October 6, 2021

"Who would be a muse, eh? Loads of people, that’s the thing. Dante wrote about his childhood crush Beatrice di Folco Portinari in The Divine Comedy."

"Jane Austen used an old flame as inspiration for Mr Darcy. Charles Dickens based numerous characters on his lover Ellen Ternan. It was all fine and nobody minded. So what changed? Two words: the internet. Online, everybody gets to create a bubble where they are the star of their own finely honed story. So when someone else mines their life for a different story, it feels more like a violation. Also, who’s to say that Ternan enjoyed being written about? She couldn’t complain on Facebook. Does this story have a moral? Yes: it’s that writers are terrible people and you should cut them all from your life immediately."


The "viral article" is "Who Is the Bad Art Friend?/Art often draws inspiration from life — but what happens when it’s your life? Inside the curious case of Dawn Dorland v. Sonya Larson" by Robert Kolker (NYT). I haven't read that, but The Guardian — after calling it "punishingly long" — summarizes it as "a woman donated her kidney to a stranger, and then a second woman wrote a story about donating a kidney to a stranger." 

At the NYT, one commenter puts it this way:
So... Dawn donates a kidney for whatever reason, I mean who cares? Then posts about it, then gets involved in a more pub[l]ic way, and... a bunch of writers secretly deride her (why, exactly? Guilt they aren't doing enough? Just plain pettiness?). Then one of those writers, Larson, uses the feelings she feels about this kidney donation to craft a story, using Dawn's actual words, never telling her, and then Larson has the gall to use racism as a defense? As a BIPOC artist, I take offense to Larson's re-characterization of what she, in fact, did - steal, plagiarize, and - while not illegal - Larson's ruthless backstabbing of someone she found ridiculous. It makes it harder for artists of color to cite racism when it actually occurs What was happening to Larson during her "summer of hell" and beyond was the result of her own lack of integrity and dishonesty and, yes, I'll say it, entitlement.

ADDED: Yes, there's a racial theme in the NYT article — which now sounds "punishing" in more ways than just length.

“My piece is fiction,” [Larson] wrote. “It is not her story, and my letter is not her letter. And she shouldn’t want it to be. She shouldn’t want to be associated with my story’s portrayal and critique of white-savior dynamics. But her recent behavior, ironically, is exhibiting the very blindness I’m writing about, as she demands explicit identification in — and credit for — a writer of color’s work.” 
Here was a new argument, for sure. Larson [the POC writer] was accusing Dorland [the white organ donor] of perverting the true meaning of the story — making it all about her, and not race and privilege. Larson’s friend Celeste Ng agrees, at least in part, that the conflict seemed racially coded. “There’s very little emphasis on what this must be like for [Larson],” Ng told me, “and what it is like for writers of color, generally — to write a story and then be told by a white writer, ‘Actually, you owe that to me.’”

32 comments:

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

In US - FBI drone-Stalins target moms and dads who don't want their kids fed progressive hate-filled racism in school.

cassandra lite said...

Cancellation of Truman Capote's oeuvre in 5, 4, 3...

For that matter, Harper Lee, too. ... Oh, right, that's already happening.

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

Someone once longed poetically for the rule of artists and scientists. It's very clear that rule by those types of people is fundamentally undesirable.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

Daley Haggar had a kind of contest on her Twitter feed: everyone knows it is terrible to date a writer. Which kind of writer is the worst? One option was "blogger," I think there was "Substack opinion writer," "screenwriter," maybe "comedy writer." She I believe has made a living as a comedy writer, and she suggests that may be worst.

As for appropriation and counter-appropriation. White woman writes (let us say) about having an ingrown toenail. Why should we care more about this than we do about genocide in Africa? We're probably being dishonest if we say we care much about the latter, but we can relate to the former. Woman of color takes up the tale. To give an example of how precious white women think they are, and how they should be catered to .... White woman then says: wait, that's my story, not yours. Everybody wants to be the victim, or the person facing difficult circumstances, wondering if this counts as heroic.

Joe Smith said...

So I take it colored person is out.

Is Bipoc person OK? Don't want to be cancelled in ten years.

Just kidding...I don't care : )

Joanne Jacobs said...

The kidney donor published the letter she wrote to the (then unknown) recipient of her kidney. The author used the letter, almost verbatim, in her story. That's a problem.

The donor gave a kidney to a stranger because she's an exceptionally nice person. Perhaps she aspires to be a "savior," but not a "white savior." As it turns out, she met the recipient eventually. He was an Orthodox Jewish man, who had no complaints about her savior complex.

The author changed the story in many significant ways, focusing it on the recipient, an alcoholic Chinese-American woman. All good -- except for plagiarizing the letter.

Joanne Jacobs said...

The kidney donor published the letter she wrote to the (then unknown) recipient of her kidney. The author used the letter, almost verbatim, in her story. That's a problem.

The donor gave a kidney to a stranger because she's an exceptionally nice person. Perhaps she aspires to be a "savior," but not a "white savior." As it turns out, she met the recipient eventually. He was an Orthodox Jewish man, who had no complaints about her savior complex.

