Raw material

August 22, 2024 12:22 AM

Exactly how fully this event defines either book is something that the authors at times fiercely dispute — an argument that will seem sometimes to be about writing, sometimes about the contested debris of past relationships. But let’s use a term that both books employ in different contexts: the “inciting incident.” At the very least, these two books share the same inciting incident. And often much more than that. from Four Friends, Two Marriages, One Affair — and a Shelf of Books Dissecting It [Vulture; ungated]
posted by chavenet (64 comments total)

[...] she’d been subconsciously basing the novel’s warring couple on herself and Ewell. Once she became aware of this, her response was not to pull back. Instead, she started mining her troubled marriage in the most deliberate of ways — for instance, purposefully wading into an argument with Ewell and then excusing herself to the bathroom so that she could get down the best of the back-and-forth on her iPhone’s Notes app.

not sure whether to judge this person more harshly for this or for using "POV" incorrectly in her TikTok video, which is an all-too-common sin but as a writer she should know better
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:08 AM on August 22 [5 favorites]

hahahaha. In its substance, not my cup of tea - in the particulars? An interesting glimpse into the specific ways people act shitty to one another in this, our glorious, inter-be-webbed, modern age. Eat'cher heart out Choderlos!
posted by From Bklyn at 1:57 AM on August 22 [3 favorites]

If having aspirations of being a professional artist means spending time around people like this, I am incredibly grateful to have no aspirations of ever being a professional artist.
posted by FallibleHuman at 2:07 AM on August 22 [21 favorites]

I am a broken record about this, but: longform non-fiction is a great prose art form of our time, and it's very possible that this Chris Heath article is more worth reading than any of the stories and novels discussed in it. Right now I'm at the scene where he reads Ewell the paragraph from Ewell's own story where he dissociatedly fantasizes about his ex-wife being killed by a homeless person and wow.
posted by sy at 3:28 AM on August 22 [17 favorites]

"Incestuous" is a word that should be used reluctantly, if at all, regarding anything which is not literal incest, but I think that it's justified here.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:39 AM on August 22 [4 favorites]

This is a great post, thanks chavenet. I’m going to a book group next week that will be discussing Yellowface. I will be the only person in the entire entire room who has had any publishing experience whatsoever. Now I can just share the link to this article to everyone in the room to give them a better idea about the dangers of hanging out with writers.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:39 AM on August 22 [5 favorites]

“who was going to write a takedown of McSweeney’s and how it was just like this hipster place to publish stories”
Lost Scenes from Generic Hipster Indie Romance Films Found in 2076 During a Museum Restoration of an Old MacBook Air and Subsequently Adapted for the Stage During Heritage Week at a Camp for 7th and 8th Graders Later That Summer [McSweeney's]
posted by HearHere at 4:51 AM on August 22 [19 favorites]

My wife and I have this thing where when we go to the movies and they show trailers, after the end of each trailer we both say a number, which is the amount of money you'd have to pay us to watch the film. It's a fun family tradition. This article was well-written, but each of the novels in question would be "mid-five-figures".
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:05 AM on August 22 [16 favorites]

As soon as I read the context (he was the second body in the two body problem of academia, hired to get her along) I knew this would be showing up: “There’s a pro, and there’s a con,” she says, “and the pro is This fucker gets it. The downside is it’s a fucking competition and no one’s saying it. And you’re a woman, he’s a man, and you fucked up getting there first.”

I read this with a bias towards Pittard over Ewell, seeing him as someone who found himself unable to deal with being overshadowed by his romantic partner, something many straight men struggle with. But then I ran into Pittard's writing about Shearer, how she was more of a villain in this than Ewell. And that bothered me. Maybe it's a leftover from VE Schwab's recounting of how with each success men were looking to tear her down, maybe it's from seeing something similar happening to a friend who has had multiple partners come to resent her success, but I'm inclined to view it through the view of "many straight men cannot deal with not being better than their partner." This was reinforced through her description of his interactions, his story, etc.

It's an interesting story and one that I am glad I will never be anywhere close. I don't know how toxic these people are, but the article left me with a desire to never meet any of them or read their books.
posted by Hactar at 5:06 AM on August 22 [8 favorites]

I couldn't finish the article. All of these people are loathsome.
posted by dobbs at 5:25 AM on August 22 [15 favorites]

Now I can just share the link to this article to everyone in the room to give them a better idea about the dangers of hanging out with writers.

