson, Ng, etc. didn't understand the risk here. They really must have not realized that Dorland was going to fight--ironically, she didn't act enough like their idea of a white women--she was just supposed to cry and be hurt. One of the ironies of the current trend to denigrate white women as weak, v. say, the cliche of "strong, black woman" is that Dorland (and, to an extent, Porter) were seriously underestimated.

R193, it's not. Ideas can't be copyrighted, the expression of them can. So Larson was safe, if obnoxious, 'til she plagiarized the letter and her texts make it clear that she knowingly did so. Idiot. (With an idiot lawyer).

Now that this story is winding down, what the hell are we going to do with ourselves?

Ugh. I guess get back to work.

"ironically, she didn't act enough like their idea of a white women--she was just supposed to cry and be hurt."

Social class plays into this as well as reverse racism, Lawson apparently comes from a "good" background and good schools, and this both fed her snobbery towards someone from a lowly background, and made her completely underestimate her. A person doesn't go from growing up living in a van to middle-class writerly circles by being a pushover. And now it leads into the rest of the world percieving Lawson as being the one who's "punching down".

And yes, R193, where Lawson shot herself in the foot is both by plagiarizing and by putting her awareness of the plagiarism in writing. But as far as the other aspects of the case, Lawson didn't just observe someone's life and write about it as is, she added hurtful things to her observations, and I wonder if that's legally actionable. I also wonder how much it's tolerated among literary fiction writers, so many of them rushed to defend Lawson that it makes me think that they do this sort of thing all the time.

Somehow I’m feeling much smarter with my top-15 (but not top-10) grad degree and my actual job I have to get up and do tomorrow.

While chubby Ms. Larson will be occupying herself with… a PTA fundraiser?

R187 I dunno, it was....atmospheric.

R200, I didn't entirely dislike it, but perhaps Mrs. Dorland was high on shrooms for that stream-of-conscious flash fiction. Or heavy pain meds post-kidney donation.

Dorland sounds exhausting. Good on her for donating the kidney, but I think she did it partly to boost her middling writing career.

This Grub Street crew probably all think of themselves as the best kind of people, but they're actually the worst.

Everyone sucks in this story. What a bunch of cunty wankers.

Finally got caught up on the first thread. I'm reposting this, just because I think it doesn't get enough attention and deserves to stand out. The idea that Dawn was crazily pestering people who didn't like her FB posts seems to be lingering, but the actual emails and context don't seem unreasonable.

I think having her protagonist hate on her kidney donor could have been a fantastic premise for her short story. The problem? She made the donor totally worthy of hate. She should have made the donor lovely. Damaged, perhaps. But hard to hate. Then the protagonist would have to explore why she would hate a person who is both selfless and kind.

She made it too easy by making the character too Dawn like.

R78, R88 and R154 - awww! Thank you, love you guys!

Roxane is trying it, but no one's having it. I love it when she plays the whole "keep my name out of your mouth" shit. Who does she think she is?

ROXANE: Also apparently the kidney lady pitched this story! Can you imagine? That is disturbing! And the racial component here. I look forward to your essays!

MATTHEW: what exactly is the racial component here? It would take the most sophisticated racist in the world to suss out what race he is supposed to be racist against in order to be racist against sonya larson.

SAM: Also @rgay won an award from the group the week before the story broke. She’s one of them just acting like she is unbiased. These people live in gaslit world a don’t get we all see how they lie and it makes them look ridiculous

ROXANE: I don’t know the two people involved. I know what I read in the NYT like everyone else. Leave me out of it.

MATTHEW: You are the one who mentionioned "the racial component". so what is the racial component here?

SAM: So you’re not friends or talk to anyone Involved? @pronounced_ing You got caught acting unbiased and now we see you are friends with them. Own up. More will cone out and you will go down with them.

ANDY: it's really disturbing how she is willing to help gaslight/defame Dawn Dorland for some dumb @GrubWriters award lol

Adding to this, the comments made elsewhere about Roxane feel a bit like there's a whole heap of people out there who have had it with her.

I love this horror over Dawn daring to pitch this story as if Roxane Gay has never deigned to do self-promotion. If she wanted out, she shouldn't have clomped in in the first place, but she did, oh she did. She isn't in as much trouble as Celeste Ng, but she pretty much makes her living as some sort of sage of wokeness and the shallowness of her principles was on full display this week.

Absolutely, R207. She immediately went for the "this is typical of white women" angle, and when everyone realised this had nothing to do with race, it really showed off how one-note she is, and also her hypocrisy. Because you KNOW that if Dawn weren't white and Sonya was, Roxane would be all: "Go girl! Keep fighting your corner!" to Dawn, etc.

'Shallowness of her principles' is a great way to put it.

R208, I read Gay's memoir on her weight (and the early trauma--gang rape--that led to it), so I try to maintain some sympathy, but her ego and, yes, narcissism are out of control. She's been handed a lot on a silver platter over the years and insists on things such as flying First Class if she shows up anywhere, so her perennial victim shtick runs old. Part of the reason she whines about White Women is that it's a way of never having to acknowledge her own privilege and entitlement.

She's basically a fucking snob and dumber than she thinks.

R209, you said it perfectly (as much as I complain about her, I do have sympathy for her for her childhood story, that's horrific and I hope those boys had/have a miserable life). There is definitely a whole lot of snobbishness that comes from her and heaps of privilege that she tries to deflect in a really cynical way - making everything solely about race. And absolutely is not as smart as she believes herself to be.

I feel like a lot of her fans see the part of her they identify with (weight issues, sexual assault etc) and are often not actually looking at the quality of what she is producing, which is pretty low. It probably sounds unlikely, but when I first heard of her, I was really looking forward to hearing what she had to say. They made it sound like she had something fresh to say. Instead it turns out, she has no skills at forming an argument, she's miserable, unpleasant, wants to be a victim, and in the original sense of the word - racist. First I found her writing mediocre. And then after seeing her regularly bullying people and attacking fans who were trying to be kind to her, I lost any interest in reading her again

[quote] I feel like a lot of her fans see the part of her they identify with (weight issues, sexual assault etc) and are often not actually looking at the quality of what she is producing, which is pretty low.

This, 100%.

I feel certain at least one of the writers surrounding this whole mess is going to turn the whole thing into a novel or screenplay or something. Little Cunts Everywhere, or something.

I don't find Roxane Gay racist, but she does seem to me to be little more than a modern-day Andy Rooney, someone whose job is to complain. Rooney may have once been wryly amusing but by the time I watched him in the 1970s and onward, his entire shtick was about being unpleasant and judgmental, which is exactly how I see Roxane. Even when she tries to be amusing or fun, like with the cooking, it just falls flat. I don't feel like she ever has any fun, ever. Never enjoys anything, except talking down to people on Twitter, and even then I'm not sure she likes it so much as it's just a personality habit at this point.

Remember when Roxane got mad at Apple for not getting her iPhone in time? And then demanded a free iPad ? Good times.

Ha! I never saw that story before, R214. Of course she was "just joking". She has the argumentative attitude of a 14 year old.

All of these people had their emotional development stunted by privilege. That's why they're so destructive.

They lucked out generationally because of the trends of the past ten years or so. As the wind changes, their grift and their lack will become quite obvious.

It all goes back to Salem Village. Eventually, when the witchcraft accusers traveled to neighboring villages to spread their shit, they were met outside town and driven off as no one wanted their drivel polluting their own community.

You are right about the wind changing, R216. I have this feeling it may be already happening, slowly. I wonder if there will be a bit moment of reckoning or just a gradual fade into irrelevance?

I hope there isn't a huge pushback on all the progress we've made, just maybe on some of the sillier aspects.

I do feel grateful to DL for allowing me to get ahead of the news for once.

Heard about the story here first.

It’s a very bad look for Celeste Ng to be supporting a cunty plagiarist. In general, I was quite shocked by all the “writers” support of obvious admitted plagiarism. It’s the one thing that will quite literally permanently end your career as a writer. Ng is in some deep PR trouble, and she’d better apologize, shut her mouth, and then cut ties with the cunt plagiarist.

The fact that Larson has me empathizing with Kidney Karen is pissing me off. That’s how awful all these people are.

Why the hell didn’t the NYT writer use the money quote from Ng in his story? “DAWN DORLAND AND HER ONE KIDNEY CAN GO AND FUCK THEMSELVES”?

I may not write for the NYT but I know good gossip when I hear it. And let’s be honest, that’s what this story is, no matter how many thinkpieces it launches.

Really, who the fuck cares about some minor league writer who wrote a barely best selling novel that got a shitty Hulu adaptation.

FUCK CELESTE NG AND HER SHIT WRITING. CANCEL HER.

[quote] I think she did it partly to boost her middling writing career.

What? How could it have helped? There's no indication in any of this she was planning to write about it. The Chunky Monkeys couldn't fathom it!

It is curious that people are complaining that Kolker cut Ng and Larson slack in his piece. No, I don't think so. He knew all that stuff would come out. It's almost like a continuation of his piece, without him having to actually write it. I think he handled the whole thing brilliantly, like a short story.

Funny, Celeste's recent Instagram is pretty much entirely a bragfest about "Little Fires Everywhere." Who is she to roll her eyes at someone else's social media style?

[quote] It’s a very bad look for Celeste Ng to be supporting a cunty plagiarist.