The author changed the story in many significant ways, focusing it on the recipient, an alcoholic Chinese-American woman. All good -- except for plagiarizing the letter.

mikee said...

Let's remember where the concept of a Muse came from: those wily Greeks. Muses were 9 illegitimate daughters of the goddess of memory and her nephew Zeus. The 9 Muses didn't like being played. So the history of muses causing problems goes waaaay back.

"Myths regarding challenges to the Muses inevitably end in the challenger losing the challenge and suffering a terrible punishment. For example, according to one myth, King Pierus of Macedon named his nine daughters after the Muses, believing they were more beautiful and talented. The result: his daughters were turned into magpies." Wikipedia

rhhardin said...

Thylias Moss The Warmth of Hot Chocolate is great but I don't know of any other black writers worth reading.

tim maguire said...

Cultural Appropriation writ small.

Lurker21 said...

“There’s very little emphasis on what this must be like for [Larson],” Ng told me, “and what it is like for writers of color, generally — to write a story and then be told by a white writer, ‘Actually, you owe that to me.’”

Seems like we hear about the vice versa situation ad infinitum -- cultural appropriation.

I get the feeling that we've opened the flood gates with all the racializing and sooner or later there will be a backlash or frontlash against the people now proclaiming their victimization.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Does this story have a moral? Yes: it’s that writers are terrible people and you should cut them all from your life immediately."

I know many writers and aspiring writers. The aspiring writers often say "warning, I'm going to use you in my next story."

If you have a problem with that, don't hang out with them.

Now, this is all too stupid for me to waste teh time reading teh NYT about it, but it appears that this summary is false:
"a woman donated her kidney to a stranger, and then a second woman wrote a story about donating a kidney to a stranger."

Because what's described above is utter unobjectionable. But if the writer didn't just "write a story about donating a kidney to a stranger", but took and used the other woman's words and put them in her story without attribution, then that is plagiarism (as the commenter you quoted claimed), and the writer deserves to be harmed for doing that

RMc said...

As a BIPOC artist

I wish activists would stop pretending that "people of colour" means anything other than Black people. POC aren't really Hispanic, unless they're, you know, dark enough. And POC certainly aren't Asians; hell, Asians are nearly as bad as white people! And Native Americans? Well, they get ignored, as usual. It's just Blacks.

Mikey NTH said...

I agree that writers are horrid people. Let's start the purge with those who write for The Guardian.

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

I get it! This is an Althousian test - last week it was the famous white painter utilizing/copying/reproducing black kid's anatomical drawing in the white painter's canvas. This week it's a black scribbler stealing a white scribbler's letter and using it as a decoration in her story about a kidney transplant.

Lurker21 said...

"Muse" has a positive connotation, doesn't it? Also, it assumes some contact between artist and muse, even if the artist is only gazing at the muse from afar. It becomes complicated when removed from that context. Calling Perry Smith Truman Capote's muse or Gary Gilmore Norman Mailer's muse doesn't sound quite right. And if a writer just uses a newspaper article as the basis for a novel, would you really call the subject of the story the writer's muse?

tim in vermont said...

As a writer, one must abstract from experience that which gives it meaning, then dress that abstraction up in different clothes. If you can't do that, maybe you aren't cut out to be a writer, maybe you are too lazy to be an artist, maybe your purported friends are well shut of you. The closest you should get is that an intimate and insightful friend might have suspicions of where a certain idea came from.

tim in vermont said...

"Someone once longed poetically for the rule of artists and scientists. It's very clear that rule by those types of people is fundamentally undesirable."

I give you the Third Reich and Fascist Italy.

Freeman Hunt said...

Copying a letter is plagiarism. Not the same as originally writing up a real-life story.

Ozymandias said...

Far from being “punishing,” the NYT article is a fascinating study of dueling egos in the digital universe. Two people, damaged in different ways, whose time-worn hurts and resentments served as mutual catalysts for further injury.

Dorland claims Larson is responsible for her presumably voluntary acts of “self-harm. Larson sees people napping on a lawn and concludes that it is “privilege” that they don’t have her fears. Larson claims, perhaps accurately, that Dorland is “unaware of how what she considers a selfless act also contains elements of intense, unbridled narcissism.” But, Larson cites that in attempting to justify herself, seemingly unaware of the narcissism implicit in the guilty knowledge disclosed in her emails to colleagues.

Each woman illustrates in their respective conduct the tawdry cache to be had from public displays of injury and disadvantage in this Post-Oprah Culture. Dorland bets a purloined kidney story and Larson replies “I’ll see your kidney and raise you my mixed-race background.” (I refuse to use the term “bipoc,” which sounds like an artificial fiber invented by DuPont.”)

Both women then made the common mistake of turning personal hurt-feelings into lawsuits. (The incommensurable properties of their respective claims may not have been lost on their lawyers, however, as Dorland and Larson each appear to have changed counsel at least once.)