Honestly, my entire social circle right now is (mostly published, professional) authors and the real danger seems to be hanging out with litfic writers. People are people, there's interpersonal drama as always in genre circles, but in terms of getting translated into writing, the most common thing is for a periodic call for people who want to get viciously murdered by aliens to raise their hands. (Coming up with infinite bit character names is hard!)
posted by restless_nomad at 5:34 AM on August 22 [11 favorites]

Heh.

This is the full-on over the top soap opera version of the feeling that I got when I realized the writer of “Past Lives” and the writer of “Challengers” are married to each other (does this count as a spoiler for both movies?).
posted by thivaia at 5:37 AM on August 22 [3 favorites]

I couldn't finish the article. All of these people are loathsome.

There's a particular type of loathsomeness that comes with these highly verbose, literary types. I've been on the periphery of these circles before and they're exhausting to be around. They are always fucking narrating their own lives.

However, I was reminded of this Onion article which is good for a chuckle:

Friends Always On Best Behavior Around Neil LaBute

“You get in one stupid argument with your wife in front of the guy, and the next thing you know, you’re an emotionally abusive misogynist in theaters nationwide,” said Terrence Wydell, one of LaBute’s former classmates.
posted by fortitude25 at 6:00 AM on August 22 [20 favorites]

Ryan Fox is George, David, Mitchell, and John Reams.

That last one concerns me a bit, given the baggage it seems to imply (John Holmes + Harry Reems is what comes to mind immediately), but I’m also more than a little curious which of the four decided this was a good moniker for him…
posted by McCoy Pauley at 6:16 AM on August 22 [1 favorite]

using "POV" incorrectly in her TikTok video, which is an all-too-common sin but as a writer she should know better

sorry, it’s 2024, and the English language continues to shift and expand meanings of certain words and phrases based on colloquial usage, which is what languages do. That usage is also what POV means now, because of TikTok. A writer understands this.
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:48 AM on August 22 [8 favorites]

This falls into the category of ‘things people have the leisure to complain about..’ with the added bonus ‘and then write about at length.’

I will say it seems totally sane that Ryan, Andrew, and Anna stayed friends. In the context of straight relationships perhaps that’s weird but in queer communities ex’es and friends are a mingled bunch. The part where the two published novelists seem only able mine their divorce for content… I mean how out of budget is a good therapist for either writer?
posted by MirJoy at 7:10 AM on August 22 [5 favorites]

I have no desire to read any of these novels (although I may go look up the poem) but this was an amazing article. People are so messy, it's fantastic, and then sometimes it gets transmuted into songs and stories and it's great if you're just consuming it and relating it to your own life but if you're the other person in the relationship in that song or story...ahahaha. It's not going to go well!
posted by PussKillian at 7:22 AM on August 22 [3 favorites]

I'm confident that reading the responses here is more rewarding than wading into these subjects' world.
posted by gestalt saloon at 7:28 AM on August 22 [4 favorites]

As a literature-adjacent person, this kind of story has been common in my friend circle for the last, oh, 25 years. It's still happening around me even as I live in a new state and am connected with a brand new-to-me literary circle.

Writers can't stop narrating their own lives: this is true. And even when they reveal all the messiness including their own, the narrative always leaves them in a slightly better light than everyone else in the story. Yes, they cheated. Yes, they are a Pretendian (this is a real example in my friend circle). Yes, they left the childless marriage and immediately got their new partner pregnant and are now earnestly performing as the best dad on Instagram. But if you just listen to their side you will understand the Pressures they were under, the Good Intentions they had, the Family Lore that led them to claim indigeneity in a way that benefited their career! And anyway it makes such a compelling story! Please listen! And buy their books!

I love my writer friends. Luckily I don't read most of their novels.