I really think it's worse than that. She a ringleader in the documents. She really encouraged Sonya into it. Not a crime but Celeste comes off very badly. Her defense of this Oct. 5 includes LYING. She says Dawn was a stranger

And so what did Dawn did eventually plan a piece about the donation. Every one in the story promotes themselves, their own writing, their deeds, their awards.

This interaction, ouch. Now she's got some men who don't play liberal games to fend off. Not touching that.

[quote] I don't find Roxane Gay racist

I find her lazy. It's totally fair to say she was responding to what we all read. That makes sense. It's just the racial extrapolations. She's half joking or she thinks it is trait of white women to sue. We find out late Larson sued first. Talking about people in these general racial categories. It's intelligence insulting.

[quote] I do have sympathy for her for her childhood story, that's horrific and I hope those boys had/have a miserable life).

I liked Bad Feminist. The stuff about not being perfect and having contradictions and being able to enjoy music with questionable lyrics.

R222 I meant that as grist for her writing mill. Organ donation = unique experience. There would be a number of angles a writer could exploit - and I don't say that as a negative.

I'm sure Dorland was genuine in her altruism - but sometimes writers needs a splash piece to really get going. I'm sure it crossed her mind that she could mine the experience in her writing. Why wouldn't it? And good for her if she did. She was probably pissed Larson did it first.

Twitter is so bizarre. You can write down anything off the top of your head and we're all supposed to treat any utterance as permanent record. The fame and power makes people less inhibited where so have so so many more potential respondents.

"Leave me out of it" after she tripped all over herself to jump into it. She went so far as to speculate maybe Dorland faked the kidney donation, but how dare you bring her into it.

Grubby Award. Fitting.

R228, there's zero indication Dorland was planning to write fiction around her organ donation. She's been promoting altruistic donation in interviews, essays, and social media, so she's been saying what she wants to say about it there.

^ *shrug* Sure, okay. Doesn't mean she wasn't going to at some point. If you're a writer - why wouldn't you write about such a personal experience?

You're hypothesizing that she might someday write about it, and so she's pissed that Larson did first, as if that would somehow prevent Dorland from ever touching the subject. Way too many leaps there.

I just noticed that in Celeste Ng's Twitter bio sh describes herself as "embarrassingly sincere." These people just get more and more ridiculous.

Helen Rosner's bio says 'nice lady'. I feel like she is. She was thought that was cute to say. Last week though: why do you have to tell us you're nice?

Brandon Taylor asked us if we know if she really donated the kidney not unlike Trump talking about birth certificates and a bunch of these people laughed. Now Brandon's twitter is deleted. Why? It couldn't be over that.. could it?

I’m glad you’re all having fun, but I’m still not going to read it.

I'm just tossing off remarks about a story du jour on an anonymous internet gossip site.

Didn't realize you were so invested in gatekeeping for this woman, R234. Carry on ... lol

You don't seem to know what gatekeeping is, R239

r239 is in (bad) company in that regard. This story is rife with people throwing around terms whose meaning they don't actually know.

R240 The first result of an internet search on gatekeeping: "the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something."

Are you saying people - on an anonymous gossip board - can't speculate about this woman's motives? Sounds like gatekeeping to me. You obviously know her - do tell!

R242 It would've been quicker to say "you're right, I don't know what gatekeeping is".

When a woman says she's a fan of a sport, and some douche then demands she names the winning team of the 1964 championship to prove she's a fan, that's gatekeeping.

By the way, I'm not the person you were arguing with, just pointing out you're using words without knowing what they mean.

You know a thread topic has started to run its course when posters start bickering.

Today Celeste is doggedly tweeting about a diaper drive. Attagirl, show those haters what a good person you really are!

So what happens next? I want a splashy jury trial with dramatic tearful testimony, every Chunk on the witness stand, live-streamed of course.

I'm sure there have been frenzied calls with PR at Penguin Random. The diaper drive may be their idea. "Don't engage in the discourse. Change the conversation, or at the very least, talk about something else."

R246 Things do blow over, Dorland and Larson will be forgotten, but Celeste will always have that little mean girl taint. She’ll be fine eventually though.

In our Murder, She Wrote version of this:

Jessica would first attempt to question Celeste (the real killer!) while Celeste is rushing around stacking and folding diapers and blathering about the importance of the diaper drive. This would be somewhere in Act 2.

This story only lacks a great big fat man wielding a black metal baton at someone's kneecap. Or kidney.

“DAWN DORLAND AND HER ONE KIDNEY CAN GO AND FUCK THEMSELVES” is absolute peak DL and is the best thing Celeste Ng has ever written. It’s a John Waters revival for Netflix in the making.

R246 Charitable drives on Twitter are actually a good idea, because then you get all of her supporters pitching in to show solidarity, resulting in a stream of nice tweets in which she’s tagged.

Also, an off-Broadway one-man show entitled "Dawn Dorland and Her One Kidney Can Go Fuck Themselves." An evening of comedy, song, vignettes, rants-commentary.

I worked in publishing for some years at the start of my career and found authors mostly insufferable. Subsequently spent time (circumstance, not design) around them for a number of years in book festival setting; the bloviating, pretentiousness, and overarching sense of entitlement is suffocating.

Who plays Celeste Ng in the film?

John Waters might be the only person who could do this story justice.

Kidney Whores and Grubby Cunts

R254 Cuntstance Wu, of course

R254, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a wig -- same look, same age. Oscarbait!

Constance Wu would play Ng having no clue she's actually the villain.

It probably should have been obvious from the tweet r43 posted that Castellani is gay considering how bitchy that post is. He sounds like a DLer and may very well be lurking around here. (At least that would answer who keeps getting these threads grayed out!)

R214, I just read her Wikipedia. That was interesting. She screams a lot of "privilege" to me excluding the sexual assault. Yale, relatively wealthy parents who paid her rent until was 30. The more you know.

Some Metafilter comments

All these folks with multiple writing degrees.

I'd think having degrees in various non-writing subjects would make you a much better writer - at least content-wise.

No slave to fashion in Ptown.

That sure makes all the "Dawn is the crazy one" articles look even more suspicious, r261. Are these just online writers circling the wagons around one of their own, or are there some paid shenanigans going on with these outlets writing pro-Larson articles? She sure seems to have tons of money to spend on this.

[quote] I'd think having degrees in various non-writing subjects would make you a much better writer - at least content-wise.

That's what's funny about Sonya's story. It's written by someone who's learned to write but doesn't have talent.

not only missing talent, but also the smarts to do basic research,

otherwise she would know that a drunk is not going to be a kidney recipient and the donor cannot contact the recipient unless the recipient agrees to it.

Ah, to be a fly on the wall at the next Chunky meet up. I'd write about that.

R134 These affluent feminists all abide by the "well behaved women seldom make history" platitude. They are just useless cunts in the end.

I'm still only half way through the 1st thread but would just like to point out: the article states that Larson has profited by about USD 465.00 dollars from her short story, The Kindest. There really is NO WAY Dawn Weiner is going to realise USD 15,000.00 in damages from the case. I mean, at best, Larson "plagiarised" what, 4 or 5 lines? A short paragraph? It's not like The Kindest is Alex Haley's Roots where the author profited substantially. I would guess the "plagiarism" suit is going to be thrown out but, either way, Dawn is just fighting for bragging rights. Larson's tortious interference case against her is MUCH stronger, given the whole Boston leg of this story. That the NYTs published this at all is down to the writer, Robert Kolker, who knows a good story when he sees one - but the story is about the death match, not their writing.

Anyone who thinks this some landmark or even significant plagiarism case will be sorely disappointed. These women, Dorland especially, are just abusing the legal system the same way Trump does.

There's a MeFi comment from someone who donated a kidney to their wife and they said becoming insufferable after donating was very common, they did it themselves, and if they had been in Dawn's position they would have been royally pissed off at how awful the group was being.

The whole thing is just fascinating to me because it boils down to so many people saying "Larson was being cruel and plagiarized, and her friends were taunting someone who probably has a personality disorder, but Dawn is unlikable so they're both equally bad." It's harsh insight into human nature, into how people will believe someone deserves cruelty and punishment just because they're not very likable.

r269 may want to read r261's tweet.

r269, please come back when you've read the whole thread, because you don't know what you're talking about. (She also used the story to get a huge grant.) Plus, it's Larson who's been dragging out the legal proceedings, and who has a terrible lawyer, not Dorland.

r271, heh--jinx! (Although you were much more succinct than I was!)

"Anyone who thinks this some landmark or even significant plagiarism case will be sorely disappointed."

I don't think anyone at all thinks that - read the rest of the threads. The lawsuits don't even matter in the larger sense. They're just background for the morality play/character study that's been set up. People taking sides are doing just as the article asks - deciding who is the Bad Art Friend, or more broadly, who is an asshole, cunt, etc. Lol. I don't think anyone is hanging on to their seat anxious for the outcome of the lawsuits.

Just because Dorland has tried to settle, doesn't make her some angel. Usually when people begin or pursue legal proceedings in haste, they come to their senses and decide they want to settle. IF they really come to their senses, they withdraw their suit altogether - but once you're involved in a legal proceeding, every move you make in that arena can be characterised to be used against you. Larson obviously has more to lose but also thinks she has more to gain, but both of them have lost their minds allowing the legal proceeding to take on a life of its own due to how willful they both are.