It seems Dorland wanted to reserve the credit for her humanitarian act to herself, and Larson wanted to reserve to herself the credit for her story. But the most intriguing aspect of the article is not whether there was plagiarism or a copyright infringement (as interesting as those questions certainly are), but how each woman, by her bumptious contention for acclaim, in the end embarrassed herself.

It’s almost a fable.

Owen said...

Up to a point it is amusing to watch this bickering over appropriation of others’ words and work. But as the Good Book says, “there is nothing new under the sun.” There is only a handful of plot lines, anyway, and they were already old when the Greeks mined them for material, which the Romans then stole, after which authors and artists in the Renaissance filched and recycled. And don’t get me started on Shakespeare.

Why is this particular tempest in a teapot so important? Because of a kidney donation? Because of color? Because Internet? Because it assumes we have forgotten all the earlier pilfering and reworking and reimagining; that we will see this as really new?

Is this about money? Who lost sales or fans because of this?

Let me guess that the fuss has *increased* revenue-productive attention, plus lifetime notoriety in some chat room.

rcocean said...

I thought everyone understood that you can't trust writers. They're always using people they know and stories they hear to create their stories, poems, novels, etc.

I just got through with a novel called "Angle of Repose" which is mostly about a New England woman and illustrator who went West with her mining engineering husband. Anyway, the family gave the author her letters - for background - and then were upset when the author quoted huge hunks of the unpublished letters in his novel, and then added silly stuff about Lesbian feelings, and adultery.

And Bukowski's girlfriends are still upset at how he portrayed them in his novels.

Lazarus said...

This will be resolved when someone writes a story about it and makes both of them angry and vengeful.

Readering said...

The article was not just punishingly long but punishingly hard to follow, and I gave up. But before I did I gleaned that it apparently started because a writer altruistically donated a kidney to a stranger, mentioned what she had done in an online discussion with other women writers, and was hurt when none of them recognized her altruism. Rather than let the matter drop, she dug down, and the result was the dispute with one of those fellow writers.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Dorland claims Larson is responsible for her presumably voluntary acts of “self-harm. Larson sees people napping on a lawn and concludes that it is “privilege” that they don’t have her fears. Larson claims, perhaps accurately, that Dorland is “unaware of how what she considers a selfless act also contains elements of intense, unbridled narcissism.”

So, now Larson's a Randian (Ayn, not Paul)?

No shit, people do good deeds because it makes them feel go to do good deeds.

A functional society rewards this, because it wants people to do good deeds.

Thank you Joanne Jacobs for supplying the fact that Larson the "author" plagiarized Dorland's letter and passed it off as her own work.

You can project, whine, or otherwise BS all you want until the end of time, but doing that kind of plagiarism is a sh!t act, and Larson is a sh!t person for doing it. and all the racial screaming in the world will not undo that.

(Note: this is different in from the artist argument last week because it takes a good artist to take a picture you're looking at, and then draw it yourself. If you disagree feel free to take a photograph of someone they try to recreate that photo in a drawing you do by hand.

Copying and pasting someone's words, OTOH, is a trivial task, and not "art")

William said...

The article was interesting to read. Both women have outsized egos, but Dorland's egotism led her to donate a kidney, and Larson's egotism led her to write what sounds like a catty short story.....I sympathize with Dorland, but I'm glad I don't know either women......I bet Dorland grew up in far more straitened circumstances than Larson. I don't think it fair to hang a "white privilege" or "white savior" label on her because of a few extra racial perks There are trials and tribulations that have nothing to do with race or for that matter class. Some kid dying by inches with chronic renal failure has got more to bitch about than plagiarism or tortuous interference..... Stephen Hawking, in his subtle way, was always going on about how tough he had it and never once took notice of all the privileges he had as a white heteronormative. He lived more years than George Floyd and got to visit Epstein's Orgy Island. Every time we contemplate Stephen Hawking, we should think about George Floyd and his tragic fate. (s/)

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

rcocean, Angle of Repose I know only as an opera by Andrew Imbrie. Perhaps it's the basis for the libretto?

Jeff said...

The kidney donor published the letter she wrote to the (then unknown) recipient of her kidney. The author used the letter, almost verbatim, in her story. That's a problem.

It's worse than that. She wrote her story in English. Cultural appropriation!

Critter said...

This is a silly controversy. Plagiarism is a thing and it’s protected by the law. Outside of that, all observations about people are acquired from watching someone else. if the writing is too literal from the observation, it does not impress as good literature. So writers are motivated to elevate the account to an insight into humanity or to make it fit in the narrative.

I’d love to be Homer’s agent if previous writings and style were protected. After all, he originated the epic story line.

tim maguire said...

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...Someone once longed poetically for the rule of artists and scientists. It's very clear that rule by those types of people is fundamentally undesirable.

Not exactly on point, but related:

"If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers"
--Frederick the Great

daskol said...

thylias moss has something to say about muses and hers (keep scrolling)

Club Vulcan said...

rcocean, Angle of Repose I know only as an opera by Andrew Imbrie. Perhaps it's the basis for the libretto?


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