In late November Marie Calloway, a twenty-one year old college student, published on her blog a long essay about sleeping with a writer twice her age.
She had admired his online writing and sent him a note saying she would be in New York and would he be willing to have sex with her. In the essay she named the man and many other identifying details. The essay was taken down after a few days and then republished as fiction on MuuMuu house. She changed the writer’s name to Adrien Brody and made that the title of the story. She made other changes as well so it’s hard to know how much of the story is true. Since it’s published as fiction it seems only fair to read it as such.
Because of the subject matter maybe, or because people thought the story was true, or because of the alluring pictures of the attractive young woman, the story has exploded. Lost in the firestorm and the debate over the story’s ethics is the quality of the story itself, which some people dislike intensely, but others, including this interviewer, think is riveting, fresh, and written with a distinctive new voice. The story is 15,000 words, an enormous length for the Internet, and yet somehow its immediacy fits this new platform in a way a more traditional story might not.
***
The Rumpus: Your story “Adrien Brody” is kind of an Internet sensation. Did you see that coming? What’s been the repercussions of that?
Marie Calloway: I had no idea what would happen. I wrote it and was really proud of and excited about it, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The only place that to me theoretically seemed like it would be interested in publishing it was Thought Catalog, but I knew that I couldn’t send it there since they told me a while back they weren’t accepting any more over “PG-13” rated stories.
I still received some attention to my story while it was only published on my blog, most notably in Emily Gould writing about it on her blog, though she didn’t write about it publicly until the day that it was published on Muumuu House.
I sent it to Tao Lin on a whim. I thought maybe he would be interested in it since the story mentions him a few times, but I didn’t actually think he would even read it. So when he offered to publish it on Muumuu House I was really shocked. I’ve admired Tao Lin and the other MH writers from afar, but I never really participated in/watched what I guess some people call the “alt lit” scene, and I never saw myself as fitting into it. I don’t see my writing as having a lot of the qualities I see MH writing/writers having (a certain sense of humor, the ability to create/interaction with Internet memes, the sense of doing something really modern…) I feel like noting here than Tao Lin has never edited my writing, nor even offered me any advice about content/style besides replacing real names with the names of a celebrity.
Anyway, I had no idea what to expect. I was immediately flattered by getting kind messages about my writing from other Muumuu House writers/fans of Muumuu House writing. Then I was asked to do an interview for The Observer. This was also surprising to me. I was really nervous about doing a phone interview, but I was surprised by how friendly and easy to talk to the interviewer was. I also got slightly drunk right before it on Tao Lin’s advice. Seeing the article with my picture and information about me in The Observer was surreal, and when I was written about in Gawker it was even more surreal. It still is kind of surreal. Sometimes I feel like all of the coverage must be about someone I’m observing on the Internet rather than me.
I feel like I’ve had mostly very positive repercussions. I’ve gotten a lot of exposure for my writing. My writing blog has gotten over 1000 unique hits since the Observer piece (quite a lot as before it was something like 20 people a day if I was lucky.) But more importantly the coverage exposed me to and so has allowed me to connect with a lot of new people I really enjoy interacting with. I seem to have made my friends proud of me/proud to know me. I also feel I’ve learned and grown a lot even in this short time, and this event has given me a lot of opportunity to continue doing so. Obviously there were a lot of negative reactions, but they seem to have overall little relevance to my life.
Rumpus: Let’s get into the backstory of “Adrien Brody,” for people who haven’t heard of this story. It’s basically a fictionalized version of a true story. You fell in love with an older man, a writer twice your age, that you met online, and suggested the two of you have sex when you came to New York. Have you fallen in love with other men that you’ve met online?
Calloway: I was a social recluse for most of my life, and so a lot of relationships I’ve been in have been formed online. I met my first boyfriend online at 15, which culminated in me running away to San Francisco to be with him. I think in general in my teens I had a lot of crushes on men on the Internet, most notably Momus since I was in my late teens. John Darnielle was also another big crush.
As an adult I’ve connected a lot with men over the Internet. Nothing seems really notable (pre-“Adrien Brody”) except I went to London in July of 2010 and before I went I had a few men lined up to meet, two who made a large impact on me. Both were mentioned in “Adrien Brody.”
