I have a different reaction about the identity of the lover. ALL I care about is who he is. If I knew going in, I’d care much less. Such is the nature of roman a clef (or short story a clef, as it were). And now that I’ve been told who the writer in question is, I find that, assuming my info is accurate, it’s someone I’ve never heard of — which seems to indicate that “famewhore” is a bit much.

As a sidenote, I wish the lit world, or this insular part of it, would stop conferring the “original” label where it doesn’t belong. Tao Lin was savvy to sell stock in himself, yes, but that idea didn’t originate with him; Wallace Shaun did the same thing in the early 70s, as anyone with a long New Yorker subscription well knows. And the MC thing reminds me of the epistelary exchanges between Sasher-Masoch and Emilie Mataja, except that the latter are more readable.

Finally, Bret Easton Ellis wrote a great essay at the Daily Beast last year about the Charlie Sheen phenomenon, arguing that the idea of fame has changed — that celebrities have to be all in, that there’s no such thing as privacy. MC seems to have taken this to heart, accidentally or otherwise.

Happy New Year, Zoe!

Regarding the ethics, I’m sure my view has been colored by my having read the story as “Adrien Brody” and not as it originally appeared on her blog. Even knowing the facts, the impact for me is minimized. My view of the ethics is also colored by the fact that the public recounting and the actual doing seem equally dubious to me, and neither seem beyond the pale. In addition, I’ve been reading a lot of memoir lately. Certainly there are reasons other than exposing heinous crimes that authors write about people in ways that could appear unfavorable. (It’s worth noting that in her interview, Calloway acknowledges she shouldn’t have run the piece as she did originally without explicit permission.)

As to her literary voice, respected authors other than Tao Lin have defended it. Stephen Elliot has praised it on FB and in his Daily Rumpus emails, as well as in his intro to the interview. Kate Zambreno has also been public in her support of the voice and the story itself. I don’t think any of these people are arguing that “Adrien Brody” is a literary masterpiece, a fully realized work of Art. But they are seeing something in it that is unique and shows promise. (Admittedly, many other writers have dismissed the story as a literary work. It’s a subject of debate.)

I’m going to paste in a bit from today’s Daily Rumpus in lieu of responding further, because I’ve run out of time. Thanks for the thought you’ve put into responding.

Happy new year!

“A little bit more on this story. I was reading the comments about Marie Calloway over on HTMLGIANT following Roxane’s article. The conversation got fairly brutal in some points and it reminded me of the way people used to talk about Dave Eggers. Large groups of young literary people seemed to froth at the mouth when his name was mentioned. They’d fall on their backs, shrieking, as if in unbearable pain. They despised his writing, and they despised him. It didn’t make any sense to me. How could someone not enjoy A Heart Breaking Work Of Staggering Genius? It wasn’t a perfect book, but it was full of life. Later, he’d write better books like The What Is The What, and then Zeitoun, which I think is a masterpiece. In the meantime he built a huge charity and gave away all of his own money. He’s basically a saint, one of the best people I’ve ever met. But there was all this anger toward him for so long.

Someone pointed out that beat writers, Jack Kerouac, etc., were also accused of narcissism. Someone pointed out that Hemingway’s fiction wasn’t always that fictional. The Bell Jar wasn’t published in the United States for a long time because of Sylvia Plath’s mother. In the end there is the art, and the person experiencing the art. But maybe not in the beginning.

Someone in this thread quoted an article about Sophia Coppola that said you have to first learn to make movies that are not about yourself. It’s the worst advice anyone’s ever given. If anything, that would be the last thing you would want to do. You wouldn’t start there. I directed actors for the first time this year. The hardest thing for an actor to do is to play themselves. You can’t be a great actor until you can comfortably be yourself in front of a camera. Playing yourself is vanilla. You can use vanilla ice cream to make a chocolate shake, but you can’t use chocolate ice cream to make a vanilla shake. Once you’re able to play yourself you can add things. You can push your history, inhabit new relationships. But first get in front of the camera and be.”

A writer’s “voice” is something else entirely. It is an artistic construct, the value of which lies in its specialness and excellence.

In the former sense, everyone’s voice is (rightly) of equal importance and concern. In the latter case, only those with something very specific to offer. By conflating both of these, I feel like we are being put in the very awkward position of having to say that Marie Calloway is an interesting or important writer because of her age, gender, or choice of topics. What’s missing is that she’s not (yet) a talented or engaging writer. (I know this is a matter of opinion, not fact, but I do note that most of the defenses of “Adrian Brody” this far tend to refer back to the identity politics aspect, not the artistic merit aspect. Where is the case for the merit of Calloway’s artistic voice?)

Calloway is not getting yelled at for expressing herself, she’s getting yelled at for (as braunb notes) passing off gossip as literature. There are times when publishing an account of people’s private speech and behavior without permission is legitimate. If there is a need to expose some heinous crime for example. But there’s a reason journalists are not allowed to attribute speech without very clearly defining the type of permission the speaker is granting. I can’t understand why a young woman writing about sex is any kind of special exception to this.