Bad art friends...or just bad people
Now that the dust has settled, I thought it would be fitting to rehash the debacle of the Bad Art Friend. For those of you who were lucky enough to remain unknowing of the saga, allow me to invade your ignorance and explain the hilarity that ensued in the literary community this month.
Basically, it all boiled down to author Dawn Dorland pitching a fit over author Sonya Larson writing a short story about a kidney donation – an act of generosity that, coincidentally, Dorland insistently announced she did. This story, like many other indie tales, started on a Facebook (now called Meta) group that consisted of Dorland’s personal friends, family and fellow writers from Grubstreet, a Boston writing center. Dorland announced her charitable act in the group and her self-importance was evident, especially in a letter contained in the post, which she drafted to be sent to the kidney recipient. Dorland was donating her kidney to a complete stranger, which was shoehorned into the article many, many times.
The point of contention isn’t, however, that a narcissist called attention to herself in a Facebook group, claiming she was a better person than everybody else; the issue arose when Sonya Larson, a former member of GrubStreet and current member of Dorland’s Facebook group, wrote a story about a woman donating a kidney. Dorland, upon discovering this, immediately pointed a finger at Larson alleging that she stole her story. It was upon actually reading the story, however, that this fiasco escalated. Larson didn’t just caricaturize Dorland’s narcissism, she in fact captured it word-for-word.
That was, at least, the crime Dorland accused Larson of committing. Larson’s earlier drafts included phrases that were pretty much verbatim from Dorland’s letter, additionally the donor character “Dawn” before changing it later on. The final copy that was submitted for publishing omitted all personal details, however, this was only after Dorland’s pestering to have the original drafts uncovered. It’s safe to say, then, that both writers were guilty of unsavory behavior.
What really irks me most isn’t Dorland or Larson, however. It’s the fact that the New York Times decided to publish a nearly 10,000 word article about this debacle and framed it so that we were supposed to “pick sides.” “Who Is the Bad Art Friend” is Robert Kolker’s way of ‘either-sides’-ing a ‘both-sides’ issue. Nobody is superior in this situation. It was unethical for Larson to blatantly caricaturize another person in her fictional work – though Dorland seems to almost be that character in real life – and it was childish of Dorland to gatekeep certain stories, as if she has sole authority on all things kidney or organ donor related.
The worst part was that this ultimately personal feud has now been given a platform big enough for widespread public criticism, and nobody cares. Why should we? What should we glean from this novella of an article that gives us no knowledge, insight or anything remotely useful? Even from an entertainment perspective, that article was far too long, and the issue too pedantic for readers to enjoy it all the way through.
Long form journalism has its time and place, and I would normally agree that “now” and the “New York Times” would be appropriate for the occasion. But airing out personal agendas is not the move. What the world learned from that fiasco is that everyone sucks and even grown adults in the professional sphere can be petty
Instead of giving a--holes a global platform to air their personal grievances, long-form journalism should be reserved for nuanced issues that deserve a word count to properly explain them. If nothing else, just publish actual novellas instead of repurposing Facebook group-chat logs.