The first was the Irish photographer, who lied about his age on the Internet to convince young women to meet him and have sex with him/let him take pornographic pictures of them. It sounds really revolting, but I was fascinated by how upfront he (mostly) was, without self-judgment or judgment of others, about being a pervert, among other things. I thought he was a funny guy. He was a really tall Irish guy who liked being slapped around and pegged by tiny, young Asian women, for instance. I was fascinated by how strange and mysterious he seemed to me. I wanted very much to understand what he was like past all of the sex and photography stuff, but I wasn’t successful. We had a one day fling and I was supposed to meet him again, but my train (from London to Portsmouth) arrived nearly an hour late, and I didn’t have a cell phone or any other way of contacting him.
The second guy I met on the Internet was Tom, who I dated for around 6 months, which is by far the longest relationship I’ve ever had as an adult. We long distance dated mostly, chatting everyday for a long time on FB chat and Skype. It’s hard to imagine a more genuinely caring and kind individual. I owe a lot to him.
I went to visit him again in London for 10 days near last New Year’s Eve. Probably taking ecstasy with Tom on New Year’s Eve was the happiest night of my life. But we split up due to me coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t romantically love him. We’re still best friends and he seems happier with his less complicated girlfriend now, though.
Rumpus: You were in New York, from the west coast, with your boyfriend. Your boyfriend knew you were going to meet “Adrien Brody.” How did that work. In the story, which you published as fiction, you were offended that “Adrien Brody” didn’t tell you he had a girlfriend until you were on your way back to his place to have sex. You had already told him you had a boyfriend?
Calloway: I feel like Patrick (I don’t mind using his name because he has given me permission and had even hoped that I would write about him/was satisfied with the way he was portrayed) and I from the beginning were very open and honest about what we wanted from each other and the nature of our relationship. I feel like he mostly just wanted to meet me (and have sex with me) because he had fallen in love with me based on some idea he had created of me from my writing. He didn’t care that I would be seeing another guy; he was even interested in Adrien Brody as well and went so far as to add him on Facebook out of the blue. He was interested in the idea of Marie Calloway as some manic pixie dream girl who slept with men like Adrien Brody that they talked to on the Internet. So he wasn’t concerned about monogamy at all. I told Adrien Brody that I was staying in NYC with another guy early on in our meeting (I didn’t really think of Patrick was my boyfriend though technically he was) and he seemed to understand what that meant. Before he told me about him having a girlfriend, he asked me how [Patrick] felt about us having sex.
Rumpus: People associate you with Tao Lin and you published “Adrien Brody” on MuuMuu house, Tao Lin’s publishing company. What can you tell us about your collaboration? How did you guys start talking?
Calloway: I first emailed Tao Lin a story I wrote about the experience of losing my virginity sometime in April 2011. He didn’t respond until it was later published on Thought Catalog, after which he sent me an email that said something very similar to, “I enjoyed reading this on Thought Catalog. Good job.”
Then another story of mine was published on TC and I noticed Tao Lin had “liked” it. Later I sent him an email asking if he would publish writing from me through Muumuu House and he replied (basically) that logistically that wouldn’t be feasible, but if I kept publishing things on TC and in other places he suspected I would get contacted by an agent eventually.
Then I didn’t have any contact with him until I sent him “Adrien Brody,” which I wrote about above. He also after saying he would publish “Adrien Brody” on MH sent me an email saying he would like me to cover his trip to Paris (with me staying in his hotel room.) But we gchatted about the idea and he said he wasn’t feeling social enough to actually do that, and I would have had logistical problems anyway (finals during the time he would be in Paris etc.)
Now we email and gchat and interact on Facebook sometimes. I feel like people will see this as me trying to “suck up” or something but I am really surprised at how kind and supportive Tao Lin has been towards me, especially considering what a “shitstorm” this whole thing has been. I feel very grateful. For some reason before I interacted with him I had the idea of Tao Lin as being very stuck up and cold, but he’s not.
Rumpus: In Adrien Brody you talk about sex work. “Adrien Brody” says sex work has been romanticized. Do you agree with that? You told me you were a sex worker for a month. Escort, I believe. Why did you decide to start doing that? I’m sorry if that’s a dumb question. I was a stripper when I was your age and the simple answer was for the money, but looking back on it now I know it wasn’t just for the money.