This particular situation seems unusual to me only in the ability of everyone involved to get published by mainstream presses.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:52 AM on August 22 [9 favorites]

In my previous poly relationship this was considered "drama llamas" and it would have been gauche to flip it into literature. That didn't stop a mutual acquaintance from fictionalising some of it in the... six, Amazon tells me, books that she has now written.
posted by Molesome at 7:58 AM on August 22 [4 favorites]

These people are not adults.
posted by bq at 8:18 AM on August 22 [3 favorites]

I might need to make a table to keep track of the people involved
posted by Pronoiac at 8:37 AM on August 22 [4 favorites]

Writers' lives are most rewardingly experienced through their letters, in my experience — and that's where you'll also find some of their best writing.

Unfortunately, in the recent past you had to wait til they were dead to get the good stuff, but now no one even writes the damn things any more. It will be a great loss to future readers of my inclinations.
posted by jamjam at 8:45 AM on August 22 [6 favorites]

I couldn't finish this but want to comment on something from early on.

Before any food has arrived, she is already describing herself to me. “I can’t remember when I wasn’t writing and making shit up,” she says.

This is the writer of the piece describing Hannah and it made me whisper 'fuck that' under my breath as I read it. It's not an explicit insult, but the way it is phrased makes it sound like she's just sooooooo eager to talk about herself but they met up for a goddamn interview *about* her.

That's especially some bullshit coming immediately after describing the two days he spent with Andrew as 'discussions' about 'the abstract parameters that govern what one can and can’t do when one sits down to an empty page.' Andrew has big ideas, you see, and expresses them in the generic so you know they're important and universal instead of just him justifying his own actions.

This predisposed me not to like the piece or the author and a few sections later, I found I really didn't care to keep track of who was who in real life and in each of the fictionalized versions of them and I gave up. But I'm still pissed off about that one line.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:49 AM on August 22 [16 favorites]

These people are not adults.

It strikes me that they may not be very creative, if the only stories they came come up with are things that happened to them.
posted by entropone at 9:01 AM on August 22 [5 favorites]

I'm glad I write science fiction.
posted by jscalzi at 9:08 AM on August 22 [37 favorites]

I read Pittard's memoir earlier this year, and it's good! I recommend it! Then I was amused to learn that Ewell had a novel out too -- I started this in the bookstore, it's fine, but I thought the Pittard book was better.
posted by escabeche at 9:14 AM on August 22 [5 favorites]

I’m not super interested in literary fiction but I’m very interested in pedantry, if someone could expand on how POV is being (mis)used.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:32 AM on August 22 [6 favorites]

This is the writer of the piece describing Hannah and it made me whisper 'fuck that' under my breath as I read it. It's not an explicit insult, but the way it is phrased makes it sound like she's just sooooooo eager to talk about herself but they met up for a goddamn interview *about* her.

YES, I had the exact same reaction to that line. Though for what it's worth, I also thought the author's characterization of Andrew's genericism was really hoisting him by his own petard - like, Andrew is so into taking the conversation into generic speculation of what a contextless person might think in a given situation that he literally either does not remember or cannot be made to see as important actual conversations that actually happened if they at all contradict his own assumptions at the time of the interview of how a person should have reacted.
posted by solotoro at 9:35 AM on August 22 [8 favorites]

I think I was thrown by the switching between first and last names. Anyway -

Dramatis Personae
* Ryan Fox was married to Anna Shearer
* Andrew Ewell was married to Hannah Pittard
* Anna and Andrew slept together
* Jeff Clymer is Hannah's new boyfriend
posted by Pronoiac at 9:36 AM on August 22 [6 favorites]

I think there’s an extent to which if you write, you genuinely can’t stop yourself from writing about the things that matter to you. The best writing I have ever done in my life has been about my divorce, about my now-current partner and the fraught lead-up to our relationship. But what you can do is stop yourself from publishing it. And that’s, I think, where these people go wrong.
posted by corb at 9:41 AM on August 22 [7 favorites]

I’m not super interested in literary fiction but I’m very interested in pedantry, if someone could expand on how POV is being (mis)used.

Well POV means "Point of view" and it's often (mis)used to show something instead of showing something from the subject's point of view.

