Authors Behaving Like A**holes

[Darth Richard II]

Well, i think it would depend on the amount of plagiarized passages and how close they are to the original, at least in a work like this.

and it’s a rare day indeed when I agree with @Zorral, but yeah...this is nasty,

[Myshkin]

41 minutes ago, Zorral said:

But it is another of the problems, as she didn't do the original research that they and others did, and then they wrote it up.  She just went to them and took it -- without understanding the context out of which these events occurred.  That's nasty.

She’s not a journalist; she’s a novelist. 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Myshkin said:

She’s not a journalist; she’s a novelist. 

A word of thoughtful advice?

This is a good point at which to engage in an empathy exercise. Put yourself in the body of the people who discovered someone "adapted' bits of their life story to then pivot and have the narrative be about how all Mexicans want to do is leave Mexico and immigrate to the US. Engage in the fantastical act of seeing through the eyes of another person from another culture - which is what so many good fantasy novels do so very often.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

have the narrative be about how all Mexicans want to do is leave Mexico and immigrate to the US.

I am highly doubtful that this is what the actual novel claims or indicates, although perhaps one of the characters makes a statement along these lines (got a quote or citation?). From the plot description and most reviews, it's specifically about why migrants risk migrating, but does it really need to be said that there are many more people in Latin America who do not migrate to the US than do, and a very large subset of those actually don't want to?

This is anecdotal, so take it as such, but as a Cuban-American, I don't take De Palma's Scarface to be an indictment of Cuban immigrants  (the film's depiction of Montana's mother, for one thing, is pretty explicit about his being aberrant), although I've seen the argument made and can understand it even if I disagree But more saliently, my first memory of it was wondering who this Tony Montana guy was that my older cousins and my father (all Cuban-born) would quote from time to time.  Even my uncle, who came over during the Mariel boatlift (as Tony Montana did), is a fan.

What I'm most reminded by in all this is the time that some high school student in the U.S. wore a qipao, and a fuss was made about appropriation -- but when Chinese men and women were asked about the photo, they were happy to see non-Chinese wearing Chinese fashion. I've a feeling that most Latin Americans will be pleased that a novel about the plight of migrants is popular and being read in the United States, and will be less fussed than the literati about the details, the author, or the money she made. This doesn't negate the concerns, but there really needs to be some perspective about this in the grander picture of the debate over immigration.

[Raja]

Her interview with NPR is so weird. I dunno what on earth she spent 5 years doing.

I can have sympathy for someone who is well intentioned but flounders in execution, but nothing in her response to the criticism has been anything other than nauseating.

[Ran]

9 minutes ago, Raja said:

Her interview with NPR is so weird. I dunno what on earth she spent 5 years doing.

I don't think the interview really illuminates this, no doubt in part because the interviewer hasn't sufficient expertise to discuss it. The interview is, IMO, fine. Particularly calling out people for removing the context of her op-ed, which I've read and it's quite clear that she is speaking about race in the particular context of the event she's writing about (a gang of young men attacking her brother and two female cousins, leading to the rape and murder of the latter, and the attempted murder of the former) rather than some overarching statement about her view regarding writing about race at all. As well as her final statement, about the publishing industry not being something she has responsibility for, which is obviously true.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

 the interview really illuminates this,

Illuminates what?

[Ran]

Just now, Raja said:

Illuminates what?

Your remark, about what she spent five years researching. Based on what you said, I had expected it to be discussed in some fashion and her answers being unsatifactory, but it really says nothing at all.

[Raja]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

Your remark, about what she spent five years researching. Based on what you said, I had expected it to be discussed in some fashion and her answers being unsatifactory, but it really says nothing at all.

Ah, no. Her saying the following

Quote

I endeavored to be incredibly culturally sensitive. I did the work. I did five years of research. The whole intention in my heart when I wrote this book was to try to upend the traditional stereotypes that I saw being very prevalent in our national dialogue.

is what prompted the 'I dunno what she spent five years researching' given that upending traditional & harmful stereotypes is exactly what she doesn't do. I should have been clear in my previous post.

