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(Matt McClain/The Washington. Chuntao shares that, since the surgery, she often needs to pee in the middle of the night. Medical researchers find my genetic mutation endlessly fascinating. She thought that it would go to press and be read by the city of Boston before I realized that she had jabbed me in the eye, Dorland said. ), has. Opinion | What 'Bad Art Friend' and the Facebook whistleblower say When Andrew Epstein didnt respond to the mediator, she considered suing Larson in small-claims court. 3.9/5 stars. However, the . Some commentators criticized the article for its effect on Dorland and Larson. It is possible, though, that Chuntao has reconfigured details of her encounter with Rose or otherwise misled the readerand, thus, that Larsons psychological brush is subtler than I am giving her credit for. A year earlier, Larson could hardly be bothered to talk about it. October 9, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EDT Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appears during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee hearing on Oct. 5. For many years now, Dorland has been working on a sprawling novel, Econoline, which interweaves a knowing, present-day perspective with vivid, sometimes brutal but often romantic remembrances of an itinerant rural childhood. In August 2017, the print magazine American Short Fiction published the short story. As soon as I learned I could, she told me recently, on the phone from her home in Los Angeles, where she and her husband were caring for their toddler son and elderly pit bull (and, in their spare time, volunteering at dog shelters and searching for adoptive families for feral cat litters). And also, its kind of what she had asked me to do.. On July 15, 2016, Dorlands tone turned brittle, even wounded: Here was a friend entrusting something to you, making herself vulnerable to you. A positive outcome of my early life is empathy, that it opened a well of possibility between me and strangers. There is seemingly no end to this, she wrote, and we cannot afford to spend any more time or resources. When the Chunky Monkeys co-founder, Jennifer De Leon, made a personal appeal, invoking the white-savior argument, the response from Porter was like the slamming of a door. Praise and Resentment: The Moral of 'Bad Art Friend' This argument is, curiously, helped by how Larson has always, when it has come down to it, acknowledged Dorlands letter as an influence. To me? She went back and forth about it, but finally decided not to listen to The Kindest. When I asked her about it, she took her time parsing that decision. Its totally OK for Dawn to be upset, Celeste Ng wrote, but it doesnt mean that Sonya did anything wrong, or that she is responsible for fixing Dawns hurt feelings., I can understand the anxiety, Larson replied. On Sept. 6, 2018, Dorlands lawyer raised her demand to $15,000, and added a new demand that Larson promise to pay Dorland $180,000 should she ever violate the settlement terms (which included never publishing The Kindest again). Several weeks before the surgery, Dorland decided to share her truth with others. She was watching, she said, to conduct due diligence for her ongoing case. "[22], On October 29, 2021, Eve Bridburg announced that Larson and two of her colleagues (Alison Murphy and board member Jennifer De Leon) would leave their leadership positions at GrubStreet, but Artistic Director Christopher Castellani would remain in his role. As I prepared to make this donation, I drew strength from knowing that my recipient would get a second chance at life. The comparison does make a certain sense: In Carvers story Cathedral, a blind man proves to have better powers of perception than a sighted one; in The Kindest, the white-savior kidney donor turns out to need as much salvation as the Asian American woman she helped. The 'Bad Art Friend' group chat drama is too real - MSNBC . But the storys quality matters. Even when she didnt get it, everyone was so gracious about it, including Larson, that she felt included all the same. Larson and Dorland have each taken and taught enough writing workshops to know that artists, almost by definition, borrow from life. LGBTQ protections: Supreme Court says certain businesses can - CNN Another, more generous reading is that Chuntaos uncharitable vision of Rose flows in part from her own anger at how receiving a kidney robbed her of the social status granted to the terminally ill. (The thing about the dying, Chuntao, no longer dying, thinks, is that they command the deepest respect.) I believe that this is the story that Larson wished to write, and sort of dida study of a flawed, conflicted protagonist who does not extend grace to others. We Are, Too. The article in question, "Who Is the Bad Art Friend?", concerns a legal dispute between two writers who once ran in the same Boston-area literary circles. It's called "Who Is the Bad Art Friend," and it's pretty good. When she wakes, her husband, Bao, is sobbing with relief, and we were laughing and the laughter felt strange traveling up my lungs, like a language I was remembering only now. This is wonderful. It was a little bit like, if youve