E.g., "POV, you are a writer" but the camera is showing the writer instead of showing what the writer is seeing.
posted by entropone at 9:45 AM on August 22 [4 favorites]

Comparing letters to romans a clef and autofiction, huh. different privacy expectations for letters age by age and person by person…
posted by clew at 10:00 AM on August 22 [2 favorites]

This article fascinates me for a bunch of reasons. A few months ago I read Hannah Pittard's "We Are Too Many" and thoroughly enjoyed it and how it plays with the form of the memoir. Reading this article and finding out more of the backstory was enlightening, though sometimes in the same way that an exploding car can bring light. It made me slightly uncomfortable, not only for the details of what went down and how the four writers are processing it, but also because I'm aware of the ways that I incorporate elements of my own life and personal relationships into what I write.

But mainly, like Marie Kondo, I like mess.

I won't disagree that everyone involved comes off as...mmm, A Bit Much. I will say that a lot of my "oh my god" reaction is saved for Ewell, both for his cheating and then writing a short story that he claims not to remember that mirrors details of his and Pittard's experience except the Pittard stand-in gets murdered.
posted by sgranade at 10:00 AM on August 22 [6 favorites]

I feel confident of two things: one, that if any of these people have wikipedia articles, their parents' names are in blue type, and two, that if these people had to earn a living, none of this would have ever happened.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:26 AM on August 22 [11 favorites]

A more sinister version of “murder your darlings.”

Until someone marries one of their kids they aren’t in Bloomsbury Set territory. In fact, it’s kind of making me sad for our age if this is the literary entanglement tale we get. It’s so…heteronormative.

I do love that a 5th writer got paid for this piece. I feel like in the literary sequel that sets off a journey of bicurious liaisons or something.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:29 AM on August 22 [4 favorites]

This is only a quick bit, an aside basically, at the end.

Shearer’s objection is to Pittard calling her Trish. When I meet Ewell, he has previewed her objections. “Trish is cheap, right?” he says. “It signifies sort of slutty or something. I mean, I think that’s a cheap low blow.”

“Are we at the point where authors who go to private schools their whole life can make fun of people from West Virginia and call them out as being stupid and say they don’t have a good vocabulary and name them Trish?” Shearer, who is from just across the border, in Ohio, asks me. “Weirdly, everything else — the other woman, make it a mean girl, a little slut shame in there, whatever — I felt like I could deal with. For some odd reason, it’s that dig at being uneducated from West Virginia and just being an idiot because of where I’m from. That just burned a little bit.”

Pittard is no more taken by the name Ewell chose for her.

“They named me Debra,” she says. “And I’m going to say ‘they’ because I think it was a joint conversation. I think of the two of them at breakfast, having coffee, going, ‘Dawn?’ ‘No.’ ‘Meg!’ ‘No,’ ‘Debra!!!’ And then the two of them just cackling. Did they know I’d hate it? They sure as fuck did. They might as well have named me Nell! And I bet you Nell was on their shortlist.”

And uh, I think the author of this article has clearly come down on the side of these people are ridiculous.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:38 AM on August 22 [6 favorites]

I feel confident of two things: one, that if any of these people have wikipedia articles, their parents' names are in blue type

This made me laugh and felt true, but only Hannah has a wikipedia article and it doesn't mention her parents. For good measure, it also doesn't mention Andrew.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:59 AM on August 22 [3 favorites]

if these people had to earn a living, none of this would have ever happened.

They are earning a living. Writing and teaching are work, and in a notoriously uncertain environment that's growing even harder to stay in.
posted by sgranade at 11:01 AM on August 22 [13 favorites]

I do love that a 5th writer got paid for this piece. I feel like in the literary sequel that sets off a journey of bicurious liaisons or something.

This. Exactly. This is the funniest part of the whole piece.

Writing and teaching are work, and in a notoriously uncertain environment that's growing even harder to stay in.

QFT.
posted by thivaia at 11:34 AM on August 22 [2 favorites]

I’m really confused by the reaction to this article. In the annals of writers treating each other badly, nothing here seems particularly remarkable. While my particular tastes in books doesn’t make me likely to read either Pittard’s or Ewell’s books, autofiction isn’t really my bag, I don’t find it shocking that writers write about their lives. I find it ethically problematic, but in this case it’s very much a case of turnabout is fair play, at least as far as those two are concerned.