It's silly to take sides in this conflict; they're both nuts.

r269, r275, again, please bother reading the full threads before commenting. You really do come across as clueless, because no, it's not just a matter of both sides being nuts and "so what if Dorland tried to settle." Larson has repeated lied under oath (perjury!). She signed contracts knowing she committed plagiarism. She's repeatedly escalated the case for years (Dorland is only asking for attorney's fees...she keeps accruing attorney's fees because Larson keeps escalating). Her attorney sued Dorland's attorney for representing her, which is insane. One side is significantly more nuts than the other.

I used an 'oh honey' line in the first part of this discussion that I thought was clever. I don't for a minute care. Feel free to have fun with it Celeste! Lol. So yeah.. wondering it something of this discussion has found its way to Ng.

Ng isn't an artist. She writes the most boring frau-fiction. Her writing could give anyone menopause.

Looks like Tom Meek's alerting Dorland about the story really was an innocent gesture (and the snitch tag to end all snitch tags) and now he's getting meangirled as well.

An under-discussed aspect of all of this: last year Larson received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

WTF? Either that place as incredibly low standards, or it's corrupt and it's just a question of who you know, not what you have done.

More importantly, shouldn't DL get some of those sweet dollars? There's plenty of well-written fiction on here.

I need to stop! The whole story is sad. It does feel like it could have been fixed, stopped, averted at a number of junctures.

Article number 2 from the New Yorker. A good question because a lot of people's response to this was what a crazy thing to do! Knowing writers are involved too. Glad the New Yorker is talking about it. Might be a small bit of counter programming to Helen Rosner's involvement in the drama as well. The New Yorker isn't a mean girl safe haven!

R282, that's article number 1. It's from 2009 and was Dorland's inspiration to donate.

The New Yorker reposting it is a combo of taking advantage of renewed interest and probably a little damage control over Rosner's stupidity.

R280 Taxpayer money. Which is fine by me, just pointing it out. I sometimes wonder how many of those grants go to people who really need them. I think it is or used to be merit alone that was the criterion, which I guess makes sense.

R261 Well this one's particularly interesting. Larson tried to sue Dorland's lawyer for representing Dorland!

So in addition to having the worst friends, Larson has the worst fucking lawyer.

[QUOTE] Brandon Taylor asked us if we know if she really donated the kidney not unlike Trump talking about birth certificates and a bunch of these people laughed. Now Brandon's twitter is deleted. Why? It couldn't be over that.. could it?

Brandon is VERY active on Twitter so his account being inactive/deleted is very conspicuous. Has he been brought down in this whole mess as well?

I had a shred of pity for Larson until it was revealed that she sued for defamation first, knowing that she plagiarized. It takes huge huevos to do that and think you'll come out on top. She started the litigation wars between them. How did she think she'd get away with it? Bad case of Affluenza I'm guessing.

[quote]And so here is my portrait of Dawn Dorland: People being neither fully good nor fully evil, she’s likely neither; people being products largely of their time and place, she likely is. Especially now, especially working within the arts, especially in educated and liberal-leaning circles, there’s a certain cachet in having been wounded, wronged, injured in some way—not only a cachet, but a near-limitless license for aggression. What could never be justified as offense can easily be justified as self-defense, and so the key to channeling antisocial emotions into socially acceptable confrontations is to claim victimhood. Dorland, in particular, went looking for hers, soliciting Larson for a reason the latter hadn’t congratulated her for her latest good deed, suspecting—rightly—a chillier relationship than collegial email etiquette would suggest. She kept seeking little indignities to be wounded by—and she kept finding them. Her retaliations quickly outpaced Larson’s offenses, such as they were.

This is probably the best take on Dorland.

r288, "Her retaliations quickly outpaced Larson’s offenses, such as they were."

No. Larson's offenses, and they were, are far greater than Dorland's actions.

R288, that Atlantic piece was part of the first wave of the literary world’s reaction to the article. It has not aged well. The overwhelming reaction of the non-cool-crowd was that Larson’s behavior in mocking and robbing Dorland was completely unjustified when compared to whatever social faux pas Dorland had committed.

I'm amazed at the universe Bad Art Friend has created. The New Yorker and Atlantic writing articles about a human interest article. Who would have thought. And a lot of them with the tone of "here's the real truth." Lol. I don't really agree with the Atlantic writer's take. Then of course there's the whole idea that all these response articles are being written by people who are or were in the world of the parties involved, or the very least are writers who harbor the same ambitions and sometimes insufferable know-it-all-ism even if they don't inhabit the world of MFA-literary fiction.

R288 That line of thinking works better if Dorland weren't correct in her assessment of Lawson. She wasn't simply being paranoid in her interpreting Lawson's feigned warmth/coolness as suspicious.

On another note, from Larson's short story: "It was just that she had two kidneys and only needed one. And on top of that, grinned the surgeon: we matched."

"Grinned the surgeon"? Just say "said." I'm sure Celeste Ng snickered at Lawson's attempts at creative writing. Surely there are texts about that.

"Sonya's rewriting that kidney story again. It's been like, what, two years?"

"She thinks she's Margaret Mitchell! She keeps sending me drafts. She said 'should I leave in the Facebook letter?' I told her yes, partly because the letter is so good, but also, it will be fun to see her with egg on her face if DD ever catches wind of this. She is playing with fire with that one, but I am here for it!"

"Did she take out 'grinned the surgeon' or is that still in there? Cringe."

Nobody's anybody's friend in these circles.

^those are imaginary texts, to be clear.

The second big lesson from this story (#1 is stop snitch-tagging) is in fact: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.

I wonder how many of these writers were inspired by Heller.

You bitches are worse than the Chunky Monkeys.

"Chunky Monkeys" is body-shaming, fatphobic, and racist, R295. Please use "differently sized primates."

No one is fashionable in Ptown. A novelty oxford is unremarkable in situ. See, now I'm being bitchy too. Difference being I really don't know these people, have no stake, and am anonymous

A novelty oxford is Ptown fashion. That and 50 year old dudes in Forever 21 tank tops.

[quote] "Chunky Monkeys" is body-shaming, fatphobic, and racist,

What is the name Chunky Monkeys was chosen to secretly body shame the men in the group?

Celeste: Remember that reading where someone put out ice cream after and we were all talking about Ben and Jerry's flavors? Sonya: Yeah, I think so. Celeste: well we should call the new group the Chunky Monkeys we'll make about how we all came together. Our secret will be because our male compatriots are looking FAT. Sonya: Oh, I don't know... I wouldn't have considered it. Are you sure we should? Celeste: Yes. It's done.

Do the Chunky Monkey men have honorary vaginas?

The name was suggested by one of the men, and was even dumber than the joke suggestions above.

"The name Chunky Monkeys (the “Chunks” for short) was originally coined by group member Adam Stumacher in reference to a situation where a writer may want to take up two workshop slots to present “chunks” of novels."

Such clever writers!

[quote] Some Metafilter comments

Thanks for linking to that. I have a lot of affection for Metafilter and I'm glad to see that they are still relevant (when the topic isn't related to trannies).

I will admit that Dawn's email signature of "I check emails once a day at noon" is eye-rolling.

So Jane Adams is playing Dawn in the screen adaptation? Any other candidates?

Maybe a de-glamorized Sharon Stone, combining some Catherine Trammell's scheming and caginess, along with Ginger's ambition and neediness.

I would just like to say that Sonya’s 90s, Brenda Walsh bangs are really working my nerves.

One of the main things giving this story legs with people, I think, must be the bullying angle. You can see it in everyone's responses online. The behaviour of the writer's group makes people immediately feel like they're back in high school again, they understand what it must feel like to be on the end of that. When I examine my feelings on it, it definitely revolves around repulsion at a group of people bullying someone.

Good grief, just how many charitable works is Celeste Ng going to post on her Twitter? That's so cynical.

I can’t believe that Celeste’s flat-out LIE tweet is even still up. The one where she says that she’d never even heard of Dawn Dorland by name before this article came out.

So many people like Celeste really seem to think if they just keep repeating the lie, eventually it will be believed.

Roxane Gay is always saying: "I never said that!" about things she actually posted online, but even she goes through and hits that delete button hard.

No one in the story is underprivileged or oppressed in any way. Every woman in this story is an overeducated, over privileged bitch. Dawn may have come from poverty but she went to Harvard. Attractive Asian women in the US who went to sister schools are not oppressed in the least. Even Roxanne's fat ass grew up wealthy.

R311, you need to really stop abusing and misusing our word.

A Chunky Monkey speaks!

It has never occurred to me that Asian women consider themselves oppressed. The Asian women I am friends with consider themselves superior to other people and they’d be happy to tell you that.

I am GenX, and grew up in the “victims are losers” culture. Obviously I don’t agree with that, but it makes it very hard for me to understand everyone’s desire to tell you all about their victimhood.

R313

[quote]In spite of much portrayal of us as catty, backstabbing, elitist, etc

It's hardly a "portrayal" when it's screenshots of their actual DMs.

R313, wow. I certainly can't say whether that is sincere or just damage control (or something in between) but at least someone had the sense to demonstrate that it is possible to step back and see one's own behavior in a new light, and apologize.

Interesting that she's now out of the group, Self-imposed, or did they tell her if she posts this apology she's out?