been at a funeral and nobody wanted to talk about it it just was strange to me, she said. A Times Magazine feature has prompted feverish discourse about the ethics of artistic appropriation. That summer, some 30,000 copies of The Kindest would be distributed free all around town. As one critic in the literary journal Ploughshares wrote when the story was published in 2017: Something has got to be admired about someone who returns from the brink of death unchanged, steadfast in their imperfections.. ", "Inspiration or plagiarism? Now, at Trident bookstore in Boston, shed apparently read from a new short story about that very subject. When Dorland listened to this version, she heard something very different particularly the letter from the donor. By a stroke of luck, Dorland would even get to meet the recipient, an Orthodox Jewish man, and take photos with him and his family. On Dec. 26, Dorland emailed Epstein, asking if he was the right person to accept the papers when she filed a lawsuit. Whatever youve endured, remember that you are never alone. That authors book hasnt been published, and so Dorland has no way of knowing if shed really been wronged, but this only added to her sense that the guard rails had fallen off the profession. "[21] According to Publishers Weekly, "the involvement of so many leaders in the organizations communityand the release of potentially disparaging emails by themprompted an internal review. This is not someone that I am particularly fond of, Ng told me, because she had been harassing my friend and a fellow writer. If anything, the letter, for Dorland, has only grown more important over time. While Larson openly wonders why Dorland doesnt just write about her donation her own way I feel instead of running the race herself, shes standing on the sidelines and trying to disqualify everybody else based on minor technicalities, Larson told me Dorland sometimes muses, however improbably, that because vestiges of her letter remain in Larsons story, Larson might actually take her to court and sue her for copyright infringement if she published any parts of the letter. Boston's GrubStreet Is Still Dealing with the Fallout from "Bad Art Friend" Stumacher responded, I have understood from the start this is a work of fiction. Larsons friends were lining up behind her. Someone snatches her words, and then accuses her of defamation too? Of course, the letter, written with a blue gel pen on daisy-shaped stationery, is pretty damning. The ensuing drama, replete with lawsuits and subpoenaed group-text messages, is a fascinatingly tangled version of an old story about the ethics of artistic appropriation. Did they know they were publishing something that used someone elses words? 2:35 am Identifying The 'Bad Art Friend' Is Easy The most consequential decision Robert Kolker made in "Bad Art Friend" was telling it out of order. It is a mystery exactly how Dorland was damaged, Larsons new lawyer, Andrew Epstein, wrote. . Dorland was amazed. To Dorland, all this felt intensely personal. Is there any corroborating evidencein the language, sayof such cunning? All I can tell you about is how it prompted my imagination. That also, she said, is what artists do. By Emma Bubola , Salman Masood and Victoria Kim. Its not as if she meant for it to happen, she said. The storys next few scenes are spent further demonstrating the inconvenience of Roses visit. But to Dorland, this was more than just material. It seemed like she had dropped the facade for a minute. According to Kolker, he pitched the story to his New York Times Magazine editor as a non-judgmental account of a complex dispute. He excuses himself and goes for a bike ride. You dont want her to be punished for being clear about where she got it from, he said. In reality, Larson was pretty vulnerable: an indemnification letter in her contract with the festival meant that if Dorland did sue, she would incur the costs. (That letter was just too damn good.), The whole reason they want it in the first place is because its special, Dorland told me. Awesome summary. She thinks they first met at a one-off writing workshop Larson taught, though Larson, for her part, says she doesnt remember this. How could anyone believe that Dorland was the injured party? A positive outcome of my early life is empathy, that it opened a well of possibility between me and strangers. You havent asked me one question about the source of inspiration in my story that has to do with alcoholism, that has to do with the Chinese American experience. But it seemed as if Larson was having the sort of writing life that Dorland once dreamed of having. Well, no. What is the story about? But in truth, Dorland, in her 30s at the time, had been wanting to do it for years. Brianna Wu, executive director of Rebellion PAC, and Kelcee Griffis, senior telecom reporter for Law360, joined Sue O . 