ETA: HAMBURDER!

WHAT A BURNt!!! SHELL NEVAR RECOVDER FROM THIS!1!

I also teach at a small rural college in upstate New York (although I don’t live in the town I teach in). I manage to not fuck students.

(Rereading the last sentence of this post gave me a stroke. Avert your eyes!!!)

Nah. Criticism comes with writing. Every writer in the world has been rejected tons of times. If there’s one thing in the world that any writer knows about, it’s rejection. The ones who are douchebags and assholes are the ones who get mad about it.

Well, just to let you know, it’ll probably go about as well as it did for Jonathan Safran Foer.

Yes! I was able to find them and read through some of the emails as well. I have no idea what gave him the idea that she wanted him to leave his wife and that she would leave her husband. It seemed like a normal conversation between people with similar interests, not “She totally fucking wants me! Later, wife!”

FUCK! I’m also a man who tried to explain something. Major self-own by poor old Horselover on that one.

And it likely expanded to some other people as well.

Edit: adrastra

The problem with this is the power difference. Bestselling, millionaire authors with large fan bases are attacking an unknown college student and pretending the criticism actually hurts them in any real way. It doesn’t.

Right? Someone has some Google alerts for their name mentions.

Yes. I remember that article as well. I am an enormous fan of David Foster Wallace (which will get some eye rolls, I’m sure, but whatever). I think Franzen had some inferiority complex issues with Wallace which would explain some of the cattiness Franzen always has when he talks about Wallace. It must be tough to have…

I don’t have anything technically against them running. But their decisions are transparently about donor unrest and ego. So, sure, they can run and waste the money if they want to, but I’m still going to roll my eyes at them.

These two are repeats of multiple candidates who are already running.

Yeah. I assume they’re definitely going to get rid of any voucher within a couple months, so I’d keep an eye on those bills.

I did not know that about Safran Foer! The author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close deserves publicized humiliation. Say what you will about how much of an asshole Franzen is, but he’s at least a better writer than that 9/11 exploiting hack.

If the argument is that she (and they) thought it was important because it’s a pervasive issue that women’s writing isn’t taken seriously enough (which might be a fair point), surely there’s a bigger example of that discrimination than a common read book at a college smaller than many high schools in one of the least…

That’s a good one. I adore Vonnegut (as I think everyone should); it’s interesting that someone so in touch with humanity in his writing also resented people so much in person.