This story has captivated the reading public because it reads like a murder mystery, not something that comes out of the MFA-approved school of writing! I swear, MFA programs must have classes like "Wit Isn't Funny" or "Fast Pacing is Middlebrow".

I'm surprised it's taken this long for one of the Chunky Monkeys to disavow a group that's become a laughingstock.

She has the advantage of being the first, from now on the rest will seem like also-rans as they issue their apologies for ever knowing these people.

They should disband and then reform under a better name.

"Dawn Dorland and Her One Kidney Can Fuck Themselves" isn't really punchy enough.

"Better Kinder Monkeys" is too cloying and woke.

"Real Ng-as" (in debt to Celeste) would be interpreted as racist

Beats me. They can think of something - they're writers after all.

Becky Tuch's tweets are WEAK FUCKING SAUCE. It seems NOBODY in this group can admit they we MEAN NASTY CUNTS to someone. Why does BECKY TUCHUS have to spend so long on the preface of Lawson being such a fine person when she's been caught out being a nasty cunt.

These people truly are appalling.

They're all posting on social media and creating narratives because the story has gotten so "big." But, they're missing that no one really gives a fuck what they have to say and it can only make them look worse at this point, if it it is supposed to be apologetic and self-reflective. No one cares about them; they're just entertained by the drama which their speaking out will only add to.

We should start a countdown to see how long it takes for the NYT article to be optioned for TV/film.

Defiant return

Can I just say - what an idiot. No one gives a sweet flying fuck about your angry kidney tweets, Brandon.

Brandon says on twitter "I wrote about horny socialist himbos." Lol.

Let's see that dick, Brandon. As R324 points out, no one cares about the angry kidney tweets.

I give her credit for actually apologizing. However, she wasn't an active participant in the mess, so she has less to be defensive about. But at least she's smart enough to read the writing on the wall. I mean, no number of diaper drives is going to get Ng out of this mess--she's going to need to grovel and, even then, her reputation is taking a hit. She should talk to Reese, who produced Little Fires Everywhere, and overcame the hit to her reputation when her drunken bitch was revealed. Reese was out there apologizing all over the place and now plays nastier characters. And that was just for "Do you know who I am?"

Can't believe Larson's lawyer was moronic enough to sue Dorland's. No one fucking does that--no wonder Larson's made such a mess of this. This is going to cost her thousands in fees and, of course, has tanked her career for years, if not permanently. Lawyers work with other lawyers and recommend other lawyers. Her lawyer's going to have professional problems too. I mean you sure as hell don't sue and enable a discovery that makes your client come off as an unsympathetic bitch and guilty as claimed. Like OMG. And, of course, it's a great way to piss off the opposing counsel. Though I think Dorland changed lawyers--was this why?

I think this story has legs for a number of reasons--there's the bullying aspect--but there's also the donation aspect. This dumb bit of literary infighting belittles something that's a matter of life and death to a number of people. So, it's not just that Dorland was bullied, but how she was bullied.

And her bullies are going to have to acknowledge that--that includes Gay, by the way, she may not be a Chunky Monkey (am desperately resisting fat joke here), but her joke about Munchausen's makes it clear that she's a shallow bitch about this.

I think, too, many of us know that the "white privilege" thing has been used as a cudgel by privileged POC to cudgel other people and cut off discussion of their own privilege--and Ng is a perfect example of that.

Brandon sounds like a pompous idiot. What a lame excuse.

It's pretty funny how Brandon goes on and on in tweet after tweet telling people to get over it.

Brandon does seem pompous and obnoxious, but I will admit Twitter apologies are usually futile. Twitter is all about demanding apologies and never accepting them.

In this case, I tend to agree with the twitterati on the criticisms, but the rule for apologies there is always "It's Not Enough!"

Now they sound like Trump. After the embarrassing and morally corrupt behavior of one side, your side, you claim both sides are great people. "You had very fine people, on both sides."

"The name Chunky Monkeys (the “Chunks” for short) was originally coined by group member Adam Stumacher in reference to a situation where a writer may want to take up two workshop slots to present “chunks” of novels."

Then it's the perfect name for the group - named for the practice of using their financial privilege to squeeze another writer out of a place at a workshop, and to demand a double share of attention.

Betcha most of them are now working on roman a clef novels about this mess.

These motherfuckers from Grub Street/chunky monkeys CAN'T EVEN WRITE. That Castenelli article upthread is breathtakingly horrible.

Does one of their parents own Penguin Random?

In less than a week the literati cool kids have gone from "Dawn's a sociopath and Sonya is awesome, go Sonya!" to "I understand why Dawn might have been upset but that's no excuse for how she treated poor Sonya!" to "Look, there are no heroes here, OK, this is so heartbreaking!" to "OMG why are you people still talking about this, get a life!"

Shouldn't the Chunky Monkeys just re-brand as the Flying Monkeys, seems more apt to their mission.

Yeah r331, something tells me Dawn could never have two "chunk" slots allowed.

I do kind of hope they are all writing stories, and they all submit them to the One City One Story competition just to see Debbie Porter's response.

What is the "Castenelli article", please?

Another blogger digging down. Apology girl turns out to have also been a bitch in group comments saying Dawn deserved it. The group tag for Dorland was "DFD" for "Dawn Fucking Dorland".

And in a further sign of Larson's lawyers incompetence, the group texts were put out there by Larson's lawyer to support Larson's side. OMFG.

r336, r263

R337, this is some good shit.

R337, that confirms that Larson sued not only Dorland but Dorland’s attorney and his law firm. It also confirms that Larson got her $25,000 NEA grant not simply for her tedious short story, but for the first version of the story, which used Dawn’s name and directly plagiarized her letter.

They're gonna have to run GrubStreet out of a cardboard box by the time this is done.

Here's a link to another Larson short story, "Code W." No kidney transplants in this one.

I wonder who else will come out with tales of bullying by Celeste Ng?

Its funny, for how much Twitter loves to throw around the word Gaslighting, few are able to recognize it when it’s literally written out for them in a NYT article.

Dawn was made to believe she was crazy, when all along she was being mocked, plagiarized and froze out.

Lawson’s quote in the article about how “she doesn’t even think about Dawn” is clearly bullshit. The entire group was obsessed with her. The goal was clearly to get the story published and make it so that Dawn would see it. That is fucked up.

This goes to show that good friends won’t egg you on. All the group needed was a good friend to say “this was fun but lets stop”.

R323

[quote]As I said yesterday, y'all have talked yourselves around to a moral lather and now you're convinced you need to cart out the guillotine and put people's necks in it and I need you to please touch grass and let the sun touch your face.

Tweets the fuckwit who tried to start a 'the kidney donation is fake' angle on Twitter. And who - if we believe his claim - spends so much time on Twitter that he has to actually delete his account in order to focus on his work.

[quote]It also confirms that Larson got her $25,000 NEA grant not simply for her tedious short story, but for the first version of the story, which used Dawn’s name and directly plagiarized her letter.

So much for the claim she only made around $400 from the story.

R343 Oh I imagine this is going to start a wave of stories like this, hence the Monkeys calling in all their favours trying to push back on this and shut it down.

That said, this guy whining that the NYT article "did a disservice to the truth by not being chronological" sounds like an idiot.

R302 good lord! Art truly is dead

NEA, you in trouble, Girl!

You cannot "educate" the bourgeois class to become artists. That's not how "art" works. No matter how much these rich, well educated kids want it. That's why they're so angry. And they keep paying to play.

This group would make good editors.

Luna sounds exhausting, but probably has a point. I know a white guy who was cancelled in literary circles because of a poem that he meant as condemnation of rape was seen as supporting it by the idiot crowd. One of the many problems with the overpoliticization of the arts is the power of idiots.

That said, Ng did block Dumplings Talusan. So credit for that.

None of these people have any "grandness" but the cunty culprits such as NG are cosplaying "grandee" as a Teflon coating . It's hilariously ineffective.

Luna definitely seems exhausting, but the reason people like him (and Dorland) are such ripe targets for the likes of Ng is because they are so earnest. They want so badly to be taken seriously and be seen as helpful that they can't protect their feelings behind layers of snark and condescension. So they are prey without any armor and here comes Ng and crew with their slings and arrows.

I found previews of upcoming scenes in this théâtre de boulevard

Also from Pipersbookblog--a list of all the Chunky Monkeys. Piper also says she thinks Ng is on the verge of being cancelled because the dialysis community and friends are really upset. I'm inclined to agree--and it won't be cancellation-lite.

"This is also a story about the Chunky Monkeys, a Boston writers elitist group, who used a “punch down” technique to gaslight, gossip, and enable the plagiarizer (Sonya Larson). The Chunky Monkeys were founded by Adam Stumacher and Jennifer De Leon (husband and wife). Members also include Sonya Larson, Alison Murphy, Calvin Hennick, Celeste Ng, Whitney Scharer, Chip Creek, Christopher Castellani, Alexandria Marzona-Lesnevich, and Becky Tuch."

I can't believe it took the Datalounge nearly 1,000 posts to come up with "Flying Monkeys". You're slipping, bitches!

R354 Fair point about Luna. He's not a cool kid, but he also didn't deserve the abuse.

R357 Flying monkeys is too good for them. Though feces throwing seems on-brand.

And it took just as long for a reference to Dangerous Liaisons! All kinds of slippage.

"the dialysis community"? Oh, brother. Average readers with a conscience can and will cancel Ng.