Calloway: I think in certain ways sex work has been romanticized. I can only speak from my experience, but what surprised me about escorting was how boring it mostly is. it seemed like an assembly line process of cleaning my apartment, dressing up, making awkward small talk, having mundane mechanical sex, making more awkward small talk, and then closing the door after them. There’s also a lot of frustration and annoyance with it that I feel isn’t discussed (a lot of flaky potential clients for instance.)
I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t very happy doing what I did nor was I very talented at it, so perhaps that’s what worked to make it boring for me. However it’s hard for me to imagine that a lot of young women who would enjoy and be good at being an escort. Towards the end of it I could feel myself drifting towards a liquor habit and I had a few minor mental breakdowns due to a what I felt like was a constant chipping away at my personhood (guys thinking I would have unprotected sex with them if they just paid me fifty more dollars, for instance) and a few abusive clients. What i’m trying to get at is that to me nothing felt glamorous or exciting or sexually liberating about it. I also think the amount of money you can make escorting is exaggerated (it wasn’t uncommon for me to see ads for escorts for 40-60$/hr where I live.)
I guess I’m also obligated to note that the experience of sex workers who are not upper/middle class/white probably have much worse conditions than anything that’s portrayed commonly in media/what I experienced.
Besides the money aspect, I guess I was curious about sex work. In the way that most people are, but also because ever since I was a teen I had read feminist writers like Dworkin and Mackinnon and the way they wrote about sex work had an enormous impact on me. Was it really as horrible as they said? Is sex work literally the buying and selling of women between men? Is sex work literally rape? There were also questions that I had about the more commonly talked about cautions against sex work, about it meaning you didn’t respect yourself or of it being incredibly emotionally damaging. I wanted to find out for myself what sex work was, and what it meant. I realize this all sounds very juvenile, but I guess I’m interested in exploring my youth and even reveling in it rather than trying to deny it and cover it up.
I plan on writing about my experiences with sex work soon.
Rumpus: What do you think about writing about real people in fiction and essay? Do you worry about not getting things right?
Calloway: I guess that my opinion of writing about real people is informed by defenses of Joyce Maynard’s memoir, that the experiences were a part of my life as well, and that I have the right to write about my life. I’ve never written about a situation involving real people that I haven’t directly taken part in. I’ve never made things up about other people. None of my stories were written with ill-intent towards the other people in them, even though I doubt people will believe that about “Adrien Brody.” I often feel like that with the way I portray myself I come off as looking much worse than any of the other characters. I guess it might also be worth noting that anyone I’ve had as a main character in a story I’ve written has had full knowledge that I am a writer who writes about the people in her life. A lot of people have given me permission. I should note that it’s common knowledge that I first ran “Adrien Brody” using pictures and real names on my blog, and I now see how that was a really horrible and irresponsible thing to do, and I will never do anything like that again without permission. I did things to help to protect the character Adrien Brody’s identity on Muumuu House, like ask Tao Lin to “x” out references to his blog etc. I’ve also refused to answer questions people have about/discuss the person Adrien Brody.
As for not getting things right: I constantly rerun social situations/conversations I experience/have throughout my head, and I’m always writing them down in notebooks or in word documents/the Internet. I feel like these habits and a generally good memory of people/the interactions I have with them (due to studying people having always been my main interest in life) have lead me to being very accurate in things I write in stories/essays. I recognize that memory is far from infallible though. If I feel like I can’t accurately describe something, I just leave it out. I also do things like write “he talked about …” instead of writing direct quotes. But generally I feel like since my stories are very obviously meant to be my perception of an event rather than the objective truth this gives me a lot of leeway.
Rumpus: What online communities were you involved in in high school?
Calloway: I used LiveJournal frequently, almost daily, since ~age 13 until ~18. I kept a personal diary there. I also participated in various “LiveJournal communities”. At the risk of sounding patronizing or something, I see LiveJournal and now Tumblr as wonderful because they give young girls ways to interact with eachother and learn and talk about new interests, ideas etc as well as support eachother emotionally. I think I would have been a lot more miserable and discovered a lot less of things I liked if I hadn’t had LiveJournal in high school. I think it’s interesting how blogging seems to be shaping a new generation of writers. I feel like growing up with the Internet/blogging/other structures seems to be a reason for the similarities people see in Tao Lin’s writing and other young writers, rather than direct imitation.
