Please see
cleolinda's timeline for a description of this situation, if you're not familiar with it. Disclaimer: I'm a fan of both Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown's work, have been reading Brown's blog for years, and know nothing about Joanna Stampfel-Volpe and Nancy Coffey Literary & Media Representation.
swan_tower says something close to what I have been thinking about the situation involving
rachelmanija and
sartorias's YA book:
It is armchair psychology time. Armchair psychology time comes in the evening after I've had some tea but before I've given the cats their pills.
The law firm I work for does a lot of plaintiff's work, which means that we represent people who have decided to sue other people (or corporations). Some of them call bewildered with fury over the awful things that have happened to them. Some of them lie.
These groups overlap. It has been my observation that they overlap very heavily.
We like to believe that we're the Good Guys. To do that, we also need to believe that we have enemies, who are the Bad Guys. We tell stories about this to ourselves constantly, even though we know better; they're comforting, and usually harmless. I mean, our private conclusion that our ex was born with horns, one hoof, and a dog-eared copy of The Fountainhead is not really going to do him or her much damage. The friends to whom we impart this knowledge at 9:42 PM know better than to act upon it materially. Mostly, so do we.
( Read more... )
Regardless of all of this, due in large part to Stampfel-Volpe's comments, you can now find a lot of people saying, whew, there's no homophobia in YA publishing after all! How nice.
Again, take a look at cleolinda's timeline: after Brown and Smith's announcement went up, twelve other authors, many of whom also used their real names, showed up to say that exactly the same thing had happened to them.
I think that that indicates a problem, people.
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But even without the evidence I've seen and you haven't: one side was careful not to make this personal, and the other side was not.
It is armchair psychology time. Armchair psychology time comes in the evening after I've had some tea but before I've given the cats their pills.
The law firm I work for does a lot of plaintiff's work, which means that we represent people who have decided to sue other people (or corporations). Some of them call bewildered with fury over the awful things that have happened to them. Some of them lie.
These groups overlap. It has been my observation that they overlap very heavily.
We like to believe that we're the Good Guys. To do that, we also need to believe that we have enemies, who are the Bad Guys. We tell stories about this to ourselves constantly, even though we know better; they're comforting, and usually harmless. I mean, our private conclusion that our ex was born with horns, one hoof, and a dog-eared copy of The Fountainhead is not really going to do him or her much damage. The friends to whom we impart this knowledge at 9:42 PM know better than to act upon it materially. Mostly, so do we.
( Read more... )
Regardless of all of this, due in large part to Stampfel-Volpe's comments, you can now find a lot of people saying, whew, there's no homophobia in YA publishing after all! How nice.
Again, take a look at cleolinda's timeline: after Brown and Smith's announcement went up, twelve other authors, many of whom also used their real names, showed up to say that exactly the same thing had happened to them.
I think that that indicates a problem, people.