'Bad Art Friend' Sparks Debates On Journalism Ethics, Copyright Law And Im not saying that I dont want her to feel scared, because Im not threatening. Written by Robert Kolker. Dorland had announced shed be walking in the Rose Bowl parade, as an ambassador for nondirected organ donations. I looked the story up, with trepidation, and discovered that it was lovelysurprising, sensitive, and sharp. Her friends call her a feeler: openhearted and eager, pressing to make connections with others even as, in many instances, she feels like an outsider. One of those writing-group members, Celeste Ng, who wrote Little Fires Everywhere, told me that she admires Larsons ability to create characters who have these big blind spots. While they think theyre presenting themselves one way, they actually come across as something else entirely. I left that conference with this question: Do writers not care about my kidney donation? After the Afro-Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo died, his husband learned that almost everything the writer had shared about his life was made upincluding his Cuban identity. Larsons friend Celeste Ng agrees, at least in part, that the conflict seemed racially coded. A version of this article appears in print on, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/magazine/dorland-v-larson.html. Dorland wrote back within hours. When a job at GrubStreet opened up, Larson encouraged her to apply. The Globe did publish something, but with little impact. Identifying The 'Bad Art Friend' Is Easy | Rottin' in Denmark Inside the curious case of Dawn Dorland v. Sonya Larson. Who was the bad art friend now? There is a sunny earnestness to Dawn Dorland, an un-self-conscious openness that endears her to some people and that others have found to be a little extra. Bad Art Friend: How a feud between two writers over a kidney donation "Who Is the Bad Art Friend?" Over email, on July 21, 2015, Larson answered Dorlands message with a chirpy reply How have you been, my dear? Dorland replied with a rundown of her next writing residencies and workshops, and as casually as possible, asked: I think youre aware that I donated my kidney this summer. Its about us and our sponsor and our board not being sued if we distribute the story. A hashtag seems to me like a cry for attention., Right? The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far. She wanted to write a story that was like a Rorschach test, one that might betray the readers own hidden biases. Kolker begins his article by describing Dawn Dorland ("openhearted and eager," although he says that some people find her "a little extra,") who gave one of her kidneys to a stranger with kidney failure. It is when Rose shows up in person that The Kindest faltersor, more precisely, discloses that it has been faltering since the beginning, because too many of its animating ambiguities are, it now seems, unintentional. And this is what fiction writers know. To ask if her story is about Dorland is, Larson argues, not only completely beside the point, but ridiculous. At times Ive felt kind of stalked.. She appears again in The Kindest, the story that Larson had been reading from at the Trident bookstore in 2016. [11] He and his editor agreed on "a story that would present both Ms. Dorland's and Ms. Larson's side faithfully, while explaining to readers how, moment by moment, all of this unfolded. After her surgery, she posted something to her group: a heartfelt letter shed written to the final recipient of the surgical chain, whoever they may be. Im thrilled to be part of their public face, Dorland wrote, throwing in a few hashtags: #domoreforeachother and #livingkidneydonation. Then Dorland quickly circled back and rejected the premise of the question. Although the magazine American Short Fiction published "The Kindest" in August, 2017, Dorland did not read it until June, 2018, when it was made available for free online. The walls of a garbage truck descend to slurp up Chuntaos crutches. But am I trying to write a takedown of Dawn? Her short fiction was published, in Best American Short Stories and elsewhere; she took charge of GrubStreets annual Muse and the Marketplace literary conference, and as a mixed-race Asian American, she marshaled the groups diversity efforts. For everyone else, heres a quick primer. While waiting, she also contacted GrubStreets leadership: What did this supposedly supportive, equitable community have to say about plagiarism? Sure, Larson had a right to self-expression but with someone elses words? If that hadnt formed the storys pretext, she believes, it would have been something else. I think it saves me from villainizing Sonya, she wrote me later, after our call. The thing about the dying, Chuntao narrates toward the end, is they command the deepest respect, respect like an underground river resonant with primordial sounds, the kind of respect that people steal from one another., They arent entirely equal, however. I did it because I had healed I thought., The writing world seemed more suspicious to her now. Everything that happened two years earlier, during their email mele, now seemed like gaslighting. In January 2016, she texted two friends: I think Im DONE with the kidney story but I feel nervous about sending it out b/c it literally has sentences that I verbatim grabbed from Dawns letter on FB. Why are people talking about Kidneygate / the Bad Art Friend? When you put a persons life in your art, you risk misrepresenting them. After requesting several postponements, she withdrew the complaint.) I never copied the letter. (Im compelled at funerals to shake hands with the dusty men who dig our graves, she has written.) Who, he was asking, was the real aggressor here? In the next beat, Larson lays down her trump card, the most contemptible symbol an author can conjure: white-lady tears. The story, published on Tuesday, tells the saga of two writer acquaintances, Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson, who became embroiled in a legal battle after Larson failed to acknowledge . In private correspondence with Larson and the Chunky Monkeys writing group that was released as part of discovery during the trial, Castellani had written of Dorland, my mission in life is going to be to exact revenge on this pestilence of a person.