Rumpus: You’ve gotten a lot of attention for Adrien Brody, but at the same time you took down your blog leaving a note that said you didn’t want to be watched. But then you gave an interview to the Observer. And, like most writers, you hope to be published. What are your thoughts on writing, honesty, narcissism, the desire for attention?
Calloway: It’s probably impossible to be a young woman on the Internet and write stories with sex in them without being accused of being an “attention whore.” It seems an odd criticism to me in a way because every artist is seeking attention, like you said, to their work. I want to say that of course I want my writing to be read and discussed by as many people as possible, but this is different than wanting personal, “celebrity”-like attention. I’m very introverted and sensitive and dislike being talked about, positively or negatively. But obviously this all gets tricky/complicated when your writing reveals so much of your private/intimate life, and the nature of writing on the Internet comes with a lot of focus on your “personal brand.”
It seems unfortunate the “attention whore” slur is used as discouragement from women (especially young ones) writing honestly about their life, if that’s what they want to do. I and a few other of my female artist friends created an art “philosophy” (for lack of a better term) called “girlcore” which basically holds at its center an unapologetic expression of and admiration of young female subjectivity.
I don’t have much to say about honesty. All that I feel about it that people don’t discuss as far as I know is how much effort it is to create truly honest writing, in my opinion. It requires a lot of thinking and effort. There’s often times a big difference between what you actually thought/felt in a situation and what you think you thought/felt. You have to do a lot of work to make your thoughts/feelings possible to be understood by other people. It’s very draining, though also cathartic.
I admire narcissism in Momus and others who “own” it and use it as a way to explore ideas/themselves and also as a form of humor. I don’t think of myself as narcissistic, but I’m definitely incredibly self absorbed. I guess I wonder if seeing the world through the lens of yourself is necessarily less valid than other ways of thinking/seeing though. I admire self-awareness more than probably any other quality, and I think in terms of what qualities are “good” in a person, it’s a mostly subjective opinion, so I can’t see a reason to think that self-absorption is inherently a bad thing.
Rumpus: Bonus Question: Who are some of your literary influences? Who are the writers you admire?
Calloway: I admire Joyce Maynard a lot, specifically her memoir “At Home in the World.” Her writing is beautiful and fascinating and seemed to give me validation to the idea that I could write validly in earnest about my life with (my) very feminine point of view, and also that I could unapologetically explore the bad traits of my character (which I find to be more interesting to explore than the good traits), as well as explore other concepts that interest me like private vs public personas, age gap relationships, etc.
Other writers I like a lot are Raymond Carver, Simone de Beauvoir, Tolstoy, JD Salinger (“Franny and Zooey” has been my favorite book for a long time), and lately Graham Greene. To be honest, though, I mostly read political non-fiction, which I find inspiring in a way because it forces me to think more critically about things. Also my politics (though very subtly) influence my writing.
Not literary but I’ve also been influenced a lot by music/lyrics, specifically Rob Wratten (The Field Mice/Northern Picture Library/Trembling Blue Stars.) I feel like few things are more successful at portraying honest emotions/experiences. There also just seems to be a certain feeling/mood that I respond well to. I feel similarly about the artist Kahimi Karie and the films “An Education” and “Marie Antoinette.” Anything with a strongly and unapologetically feminine point of view I tend to be interested in.
I also feel influenced by Momus’s writing on his old blog, Click Opera. He seems to really strive to critically think about things and not just lazily spout off typical ways of thinking about things, and this is something that I strive to do. His advice to young artists was something like “don’t try to imitate anyone. Try to do something new and different.” Which I feel inspired by. I also like his celebration of things like Japanophilia, youth, “charismatic otherness”, aesthetic beauty, femininity, and “trendiness”. Basically, I feel inspired by any artist that seems to want to introduce the world to their likes and perspective rather than trying to shape their interests and point of view to fit better into the world around them.
Rumpus: Bonus Question 2: What can you tell us about your childhood home, how you were raised, your relationship with your parents?