POCs who didn't learn the lessons from Jussie Smollett:

1) POCS (and white wokes) - don't quickly blindly support your POC brothers and sisters in their race card bait and switch and cos-playing victimization.

2) When you make a huge mistake and are slimed in a public shaming, offer a supine mea culpa, short and sweet, and LOUD, take all responsibility, shut up and lay low.

[quote] the dialysis community and friends are really upset. I

There's a dialysis community?!

Cry me a river.

He deactivated his account to edit a piece. OK. And now backpedaling saying he doesn’t even care about the actual situation, it was a funny tweet.

When did obnoxious people like him start saying “touch grass” as an insult?

What’s the lesbian equivalent to, “I want him in me quite deeply?” Because that’s what I feel when I read Deb Porter’s emails. She needs a very large role in the Murder, She Wrote episode.

I missed this gem from Debbie Porter: "KINDLY ask your friends not to write to us".

R362, kidney failure is a significant cause of death in the U.S. There are a lot of people who rely on dialysis to stay alive, and finding kidney donors is difficult: people stay on transplant lists for years waiting for the appropriate donor. My partner nearly died of kidney failure, so I find Larson’s behavior truly enraging.

I have kidney disease and Sonya and Celeste can fuck my dysfunctional organs.

R362, Yep. There are 100,000 people in need of a kidney transplant and around 6,000 kidneys available per year. So, yeah, a lot of people hoping to survive long enough to get a kidney and spending every day on dialysis (as well as some people who can't get a transplant, but still need dialysis) and all the people who care about them.

So, yes, there's a community and they are fucking pissed off about this. And they're going to be the reason that this just doesn't blow over. The Chunkies still don't get it.

I have to say the more I read about it, the less loony Dawn looks (more one of those earnest do-gooder types) and the weirder Larson and her enablers look. I mean Dorland had moved across the country and Larson was still obsessing about her.

And then there was the terrible lawyer Larson hired. It makes me wonder if better lawyers told her to just settle and pull the story. That defamation suit was *sooo* stupid. It ain't defamation if it's true.

Larson’s lawyer seems completely incompetent. And he has an AOL email address! Did she find him via a highway road sign? Why didn’t her good friend, Celeste Ng, connect her with better legal counsel?

Here's an interesting comment by an attorney on Metafilter:

[quote] I have some real, major questions about the lawyering here. The lawyer appears to be a partner who's been in practice for 40+ years, so my best guess is he just wasn't really paying any attention to a relatively small-potatoes case. But letting your client perjure themselves, this many years into a case that your client filed? DUDE, WTF. And also he calls himself "Lawyer Q. Lawyerman, ESQ," (yes he uses all caps) and I am automatically suspicious of all lawyers who call themselves "Esq.," as I feel it is the surest sign of a hack.

R371 Great link, that whole post is extremely informative, as is his next one. Now get this - Larson used discovery in the lawsuit to mock Dawn:

[quote]Also, OMG, jump to page 12 in this motion and see where Larson used her interrogatories filed in the lawsuit to make the point that Dorland had never published a book and was generally not a successful writer. (Her lawyer makes that point very clear on page 14 and following.) Again I don't know that this is Larson's lawyer or Larson herself, but it's super-gross.

Page 12 shows Larson demanding Dorland provide a list of all articles, stories, books, essays and other writings she has written from 2015 onwards, that she's edited from 2015 onwards, whether anything she wrote was published, whether she taught any writing classes, how many students, how much she was paid, and who paid her. As Dorland's lawyer says, there's no other reason to ask for this other than to try and embarrass Dorland compared to Larson's career. How utterly pathetic.

I am still fascinated with this story. They accuse Dawn of being like Trump for being an organ donor advocate, then they mock her one kidney which is exactly what Trump would do. A true narcissist would never donate their kidney, Dawn is a lot of things but I don't think she's a narcissist.

R373 And on top of that, Larson's lawyer sounds like he's from the Giuliani law school, so much so that Dorland's lawyer complained about how shitty he was:

[quote]Ms. Larson, through counsel, has further disclosed counsel's hands-off approach to the discovery process. In her opposition, Ms. Larson states that "she was not absolutely sure what Dorland was seeking from her when she received the requests from her counsel." Opp., p. 12. This is consistent with Ms. Larson's counsel's prior statements wherein he stated that he did not know what his client did to search for additional documents following the parties' conference because he simply "forwarded your email to her." Counsel has obligations beyond simply forwarding a document and leaving his client to decipher the legal import and the legal obligations. Counsel also had an obligation to engage in the meet and confer process, which he did not, as reflected in Ms. Dorland's Memorandum in support of her Motion.

Dawn is just super needy and super annoying and super earnest. We ALL know the type. That they're not shrouded in layers of cynicism, snark, condescension, and know-it-all-ism is baffling to all of us - even all of us who are generally good people - that use those tools to some degree to navigate and protect us from the world at large. People like Dawn just seem unreal, weird, crazy - in addition to being needy and annoying They're easy to dismiss. And honestly, there's been Dawns in my life and I've gone IN on them with my friends. But as someone said back in the first thread - you do a private rant with friends. You don't make it public and double down and actually try to materially harm that person. You rant and let it go.

The lawyer's links in R371 are really interesting, particularly the one filed by Dorland's lawyer. Prior to the stuff on page 12 cited above, it mentions that Larson nagged American Short Fiction, which had published the kidney story, about it not having submitted it for inclusion in the Best Short Story anthology. To shut Larson up, ASF put the story on its Web site which is where Dorland saw it.

Larson also announced her kidney story being picked for One City/One Story *before* the Boston Book Festival had had a chance to do so.

In other words, she's completely pushy and obnoxious about her own work--but Chunkies are supposedly appalled by Dawn pitching the NYT or posting about her kidney donation.

It really does come across as a class thing--how *dare* Dawn put herself forward in any way shape or form?

[quote]That said, Ng did block Dumplings Talusan.

Wait, back up! What's the story here? Anyone know why? That's amusing to me. I bet Dumplings went on a rant about it, did she?

R317, MFA-Alum Random Jarrar (rolling around on the beach naked wrapped in bondage rope woman) got her knickers in a twist recently when someone commented on GoodReads that she didn't find Jarrar's novel flowed well enough. Jarrar got into a HUGE snit, saying that she deliberately made her novel like that because a novel that was chronological was a tool of white oppression, or something.

R365, I totally see her, glamorously dressed, walking around her office trying to get things done as Jessica tries to ask her questions. Porter has no time for this, but by the end has some real respect for Jessica. Maybe Porter ends up offering a space at the Boston Book Festival for one of Jessica's stories?

"I have to say, Miss Fletcher, you impressed me. We should talk sometime about making some of your work available for One City/One Story."

I see a cocked eyebrow involved too.

Oh apologies, I just read the Joseph Luna thread in more detail and I see that's where Dumplings mentions she was blocked by Ng (except she says "I blocked her first but LMFAO"). Sorry for not reading in detail before asking.

OP forgot to link to part one. Can someone please do so for posterity?

R380, OP (ie me) did link to the first one. It's right there. But I'll post it again here for you :)

It's a good question, but unpacking it would take a long time...

[quote]Why is Roxane Gay always involved in all these Writer Twitter in-group pile-ons of outsiders? I like her actual work, but she keeps turning up in these writer world scandals on the side of the bullies.

What does she mean she didn't subtweet anything? She did! The woman couldn't stop lying if her life depended on it!

[quote]Oh please. Literally thousands of people commented on the article. And I didn’t subtweet a goddamned thing. Like I said, leave me out of it or bring this attitude to the thousands.

Well shit now that Roxane Gay is involved I need to read this thread.

Oh mate, Roxane involved herself from the very beginning (in the sense of once the article appeared) - you have plenty to catch up on! 😉

I think it's pretty clear that Gay is buddies with all of them. She's a social climber like the rest of them and part of being a climber is deciding who's in and who's out. Ironically, they use traditional racism as a template for their own reverse version. They want the same framework of some animals being more equal than other, but just different animals. I assume, on some level, Roxane also feels like shit about herself. You pile on weight the way she does and have a great sense of self-esteem. She's basically killing herself at this point.

The first thing I ever read by Gay was years ago and was something in, I think, Salon about being a good literary citizen, buying the books, attending all those effin' readings, etc. Basically a guilt trip for wannabe writers. Dawn Dorland completely walked the walk on this as, I think, she's done on so many other things, trying to do the right thing. And her trying to be good is one of the reasons they despised her.

It is really strange that no one, until Deborah Porter, told Larson to check herself. Part of it had to be that POC privilege--they figured as victims they were above self-scrutiny. There's no way a goody-two-shoes white lady could be in the right--because white do-gooding is suspect by definition.

I'm not surprised that the only Chunky who's apologized is a white woman--since she doesn't have that shield. No one's going to defend her as a permanent victim. It also makes a weird sense that Ng can't admit wrongdoing--she's built an identity on being a victim and critic of racism.

Want to give you a standing ovation, R386. Excellent post. I really admire it when someone can explain their point like that, something I have a problem with, I get so needlessly wordy haha.

This tidal wave of cunts and entitlement is the classic NYT story, about "feelers" and altruism (but with strings attached, lots of strings), and hurt feelings, and lawsuits, and white saviourism.