[23][24][25]. Larson justified her use of Dorlands post by distinguishing between the informational text of restaurant menus or tweetspedestrian stuff, the prose of everyday lifeand art, which transfigures and transcends. We get inspired by language, and we play with that language, and we add to it and we change it and we recontextualize it. The next day, on July 20, she wrote again: Am I correct that you do not want to make peace? Are you finding it hard to tie your shoes? Writing hackles raised in Boston dispute", "There Is No Such Thing as Bragging Too Much About a Kidney Donation", "The kindest cut: what sort of person gives a kidney to a stranger? All the Corrections Dawn Dorland Sent Us About Our 'Bad Art Friend' Blogs CreditPhoto illustration by Pablo Delcan. I Shouldn't Have to Accept Being in Deepfake Porn - The Atlantic (Little things amazed me, Chuntao says, like tree needles, sprayed out and brushing the window in a breeze.) Still, the plot rolls forward with an appealing ease and plainness. October 11, 2021 by PG From The New York Times: There is a sunny earnestness to Dawn Dorland, an un-self-conscious openness that endears her to some people and that others have found to be a little extra. A car crash precipitates the need for a new organ, and her whole family is hoping the donation will serve as a wake-up call, a chance for Chuntao to redeem herself. Im not sure what to do feeling morally compromised/like a good artist but a shitty person., That summer, when Dorland emailed Larson with her complaints, Larson was updating the Chunky Monkeys regularly, and they were encouraging her to stand her ground. If I walk past my neighbor and hes planting petunias in the garden, and I think, Oh, it would be really interesting to include a character in my story who is planting petunias in the garden, do I have to go inform him because hes my neighbor, especially if Im still trying to figure out what it is I want to say in the story? Dorland is not shy about explaining how her past has afforded her a degree of moral clarity that others might not come by so easily. Rose proposes that they might meet. How does a writer like me, not suited to jadedness, learn to trust again after artistic betrayal?. Its hard for me to see what the common denominator of all of her demands has been, aside from wanting to punish me in some way.. Larson and Dorland had met eight years earlier in Boston. Who Is the Bad Art Friend? In early drafts of the story, the donor characters name was Dawn. Its almost as if Dorland believes that Larson, by getting there first, has grabbed some of the best light, leaving nothing for her. What feels like Chuntaos entire social web celebrates with her; but then they depart, and Chuntao remains alone in the hospital room, buzzing for a nurse who wont come. Narrated by Samantha Desz. Meek had tagged Larson in his comment, so Dorland thought that Larson must have seen it. Early on, Rose, the donor, writes a letter to Chuntao, asking to meet her. And, she added, seeing Larson there seemed to be working for her as a sort of exposure therapy to defuse the hurt she still feels, by making Larson something more real and less imagined, to diminish the space that she takes up in her mind, in her life. I just think shes trying to control something that she doesnt have the ability or right to control., The first draft of the story really was a takedown of Dawn, wasnt it? Calvin Hennick wrote. At GrubStreet, Dorland eventually became one of several teaching scholars at the Muse conference, leading workshops on such topics as Truth and Taboo: Writing Past Shame. Dorland credits two members of the Chunky Monkeys group, Adam Stumacher and Chris Castellani, with advising her. Chuntaos sarcastic inner monologues feature sentences such as Whoa now. Whats more, Larson had pulled lines from a letter Dorland had shared, on Facebook, in which she addresses the unknown recipient of her kidney. In Kolkers article, he quotes Calvin Hennick, a friend of Larsons. Our own Jenny G.. It seems to me that we have grounds to sue you, she wrote to Larson. Larson replied: Oh, my god. While perhaps many more people would be motivated to donate an organ to a friend or family member in need, to me, the suffering of strangers is just as real. She and her husband had just had their baby. Just before she wrote The Kindest, Larson helped run a session on race in her graduate program that became strangely contentious. In her fiction, Larson began exploring the sensitive