 

[Ran]

4 hours ago, Raja said:

Ah, no. Her saying the following

is what prompted the 'I dunno what she spent five years researching' given that upending traditional stereotypes is exactly what she doesn't do.

 

I think upending the traditional stereotypes of migrants is probably what she actually _does_ do. She just doesn't seem to upend traditional stereotypes of Mexicans.

[Raja]

Yikes. I didn't realize the book had already been acquired to be made into a movie. Charles Leavitt will be adapting it.

[Zorral]

She and her publisher evidently are navigating through this storm with success.  A very long, sympathetic article, featuring the author herself, in the NYT book section yesterday:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/arts/american-dirt-jeanine-cummins.html?

They aren't backing down, especially since they already have a great film deal and best seller status, Oprah book club and Baltimore's choice for an all-city read.

FWIW -- the nearly 300 comments tend to be disgusted with those who object to the book, though nobody's read it, of course.

Here's the NY Time's review though, for what that's worth, which thinks it is a very poorly written novel, for many reasons, and provides those reasons, which have to with the actual writing, rather than whether or not the author committed appropriation, trauma porn or whatever.  This is when I first became aware of the book.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/books/review-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins.html

Quote

 

The real failures of the book, however, have little to do with the writer’s identity and everything to do with her abilities as a novelist.

What thin creations these characters are — and how distorted they are by the stilted prose and characterizations. The heroes grow only more heroic, the villains more villainous. The children sound like tiny prophets. Occasionally there’s a flare of deeper, more subtle characterization, the way Luca, for example, experiences “an uncomfortable feeling of both thrill and dread” when he finally lays eyes on the other side of the border, or how, in the middle of the terror of escape, Lydia will still notice that her son needs a haircut.

But does the book’s shallowness paradoxically explain the excitement surrounding it? The tortured sentences aside, “American Dirt” is enviably easy to read. It is determinedly apolitical. The deep roots of these forced migrations are never interrogated; the American reader can read without fear of uncomfortable self-reproach. It asks only for us to accept that “these people are people,” while giving us the saintly to root for and the barbarous to deplore — and then congratulating us for caring.

 

As so much of the controversy is around whether or not this person is or is not qualified to write a novel centering Mexican immigrants trying to get to the US creates ever-wider ramifications of consideration too.

Thinking of the many many many novels -- mostly written by white male writers -- about the sufferings of so many diverse groups of people from the two World, with Italian characters but a white US male in the center?  Plus there is a love story at the heart of Farewell.

I recall a dust-up in the sf/f/romance fan fic world around a story submisson by a white USian that she ripped out in the wake of the Haitian earthquake, in which the entire tragedy of suffering of the Haitian people were present only as exotic backdrop to a love - sex story between two white Americans.  This was declared disaster porn, and racist, and the author never understood what the objections were.

In lit and writing classes even now it is discussed why there was no great canon novel to come out of the Vietnam War. There have been great journalism and history, and continue to be, but not a great novel, per se.  Lately some have wondered if it might be due to these concerns, which didn't exist until very recently. That perhaps the only writer who could portray 'honestly and well' the Vietnam war experience would be a Vietnamese.  Which may well have happened, for all we know, but US publishing hardly publishes anything in translation any longer.

[Zorral]

I apologize for the double post, but this is so hilarious I was compelled to share -- and it does fit into the conversations going on here.  Though ostensibly concerned with the actor Lawrence Fox, who has been thoroughly occupied lately in making a thorough ass of himself in public, we somehow get to ... Gor and John Norman.

A sample:

Quote

Gor differs from the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1912 A Princess of Mars, which inspired it, as all Gor’s women are pliant sex slaves who accept their role as the silent Play-Doh™® of men. Author John Norman, a philosophy professor who wrung the soiled underwear of his fiction though a Nietzschean knicker-mangle, lost his contract with DAW Books at the turn of the century, perhaps at the hands of the one foe even Tarl Cabot could not defeat – the so-called “politically correct brigade”.