But it doesn't have fuck all to do with Art. And not fucking much to do with Literature unless you consider Bad Women Writers' Workshops art or literature.

R386 what an amazingly dishy post. I nominate you to write the lifetime original movie about this saga.

How do we fit the Roxanne Gay character into the "Murder She Wtote", episode?

R390 With an IMAX camera.

Ooh, that's a good question R390! Hmmm... I'm not sure, to be honest. Anyone got any ideas?

[quote] I swear, MFA programs must have classes like "Wit Isn't Funny" or "Fast Pacing is Middlebrow".

I was an English Lit major who had to take writing courses for my degree in the 1990s. If anything even vaguely looked like "genre writing" the professor would humiliate you, insult you, give you bad grades and generally make your life miserable. Fast pacing was considered a trait of "genre writing." I'm not joking.

One of the classes I was in was featured a professor who loved to harass certain students every semester. He harassed the one black student in our class for several classes until he quit, because the student had once said popular antebellum "sentimental novels" were the mid-1800s equivalent of Stephen King in terms of popularity, and the professor was so mad that he even SAID the words "Stephen" and "King" that he harassed him endlessly.

These ladies are the product of the upper-class, Ivy League versions of that kind of education. The snobbishness has been baked in. They were literally taught who deserved to be part of their group and who didn't. And now they use this fake "woke" or "SJW" rhetoric as weapons to maintain their cloistered little in-group, pretending they're oppressed victims.

Wow, R393, thanks for that insight, it is both fascinating and disheartening. I wouldn't last long in a program like that, I don't think!

[quote]That said, Ng did block Dumplings Talusan. So credit for that.

Someone on MeFi brought up author Grace Talusan because she's part of that whole Grub Street crew and is in a photo with Chip Cheese and others involved, and I almost signed up for MeFi to tell them to stop mentioning her, that we are already overstocked on Talusans and can't possibly add another to any current or forthcoming drama.

Ahahahaha, R395!

You quoted me in your lovely post, R393, and pointed out something I should have known.

Satire is almost impossible to pull off these days, because reality is just too fucking silly!

From "Kindly, She Kills":

FLETCHER: Ms Gay, when was the last time you saw Sonya Larson alive?

GAY (impassive, sat behind her desk): Miss Fletcher, you seem to be laboring under the impression that I, a woman of color, am required to do the work of a white woman like yourself for you. I am not. Google is free, Miss Fletcher. I suggest you use it. Kindly do better in future.

I laughed at what you posted r397 because I knew you meant it as a joke but it was actually true! I can still see one of my writing professors standing there in her two cardigans (she always wore one regardless of weather and kept a second in her office if she got chilly) chewing out a student because her short story was "fast paced, like a... a... science fiction novel, or something published in a colorful paperback edition."

Good point, R386. Ng almost *can't* apologize. She'd have another ton of shit raining down on her, from another camp.

THIS is where we're going, where we're at as a society? Disgusting.

It is crazy seeing all the bad takes from writer Twitter siding with the bullies, and that virtually everyone else sides with Dawn.

No one is mad that Larson and friends spoke shit about Dawn in a private group. No one is mad that she took “inspiration” from Dawn. People are mad that a group of writers made fun of a seemingly kind but annoying woman for years, wrote a story about it with the very real possibility she would see it, stole her letter for the story, all while pretending that they did nothing of the sort.

Yes, me and my friends make fun of people behind their back. No, we don’t write stories about them take get 25,000 dollar grants in some odd and sadistic power play.

Out of curiosity, I read Roxane Gay's memoir.

Yes, I feel empathy for her terrible suffering after her gang rape. But I'm not convinced that she has done everything she could to heal, and I don't believe she really wants to.

She's stuck in the stage of Jackie K wearing the blood-stained pink suit. "Look at what they did to Jack." Except with Ms. Gay, it's her body. "Look at what they did to me."

There are trauma specialists who work with the brain itself. People have healed from torture and worse than what she went through.

She has character traits that allowed her to start having sex at age 12 with the perpetrator. But those character traits will never have to be confronted and she will not have to take accountability, because, you know, the rape.

She was 12, r402 you fucking ghoul. She isn't "accountable" for her own rape.

Don't hijack this fantastic thread with your weird "12-year-old girls are responsible for their own rapes" agenda. Go start your own thread about it.

R391 🤣

R403

She said in her memoir she was already having sex with the perpetrator before the rape. She was willingly seeing porn with him.

I did not say she was responsible for the rape. I'm saying she is responsible for her healing. So fuck off for missing the point yet again,.

Genre fiction! (gasp). Before ebooks and ereaders (one of the greatest inventions of all time), when I was traveling, trading books was a hot topic. Used and tattered paperbacks in shops were sold at ridiculous prices, more than a meal, so one of the early questions you’d ask after “how long have you been over here” and “where have you been” was, “any books to trade?”. Nice, thick genre novels were the best but not too “airport bookshop”. Booker Prize nominated was a class to be avoided.

Wow, the BOSTON GLOBE was involved at one point, and told that publishing festival or whatever that the story flat out had troublesome plagiarism and it needed to be addressed which is why the head of the festival, Porter, shut that shit down right quick and told SL that she’d be sued if she didn’t shut her trap.

A major newspaper involved? This is an absolute dumpster fire of reputations. Celeste Ng is finished and that entire group of middlebrow wannabes should start to accept they’ll be lucky to find high school English teaching positions in the future.

EXACTLY, R375!!

R407 Ng will probably survive. Larson is done for.

[quote] Dawn is just super needy and super annoying and super earnest.

I might not have anyone in my life like this. If I did I would ignore or limit. All of the writers in the story would be talking earnestly about their race and past experiences. Dawn is self aware enough to know people might not want to be in her Facebook group.

Buck would never join a writer's workshop

Don't think the video matches the description. Did they find her voice a little..something? Dawn asks a good question. It's immediately met with someone in the room saying perhaps jokingly 'what's a generic race'? They all knew what she meant. Do they think a white person choosing to be in that room would be oblivious to these discussions? No race specified or matching the author or white in American settings. That's a good topic. What do we think of as default?

Nothing to see in the clip.

She asks the first question so she's a go-getter lol.

She meant not specified or assumed to be white. They should have talked about that. From past experience some of these people have a hair trigger for word choice.

[quote] Why is Roxane Gay always involved in all these Writer Twitter in-group pile-ons of outsiders?

Because she's the final boss one faces before being vanquished from Literary Twitter. After she weighs in and piles on top of you, it's supposed to be curtains!

It kinda cracks me up that these Black women have allied themselves with Chinese-American women under the “WOC” banner.

I can’t imagine two cultures less alike.

Can't believe with all these posts, no one has mentioned the movie Let Them All Talk. Meryl Streep plays Larson. Candice Bergen as Dorland. Diane Wiest as Celeste Ng. Go watch!

"muh patriarchy". These cunts are so boring and predictable.

Gotta say I'm throughly enjoying this thread and the previous one, and watching all the back and forth of ratfuckers like Ng and Larson. I also enjoy the fact that someone they mocked and held in such contempt is fucking with them and dragging them down so expertly. Dawn is a self-serving narcissist but she's playing them at their own game quite well. I only hope the plaigiarism part of her lawsuit isn't dismissed. It would be a shame to see these smug cunts get away with their machinations.

Brandon Taylor is acting like a martyred woman on Twitter right now after wading into Roxane Gay’s obnoxious posts.

Brandon needs a fucking case of Midol. Performative victimhood in action.

Frankly I'm disappointed there are not more IVY and Seven Sister diplomas in this rat fuck. Well, I guess I should be pleased since I have them myself.

R420

[quote] Dawn is a self-serving narcissist

I don't see her as wildly so but if one knew her personally that would be clearer? Every single one of these writers is self promoting, self serving not to mention totally navel gazing in service of their craft.

Not knowing Dawn, I’m not buying the premise that she’s a self-serving narcissist. Annoying to some, definitely. But clearly her annoying quality turned into a spectator sport for the chunkies.

If you want to see some arguably self-serving narcissism, take a look at Celeste’s Instagram. “Look, my book is on the New York Times bestseller list! Look, my book has been optioned for a show! Look, a zillion readers have read my book!” And really, I don’t blame her for promoting her work, that’s fine. Everyone on social media plugs, boasts or virtue signals in some way. Some just do it more suddenly than others. And what Dawn did was perfectly within bounds.

^subtly not suddenly.

The annoying quality. Why would that drive this rage? I don't have a lot of colleagues in my field. I worked one place where everyone thought one of the people was annoying. Some sighs and laughs out of their sight but that's it. Nothing actionable, nothing written down that I know of

R425, I think there was a lot of projection in how Larson and the other Chunky Monkeys saw Dawn. She was targeted because there was something wrong with them.

R426 Their problem with Dawn is that they think that because they are 'artists' they deserve to be narcissists while someone like Dawn is just a grubby nobody who is using her kidney for attention she doesn't deserve. I'm curious is anyone here has actually read Ng or Larson. They're not Joan Didion or Virginia Woolfe. They are watered down versions of Amy Tan. There's a good chance that if Empress of the Fraus Reese Witherspoon likes your work, it's probably shit.

When you think about it, Dawn’s sin was being too open and earnest about her feelings. I mean let’s face it, whenever any of us posts a selfie, the caption should read, “I think I look good and I would like some compliments.“ But people come up with seemingly clever ways around that. Let’s face it, none of us are fooling anyone.