And I don’t understand how Fox and Shearer get swept up in the opprobrium, neither one is taking part in the duel of the novels, not even as seconds. That their lives are being subjected to this kind of unasked scrutiny is uncomfortable to me.

Also, while the original cheating is, to put it mildly, not good, and Pittard is well within her rights to hate Ewell and Shearer, it does put things in a different light that the latter two are still together, eight years later. Falling in love makes people do all kinds of stupid things.
posted by Kattullus at 12:25 PM on August 22 [7 favorites]

And uh, I think the author of this article has clearly come down on the side of these people are ridiculous.

Thanks for sharing that passage. Considering it made me realize the point the author made with it: that while his subjects (well...to varying degrees) claimed to put their art over their marriages, in fact they put themselves over the art and the marriage.

Which...I suppose we all must do in some sense, at the end of the day? But that's the source of the comedy there, at least
posted by billjings at 12:39 PM on August 22 [1 favorite]

They are earning a living. Writing and teaching are work

I mean, sometimes these things are true. Writers like these mostly seem to network.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:40 PM on August 22 [3 favorites]

"He’s always known that she is the one person an affair with whom I could never forgive."

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 12:43 PM on August 22 [14 favorites]

When literary writers set out to explain their hearts do, it is tangled in extreme that which is laid out upon the table for the common mind to upon ponder! Many have spoken to such concerns before! The great ones...Joyce...Faulkner...Fitzgerald...Yoda!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 12:52 PM on August 22 [3 favorites]

And I don’t understand how Fox and Shearer get swept up in the opprobrium, neither one is taking part in the duel of the novels, not even as seconds. That their lives are being subjected to this kind of unasked scrutiny is uncomfortable to me.

They both apparently agreed to be interviewed at length and then Shearer shared her unpublished novel, which also covers the events in question, with the journalist. So I wouldn't feel uncomfortable; it seems that they wanted this, at least on some level.
posted by ssg at 12:54 PM on August 22 [3 favorites]

> Hannah has a wikipedia article ... For good measure, it also doesn't mention Andrew.

Do we think it should?

I'm asking for a friend, who is me.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:06 PM on August 22 [4 favorites]

Do we think it should?

I just thought it was interesting, given that her contention is that at least part of their problem is that she is much more successful than him. Not only is he not important enough to have a wikipedia article, he's not even important enough to be mentioned in her wikipedia article.

I suspect, however, that that's at least partially because she is not important enough that anyone ever added an info-box to her page, which is often where spouses (and ex-spouses) are listed.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:12 PM on August 22 [3 favorites]

Our dysfunction, let us show you it
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:33 PM on August 22 [4 favorites]

> I might need to make a table to keep track of the people involved

I was thinking that when I started the article but by the end of it I just didn't care.
posted by gingerbeer at 1:55 PM on August 22 [4 favorites]

sorry, it’s 2024, and the English language continues to shift and expand meanings of certain words and phrases based on colloquial usage, which is what languages do. That usage is also what POV means now, because of TikTok. A writer understands this.

not to open the whole descriptivist/proscriptivist can of worms, but it does bother me when the evolution of language erases terms that used to be the only term we had to express a certain concept

POV used to mean "this is a scene from the point of view described in the rest of the title," now it means "you are looking at something" and we don't have a term that means what POV used to mean

the language has lost a meaningful term & we have gained... what exactly? am also writer & this just makes me sad
posted by taquito sunrise at 4:10 PM on August 22 [9 favorites]

Hannah Pittard's "We Are Too Many"

So one of my first questions here was "why is this author referencing a famous fictional murder-suicide note for the title of her memoir?" (To go along with: my guy, why are you writing a story in which you fantasize about the murder of someone clearly based on your now-ex?)

I saw nothing unusual (unfortunately?) about people mining their relationships for material; it was the willingness to talk about it with a reporter, and also the sheer extent of the mutual exploitation involved, that was striking (and off-putting).
posted by thomas j wise at 4:11 PM on August 22 [3 favorites]

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
― Anne Lamott
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:24 PM on August 22 [5 favorites]

I'm mostly amused by the Vulture writer carrying gossip back and forth like he's running across a high school lunchroom.
posted by betweenthebars at 5:46 PM on August 22 [15 favorites]

I used to worry, as a writer, that people were afraid I’d write about them. The older I get (and the more I write) I suspect that a sizable minority of people I know are worried that I won’t. And some percentage will always assume I am no matter whether the character is anything like or not.