The piece deliriously throws into the author's (a male, btw, not one of those hippy dippy sjw feminist girls) blender keyboard, thud rock, fruits and vegetables, Gor, movies, books, sex, etc. all to skewer the preposterous pretension of Lawrence Fox, and the way only a Brit crit unrestrained can do.  Too bad, by the way, I had truly liked the actor, Lawrence Fox, particularly in the Island At War series.  But his current incarnation has indeed shown us a ridiculous person!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/26/laurence-fox-actor-fantasy-film-gor-stewart-lee

[Myshkin]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

A word of thoughtful advice?

This is a good point at which to engage in an empathy exercise. Put yourself in the body of the people who discovered someone "adapted' bits of their life story to then pivot and have the narrative be about how all Mexicans want to do is leave Mexico and immigrate to the US. Engage in the fantastical act of seeing through the eyes of another person from another culture - which is what so many good fantasy novels do so very often.

Is any of this what she actually did? She did not adapt bits of other writers’ life stories; she fictionalized events that they documented. Again with the caveat that I have not read any of the works in question, it does not appear that what Cummins did in this instance comes close to plagiarism, or really even bad form. And lobbing unfair accusations of plagiarism at her only serves to call in to question the legitimacy of what appear to be the very fair accusations of cluelessness and insensitivity. 

 

[Heartofice]

It is quite amusing to see the Guardian (and Twitter)  as usual lose it's mind after someone says something sensible on Question Time, and decide they are the devil incarnate. But carry on posting Guardian links..

[Zorral]

25 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

Is any of this what she actually did? She did not adapt bits of other writers’ life stories; she fictionalized events that they documented. Again with the caveat that I have not read any of the works in question, it does not appear that what Cummins did in this instance comes close to plagiarism, or really even bad form. And lobbing unfair accusations of plagiarism at her only serves to call in to question the legitimacy of what appear to be the very fair accusations of cluelessness and insensitivity. 

 

That's why reading that NY Times book review is illuminating, yes? What has caused all these problems is that the author is a fairly poor writer. This clashes with the judgment of those who don't notice and / or don't care about any of the matters by which those people do judge a book's quality.  This includes people who were offended by the book, and perhaps didn't have the critical vocabulary to pinpoint what set off their shyte o' meters.  Like really good writing and execution in books, movies and television cover emotional, political and historical flaws, for those who don't care about such matters, and sometimes even for those who do.  It takes them time, sometimes, to recognize  -- hey! that's not romantic, that's stalking!  Poor writing, however, can reveal problematical issues much more quickly to those who care about quality of writing.

[Darth Richard II]

Lots to comment on when I’m not on the phone but ran has a good point, I remember waaaay back there was some bit on a sitcom a bunch of angry white people claimed was racist towards Asians but when they finally got around to asking the Asian community about it they not only said it wasn’t offensive they actually thought it was hilarious. So, we should really be looking at how the migrant community(for lack of a better term) feels about this, rather then white people on social media.

[Zorral]

Being a critic is a lot easier when reduced to declaring something appropriated when the aspiring critic hasn't the training and experience in writing and critical thinking about writing. This why it seems to me at least, that many of these blow-ups are really about a writer writing poorly. So many now can make their opinions known via twitter and other online venues, and want their opinions to be considered. They don't know (or care -- why should they, as they read for their own entertainment only) there are well known vocabularies and rhetoric for criticizing work, skills and tools that professional critics, reviewers and writers employ almost non-self-consciously depending on how long they've been in the game.  Still,   

 

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Myshkin said:

Is any of this what she actually did? 

My goal here was not to further the strand of thought concerning plagiarism. 

Rather: imagine how weird it would be to have someone from a different culture and cultural context write about your culture in a way that rang hollow and false and have that writer be applauded for it. 

Some of the responses we're seeing to American Dirt are responses to cultural chauvinism, and that's something worth stopping and meditating on. 

[Darth Richard II]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

It is quite amusing to see the Guardian (and Twitter)  as usual lose it's mind after someone says something sensible on Question Time, and decide they are the devil incarnate. But carry on posting Guardian links..

Hell must be frozen, now i agree with heartofice.

Was the guardian not that site that posted a pro Kathleen Hale story after she basically stalked a girl that gave her a bad review on goodreads?

(speaking of asshole authors, she needs some sort of trophy)