Comments are fun. They keep coming for Celeste.

Meant to add, of course the chunks added another layer to their hate, which we have all seen.

Apropos of nothing, I was amused to note that in her correspondence, Sonya repeatedly refers to Dawn’s kidney donation as “tremendous.“ Channeling her inner Patsy stone I suppose

Check out Celeste Ng’s Wikipedia page. Someone has added this:

[QUOTE] In October 2021, she was involved in an online controversy wherein she stated a kidney donor should “go f*ck herself and her one kidney.”

I want Amy Tan to weigh in.

We're still toying with the idea that someone so clearly kind and calm in writing somehow deserved to be plagiarized and mobbed in this way.

I think Dawn's selflessness is so abhorrent to this group because it is defiantly outside of their values. It's a true gesture of human kindness. It shouldn't be cynically mocked and derided, but all they know is upper middle class selfish, cool, intellectual cynicism. And their rage at Dawn actually revealed their dearth of goodness, and that enraged them further.

I'm dealing with something similar vis a vis Covid- trying to get rich friends to abandon some selfishness to help less fortunate friends, but they're too mired in sexy self pity. It's fascinating.

R434 I refuse to believe that wasn't a DLer.

R438, either a DLer or Deb Porter.

Her different background, whatever it is we're supposed to assume about her character, what R437. & I also think Dawn could be the smartest person in the story. It's possible. She was beyond understanding or control.

One of the most vivid things in Bar Art Friend is absolute insane disconnect between what we're first told about Dawn and Celeste and how they both come across in the documents.

What's kinda interesting re: Roxane is that normally on those posts above, her sycophants would immediately be jumping in to defend her with lame arguments ("Roxane is a WOC, are you really going to talk to her like that?"), but they're not. I mean, maybe no one's really seen those responses, but it is noticeable. Also that usually Roxane gets heaps of likes, whatever she says, but last time I looked, she had very little, but the people who keep calling her out ARE getting the likes. It's small, but at the same time I keep seeing people who like her say how disappointed they are that she got involved, so...

[quote]either a DLer or Deb Porter.

Hahaha, imagine if Deb was there, changing Wikipedia in her spare time! Hehehe.

*Bad Art Friend* Bar Art Friend is another tale.

Shit, Celeste, get off Twitter! You’re only making it worse!

You almost get this image of Celeste sitting at her computer, looking confused at her Twitter: "Don't they know who I am?!"

I think Celeste should take this weekend and re-read her favorite book of childhood yore, Harriet the Spy. There will be a test next week and possibly ever after.

Also, if this was a MSW episode, it has to be a two-parter ala S3's 'Death Stalks the Big Top.' That creates more, um, space to incorporate Roxane as a secondary antagonist, whose exhausted sigh will be featured in the 'Tonight, on Murder She Wrote' teaser.

Hahahahahah! R446, yes, that sigh has to be there! Maybe it's an exhausted sigh and a pause on Roxane's unamused face as the voiceover tells us "Tonight at 9pm" or however they used to do it.

I still find the "my favorite books is Harriet the Spy" thing so hilarious!

Ramona is right here. It's almost baffling how clueless Ng is. I love how she claims Larson is so good at creating characters with blind spots, Ng has a huge one herself. Dorland could've made a very similar point when the Chunky Monkeys were attacking her.

On team Dawn...Slate weighs in.

^^^"There Is No Such Thing as Bragging Too Much About a Kidney Donation"^^^

^are they the first from a journalist/writer perspective to come out on Dawn's side?

Read two of Ng’s books and they were really good. But I didn’t realize what an asshole she is.

Yay have to wonder where her husband and (real) friends are in this? No one has read all this stuff and sat her down and told her to stand down? Really???

Let's not forget Tess and Katharine!

They believe, like Katharine, that they are UNTOUCHABLE.

R451, no. The lordly New Yorker weighed in and found Larson's short story -- allegedly worth $25,000 of tax payer dollars -- to be a failure. The link has been posted above in the thread.

"Sonya made drunk jokes about how one of the Chunky Monkey people, the fat Asian one, was getting too Chunky and shouldnt take the name literally. She said it was okay for her to make those jokes because Sonya is "Asian.""

Who is Nina Sanger? Is she a Cunty Monkey?

R457, she seems to have been in a writing workshop with Larson.

Nina Sanger also appears to be a right-wing nut job, of the "Fauci lies," "vaccines kill," MAGA variety. So be careful what you're buying from her. (She may very well be honest about Larson, but she doesn't seem to be much better.)

Yeah, that looks like drunk tweeting. Is more likely to backfire than really hurt Larson.

But I'm all for more credible people coming forward with stories of the Real Grubwives of Boston.

What happened when Sonya read Deborah Porter's email

Nina Sanger = MAGA troll

I just hope someday the Chunky Monkeys find our Murder, She Wrote episode.

Finally getting caught up in the latest. I didn't see anyone post this statement from Grub Street. They're so full of shit. Their executive director was involved in covering up Dorland's HR complaint! Their president was one of the catty bitches shit-talking her! "Alleged behavior by some?" There are receipts! Provided by Larson!

[quote] I almost signed up for MeFi to tell them to stop mentioning her, that we are already overstocked on Talusans and can't possibly add another to any current or forthcoming drama.

Hahaha! I was a heavy user of Metafilter during its first decade but it has in recent years become sour and doctrinaire on social justice issues.

"The annoying quality. Why would that drive this rage?"

Have you ever heard that old saying: "If you do someone an injury, they become your enemy"?

It's a guilt reaction. If you hurt someone who doesn't deserve it, you consider them your enemy both because you expect them to retaliate, and because you've got to justify your hurtful action to yourself. So I think what happened here was that Lawson started by observing Dorland so she could write about her and lying about her motivations, and once she'd done that she had to consider Dorland her enemy. So the whole Flying Monkey group was slightly acquainted with Dorland, Larson's guilt feelings prompted her to shit-talk about Dorland to the group, and had no trouble convincing the Monkeys that she was crazy and narcissistic. Not only were acts of genuine real-world altruism baffling to them, but I'm sure they were all ready to believe the worst of wannabe writers in general, because it made them feel secure in their positions. Most of them are probably guilty of nothing worse than snobbery and exclusiveness on a private level, things that every single Datalounge is guilty of themselves.

I want Celeste Ng’s head on a pike. I want her to be dreadfully anxious about her career. Reese not returning her calls. Endless dragging on social media. Ng lashing out in tone deaf ways. I want her to be punished.

She comes across as the real villain, more so than dumb Sonya. Maybe it’s because she is/was the most successful grubbychunkfuckingmonkey.

I dare someone to go on Celeste's Twitter and tell her to go re-read Harriet the Spy. I want her reaction.

And then bring it here to me.

I have been a royal cunt in text, on the phone, in person and on Datalounge. I am a huge gossip, kind of a mess of course.

But the cruelty displayed by this group actually shocks me. And makes me want to be the decent person I can be.

"And makes me want to be the decent person I can be."

MARY! SNAP OUT OF IT!!!

So Ng is on Twitter promoting charitable causes, and saying "So the embarassment you think I should feel ought to outweigh the desire to help other people. Okay.".

I dare a Datalounger with a twitter account tell her that if she wants to refurbish her image, she ought to try praising people who've performed altruistic acts instead of dragging them.

[quote]Yay have to wonder where her husband and (real) friends are in this? No one has read all this stuff and sat her down and told her to stand down? Really???

Ng really is the fascinating one in all this, the major diva of the Flying Monkeys and the one with the most to lose by tanking her brand. Yet she keeps doubling down. Is she stupid? Clueless? Obviously if she has any real friends, she's not listening to them. It truly is astonishing that one as "celebrated" a writer as she is reputed to be (I've never read any of her stuff) can be so oblivious to what is going on, (and down) around her

Perhaps more twists coming?

More fan mail

"Boston’s GrubStreet Is Still Dealing with the Fallout from “Bad Art Friend”

"Bluntly, we are appalled by the disconnect between GrubStreet’s stated values and the alleged behavior by some that has come to light. GrubStreet is meant to be a nurturing and supportive environment for all, a place where our creative work can thrive, and where we are each treated with care and respect. The events described in the article do not describe the environment we strive to create for everyone in our community."

LOL, Oh my sides!

just curious, did the monkeys get chunky by eating at grub street?

'Bad Art Friend' fallout: Boston's GrubStreet writing center launches investigation into events in viral article

"It was unclear precisely what alleged behavior described in “Who Is The Bad Art Friend?” most alarmed the GrubStreet board."

Tells you all you need to know about this vile bunch

I introduced this topic on another forum, one that includes some straight men. It fell flat, nobody cared.

I think this story chiefly appeals to people who have an inner petty bitch, which is a requirement for both the Datalounge and Twitter.

"I think this story chiefly appeals to people who have an inner petty bitch"

And an outer one!

Well, if people didn't know who Celeste Ng was before.. they might now.

R478, the original story drew thousands of comments on the NYTimes website; stories about the online reaction have appeared in all kinds of media outlets. There are multiple Reddit threads about it as well. It’s safe to say that many, many people care about the issues this story raises.

R478, was the forum Boring Straight Dudes? Or was it Boring Straight Dudes Talking about Fantasy Football?

Dear Lord in Heaven!