Write what you know and you get accused of being too self-indulgent and whiny. Write outside of your experience and you get accused or being phony or inauthentic. It all feels very limiting.

I don’t know the financial portfolios of the authors in this piece. But as to networking, the only writers and artists that don’t have to do it are those that have such significant existing connections and resources that they can create with the anticipation that their audience (and by extension any hope of getting paid) is either built in or irrelevant. Publishers expect you to network because 99.9999% of the time, they will not do it for you.

I mean, I write because it’s what I do and I’d do it without any readers but it sure is nice to be read and nicer still to get paid for my work.
posted by thivaia at 5:51 PM on August 22 [4 favorites]

I got tired halfway through. This could've been 50% shorter and still gotten its point across.

I can see writing about a prior relationship; what I can't see is talking at length about writing about a prior relationship. Let the audience wonder!
posted by praemunire at 6:38 PM on August 22 [1 favorite]

This could've been 50% shorter and still gotten its point across.

Pittard & Ewell would probably say the same of their marriage.
posted by chavenet at 12:22 AM on August 23 [5 favorites]

language has lost a meaningful term & we have gained... what exactly?

a factoid [npr]
posted by HearHere at 3:56 AM on August 23 [1 favorite]

POV hasn’t ceased to retain its original meaning, it’s just gained an additional meaning. are you lamenting that you have to use context to figure out which meaning it is?
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:00 AM on August 23 [4 favorites]

so my particular flavor of autism/ND is great at processing text, mildly terrible at facial expressions, variable at visual processing & other context depending on the presentation

(it's usually fine for most media, I have to have about 1 in 50-100 webcomics explained to me for example)

short-form video comedy sketches can be tougher to figure out what's going on because they're faster-paced, the visual stuff is in frame for a shorter duration, & there's less time for setup -- frequently the title does a big ol' chunk of the setup work

POV: in its original meaning is a really useful context clue as to what's going on & who the character I'm watching is ("okay I'm the one who just wanted to stop for Swedish meatballs which probably makes this character my partner who is insisting we get a new couch, got it, that's cute")

POV: in its new meaning of not meaning anything is not only not helpful but frequently leaves me more confused ("wait this other character also wants meatballs? do we both want meatballs? now they're talking like I don't want meatballs? what is going on")

mostly it's fine and I can figure it out by the second watch or sooner! especially now that I'm used to POV: in the title being basically meaningless!

but yeah this is a piece of language I was actively using to make sense of things that I can't count on anymore & that does bother me

not a huge deal, not advocating for anyone to like go to prison about it?
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:18 PM on August 23 [5 favorites]

(also I've been operating under the impression that POV: doesn't have a new meaning & is simply an acronym now added to video titles in the same way that AI used to draw disembodied arms on barbells

if it does consistently mean something like "from the point of view of the character you're looking at here's what's going on" then I'm more okay with that, literally just now occurred to me that was a possibility

sorry for the derail)
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:26 PM on August 23 [3 favorites]

To bring two of the discussions together (the definition of POV, which is being discussed mostly in terms of videos on the one hand, writing on the other), I am currently reading a book in which each chapter focuses on a different character. The summary in Libby (that I assume appeared on a book jacket at some point) refers to the book having different POV characters each chapter, but the book is written in the third-person limited perspective. Is it fair to call them POV characters? In each chapter, you certainly are seeing what's happening through the LENS of that specific character's point of view, including their thoughts and feelings, but it's being described kind of over their shoulder, not behind their eyes. Seems pretty analogous to the videos under discussion, and it didn't really occur to me to question calling them "POV" characters until this thread.
posted by solotoro at 1:30 PM on August 26 [2 favorites]

I think they're absolutely POV characters, the POV is third person limited. That's a POV choice that has a specific character viewpoint.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:19 PM on August 26 [2 favorites]

Fanfare posts (by me) on the two resulting books from this clusterfuck:

We Are Too Many by Hannah Pittard
Set For Life by Andrew Ewell
posted by chavenet at 6:52 AM on August 27 [1 favorite]