subject matter that had always fascinated her: racial dynamics, and people caught between cultures. In 2015, Dorland decided to donate her kidney (the gift was nondirected, so it had no specified recipient) and created a private Facebook group to update well-wishers on her progress. That piece prompted a round of outrage from Writer Twitter (I have held every human Ive ever met upside down by the ankles, the author Lauren Groff vented, and shaken every last detail that I can steal out of their pockets). While perhaps many more people would be motivated to donate an organ to a friend or family member in need, to me, the suffering of strangers is just as real. Bad Art Friend: Dawn Dorland Kidney Donation Feud in NYT Goes - Insider "Who Is the Bad Art Friend?," the viral New York Times Magazine piece that charts the increasingly messy interpersonal and legal battle between two writer "friends" (frenemies? Some seem to believe that they have a right to distribute these imagesthat because they fed a publicly available photo of a woman into an application engineered to make pornography, they have . Shes taken writing workshops., Transformative use most often turns up in cases of commentary or satire, or with appropriation artists like Andy Warhol. Larson was accusing Dorland of perverting the true meaning of the story making it all about her, and not race and privilege. But Dorland found more groups with a connection to Larson to notify, including the Vermont Studio Center and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers. On privacy grounds, Bread Loaf refused to say if The Kindest was part of Larsons 2017 application. The third one, in August, was a Cambridge Public Library event featuring many of the Chunky Monkeys, gathering online to discuss what makes for a good writing group. I did what I thought was artistically and emotionally healthy, she said. ", examining Larson's claim that what Dorland called plagiarism of her letter was really "fair use. But this wasnt a neighbor. We could have easily treated the same moment in that story using a phone call, or some other literary device. But once she made those changes for One City One Story, she said, the festival had told her the story was fine as is. She didnt buy a copy. Whether or not Rose asked for a heros receptiona tension Larson plays with deftlywe sympathize with Bao and Chuntao, and begrudge the proximate cause of their anxiety. Oct. 6, 2021 The particular intersection of writers and online freaks that make up Media Twitter is still aflutter in the wake of " Who Is the Bad Art Friend? It didnt steal from the letter, he told me, but it added something new and it was a totally different narrative., Larson put it more bluntly to me: Her letter, it wasnt art! After many years, Dorland, still teaching, had yet to be published. Thats a real privilege right there., Larsons biggest frustration with Dorlands accusations was that they stole attention away from everything shed been trying to accomplish with this story. Yet, as several commentators have pointed out, few of the people remonstrating about the womens respective infractions or the creative-writing cottage industry or the hazards of asymmetrical relationships have actually read Larsons story, The Kindest. Kolkers piece offers no judgments. Now, as she read these strained emails from Larson about this story of a kidney donation; her kidney donation? I know shes trying to work through every angle she can to say that Ive done something wrong. Such ramping up is effective, suspenseful, but it also feels a bit like the deck is being stacked. What no one had counted on was that Dorland, in late July, would stumble upon a striking new piece of evidence. It was about her art, her letter, her words, her life. On June 24, 2015, Dawn Dorland, an essayist and aspiring novelist, did perhaps the kindest, most consequential thing she might ever do in her life. Then Dorland found that old audio version of the story online, and the weather changed completely. What a tremendous thing!. And we transform it., When Larson discusses The Kindest now, the idea that its about a kidney donation at all seems almost irrelevant. Who Is the Bad Art Friend? - The New York Times Because this voice actor was reading me the paragraph about my childhood trauma. As for her new complaint against Larson, the judge knocked out the emotional-distress claim this past February, but the question of whether The Kindest violates Dorlands copyrighted letter remains in play. Similarly, Dorland could argue that this letter, despite having made its way onto Facebook, qualifies. "[8] Kolker's 2021 story included one paragraph of the letter as Audible recorded it in 2016:[1]. While others might desire to give to a family member or friend, to me the suffering of strangers is just as real. The idea is not to have such strong copyright protections that people cant innovate. Its the interpersonal layer that feels off to me, Sonya. The Tortured Bond of Alice Sebold and the Man Wrongfully Convicted of Her Rape. When reflecting on Chuntao, Larson often comes back to the characters autonomy, her nerve. (The show never responded.) Chuntao and her husband clean, they prepare snacks, they vibrate with dread.