Wow, a 13,000 square-foot space at the Seaport, looks fancy. I was picturing some humble converted shop building.

" I introduced this topic on another forum, one that includes some straight men. It fell flat, nobody cared.

I think this story chiefly appeals to people who have an inner petty bitch"

I realize that there are actually chill, buttoned-up, non-gossipy straight men. But, the idea that straight men uniformly have no "inner petty bitch" is laughable. Many can be just as bad as gay men and women. Maybe their lack of interest is for that very reason. Women and gay men can easily self-reflect on their inner petty bitch and willing put themselves in the story "what would I do If I were Larson or Dawn or a Chunky Monkey?" I can see straight men wanting to avoid it, telling themselves they're not like that. Plus the story doesn't involve obviously straight men. Just an idea. No matter their reason for avoiding it, a lot of them have an evolved inner petty bitch.

Who plays the fast Asian Chunky Monkey?

Celeste is determinedly tweeting out do-gooder stuff. You know something, it might just work – brazening it out, no apologies. Hmmm.

Nah. I don't think it will fly. We are too hateful and she isn't important enough to give her the benefit of the doubt.

R488 Yes, but things fade. People forget.

It's possible that Ng's frau and wokey fans don't care about mean girling, plagiarism, or a bunch of losers with kidney disease, so maybe it'll work for her.

But I think the literary establishment is going to put her on their collective shit list for a while. Or forever, if she stops selling big..

Writers should have a bitchy side.

Truman, at least you were at times capable of writing gorgeous prose.

The grubby monkeys not so much.

Real writers can be bitches. The issue in this rat fuck is real bitches want to be writers and suck at it.

This sort of contrived “art” making by committee/clique/nepotism /bourgeois grant system/identity politicking approach to writing novels and stories seems like the complete antithesis to what literature should be. It’s depressing that there are probably hundreds of modern day hemingways/Austens/baldwins out there with brilliant work but also the modesty and good sense to avoid these weirdly Byzantine and fucked up paths to actually being published. Who buys these tedious books??

I believe Larson's a boozer--the alter ego she's used in multiple stories is one in Kindest. Sounds like, too, that Dorland had had a baby around the same time Larson was desperately dating the 140 men looking for some guy to marry and spawn with.

For all the talk you hear about women being "happily single" getting married is still a major deal for a lot of straight women--a basic indicator of success or failure. Dawn seems to have had it all that way--the husband, the kid, the whiteness, the altruism--all of which was fueling Larson's jealousy and rage.

A lot of first-gen Asian-American kids are put under crazy amounts of pressure to succeed by their parents--and success means financial *and* personal. There can be a lot of jealousy and resentment of white kids who don't have to worry about being seen as American, they just are.

But the self-pity resulted in both Larson and Ng behaving with incredible cruelty--and continues to blind them to how horrible they seem to people outside their circle. Similar issue with Gay, another privileged 1st-generation POC. All of these women were, ironically, given incredible opportunities precisely because of their identities, but they're still eaten up with resentment and feel justified in acting out.

And, of course, it keeps them from doing the one thing they need to do--surrender their perennial victimhood, take some responsibility and apologize. Gay can skate by without doing anything and probably will, but Ng, in particular, has to do it. Larson's toast no matter what.

I think to be a really great writer, you have to have generosity of spirit in the end.

I don't think Ng's reputation is going to be saved by diapers-for-Afghans tweets. It's too obvious and doesn't address what she did wrong. It looks evasive.

Also, again, all those people who need kidneys and Ng shit on them and donors. It's really ugly. Ng's readers are women, particularly women's book clubs and it's easy to pick a writer who's not a known backstabbing bitch. It's one thing to be lectured on one's privilege (most of these readers are white.), totally another to support someone who bullied a feckless woman who donated a kidney. I mean part of the reason that these women are willing to be lectured on their privilege by the Celestes and Roxanes of the world is that they want to be good. If Celeste is a rotten person, they're not going to read her for naughty entertainment. She's just not a good enough writer.

[quote]It's possible that Ng's frau and wokey fans don't care about mean girling, plagiarism, or a bunch of losers with kidney disease

I think that's very true, and the number of people I've seen saying without irony, "Dawn's problem is that she thinks the truth matters" has been a little shocking to me.

My experiences on Twitter, Reddit and DL tells me that there are a lot of people who don't care about the truth or about right and wrong, and I always thought it was simple lack of caring or even an inability to tell the difference. After this brouhaha, I now believe a lot of people know full well the difference between right and wrong, between truth and lies, and purposely choose to believe what they want, regardless of anything else.

R498 These days we're all about "teams." Also, race infects every issue.

A Velma & Roxie type team-up by Dorland and Larson will happen one day. Seriously.

R498 and R499, that is one of the reasons I believe that STEM education is so important. The Scientific Method teaches a person to adjust their beliefs (hypothesis) if evidence proves it false, but the world is full of idiots who don't know thats what they should be doing.

In the case of highly educated wokies, they won't abandon idiotic opinions out of a misguided belief in a high morality or groupthink, like when they'll insist its okay for a POC to be mean to a white person but not vice versa.

R501, the problem is that people with STEM education do not translate the scientific method to ethical, political, or aesthetic concerns. Not to mention that few students get to the point of doing the experimental work you describe.

I think this is more an argument for education in philosophy (or at the very least humanities). They need to learn how to think and reason.

I’m convinced Celeste has dug in her heels, defiantly unapologetic. No fucks to give, won’t be moved. And that this approach will work for her to some extent. At least she’s not in any legal jeopardy.

The MFA crowd has been taught that success in “writing” means investing time and money in networking. They are not going to suddenly cave, because it has worked for them up until now.

But, as someone observed upthread, this is what happens when the arts become the province of the upper middle class. Being educated can’t make you an artist. It can’t give you creativity or insight, things the Chunky Monkeys seem to lack.

That is so right R504. The lack of insight and self-knowledge is probably the most shocking thing about this. We expect writers to have clarity and wisdom, but this group seems more clueless than the average person.

It is weird that at a time when there is so much concern about "privilege," that these writers use their privilege so brazenly, expecting that no one will object. You wonder what rock the Chunky Monkeys have been sleeping under for the past five or ten years.

R505 They’ve been busy mining the “idpol” vein.

Link to part 3

"It is weird that at a time when there is so much concern about "privilege," that these writers use their privilege so brazenly, expecting that no one will object. "

Wokeys talk a great deal about their awareness of their privilege and try to sound humble, but of course they'll take full advantages of whatever privileges they have. Which I don't hold against them particularly, it's a rough world and everyone uses whatever they have to their advantage.

If twerps like them have come to dominate the arts, IMHO that's more because of larger economic forces, not because the twerps have frozen everyone else out. Okay, they've undoubtedly done some freezing-out, but the face is, the cost of living is so high and wages are so low that nobody can be a starving artist any more. Now, the arts are dominated by the upper and upper-middle classes, because they have enough of an economic cushion to indulge in careers that require a lot of education and which may not pay for years, if at all. Face it, the arts have become the purview of trophy wives and trustafarians, because they're the ones with enough free time and economic cushion to devote months to a short story that earns $425.

The revision history on the Celeste Ng article includes this deleted line from October 8:

[quote] She is also a nasty person who is known to indulge in race-baiting.

How Bad Art Friend Became Twitter’s Favorite Parlor Game. Robert Kolker, who recently wrote about a case involving a friendship torn asunder for The Times Magazine, explains how he approached his reporting and what he thought about the online discourse around the story.

Why does Celeste Ng’s Wikipedia entry not include her role in the whole Bad Art Friend fiasco? I know that Christopher Castellani’s involvement was constantly being scrubbed from his Wiki by his husband until the husband was banned from editing on Wikipedia. However, Ng seems to have escaped any kind of memorialization.

Isn’t she the one who referred to Dawn Dorland as “DFD - Dawn Fucking Dorland”?

She also apparently doesn’t know the difference between “farther” and “further.”

I can’t get over the irony of Harriet the Spy…

I’ve no doubt Dawn was annoying and exhausting but at least she did something helpful to someone else. Even if she did it for positive attention, it saved another person’s life. Something is very wrong with a group of people who would find that worthy of mockery.

[quote]r156 if [writers] ocan't take the trouble to disguise the source of an inspiration to avoid hurting another person's feelings, then they should find something else to do with their lives. Because no, "great art" is NOT more important than the feelings of a real person.

Are landlords, grocers, dry cleaners etc. supposed to worry about hurting our feelings? Do we think banks and corporations consider our feelings? Why should artists be held to a different standard when they are doing their work?

My (non legal) view is Sonya Larson may have overstepped when she didn’t rephrase Dawn Dorland’s letter more completely. But Dorland’s life and actions themselves are fair game. If writer’s didn’t use what they saw around them we’d be stuck with a diet that’s exclusively sci fi fantasy.

^^ sorry, I was quoting r153 . . . !

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Sonya Larson is a cunt. Period. And that awful take above is an embarrassment.

I suspect all writers of literary fiction behave this way, slighting and backstabbing, forming incestuous networks, and putting thinly disguised versions of each other's lives into their fiction, using politics for personal advantage, and generally behaving like a bunch of high school mean girls.

These bitches are just the ones who got caught, as Sonya Larson was both unusually clumsy about her little Roman a Clef, and she made the mistake of picking on someone who had nothing to lose.