Calloway: This is a difficult subject. I’m not very close to my parents. My stepfather (in my opinion) was very emotionally abusive when I was growing up and there were a lot of other issues I don’t feel comfortable talking about publicly. I spent a lot of time in therapy dealing with these issues though, and I feel i’m finally starting to move past them. One thing about having mostly absent parents that I think was perhaps “good” for the development of my intellect/writing is that I was given almost total freedom to read/write/look at whatever I wanted. I wonder a lot about how my past experiences, particularly my negative childhood (home life and being severely bullied/ostracized throughout school) as formed my/my thoughts/my writing, though I should also note those things were far from the only thing that had an impact on me/my writing. I wish there was more discourse about this sort of thing as something other than “fucked up girls seeking attention” or whatever.
***
Postscript: While the story “Adrien Brody” is supposed to be based on a real experience “Adrien Brody” was published as fiction. I think it’s only fair to read it as such and to withhold judgements from the participants as you would with any work of fiction.
69 responses
Great interview. Nice to hear her speak for herself amongst the storm of other media/people speaking for her… esp appreciated what she had to say about the “attention whore” label.
Very cool. What she says about writing about other people is very similar to what evolved into the methodology I employed with my memoir. Looking forward to more from her. I hope she gets a “big idea” and writes something book-length. That would be cool
What an odd little caveat to add in the postscript. Because the truth is, I (and many readers, I assume) do NOT withhold judgment of fictional characters. How would that even make sense–are we not supposed to judge what we read? But perhaps you are saying, in essence, “Don’t judge the real-life people these characters are based on.” And perhaps you mean “judgment” in a narrow sense, a connotatively negative sense, rather than the broader sense of weighing ideas or forming thoughts without condemnation or moral pronouncement.
Which would be fair enough, I suppose, in an absence of context, but in this case seems disingenuous to the extreme. The truth is that the “fiction” was originally published as “fact” (for whatever that label is worth), on Marie’s blog, with real names and (as you point out) “many other identifying details,” including a photograph of Marie with the writer’s semen on her face. Many people who read the original blog post say that the “fictionalized” version published at MuuMuu House is, save for the name change and the removal of the photograph, essentially the same.
Soon after Marie’s blog post went up, the writer’s girlfriend wrote in to The Hairpin’s advice column and described her unhappiness with the situation (I read that post, which has also since been removed) and her inability to get past it because it was staring her right in the face, so to speak, in a blog that everyone else could see as well. The girlfriend wrote that she was she was “consumed†by “visions†of Marie and her boyfriend. Then things happen, as they do on the Internet, pretty quickly. Marie’s blog disappears, the story is “fictionalized,” the Hairpin post vanishes, and suddenly it all becomes Art. No harm no foul.
That looks like sarcasm up there, but I don’t mean it sarcastically. It DOES become art. We have no say in the matter. And yet. Sometimes art involves harm; sometimes it involves fouling.
I’m not saying there is a side to take. I’m not saying we know the whole story. I’m not saying there is a “right” judgment to be passed. But if someone chooses to publish something online for anyone to see, you can’t then ask people to unsee it, whether it is labeled fact or fiction. And if there are facets to (or characters in) the story that were published and then altered, removed, tinkered with, translated, well, that’s part of the story too. It strikes me as bizarre to suggest that we “withhold judgment as we would with any work of fiction.” Part of what makes this whole story compelling, and the reason it has received so much attention, is that everyone *knows* it really happened. You open this article with two lengthy paragraphs devoted to the fact that it really happened. [Inset really long discussion of what constitutes “fiction” here.]
But you know, even if this whole thing were made up, I’d be judging the hell out of everyone involved (note that I didn’t say I would be judging them unfavorably or with no empathy–judgment is a complex concept, after all). Hell, I’d probably be MORE comfortable in my judgments, given that convenient remove between fiction and reality, yes? (That might be a little sarcastic, come to think of it.)
Isn’t this what writing is for? To be read? Doesn’t the act of reading itself necessitate judgment–of ONESELF as well as the material read? If it does not, what are we writing (and reading) for?
I don’t buy that “Adrien Brody” is fiction. Even though the blog references are Xed out, there are enough identifying details in the “story” to figure out who the older male writer. It’s a fine “story,” but how is it fiction? I guess ultimately that doesn’t matter, but what about the fallout for the older writer who has/had a girlfriend. I’m surprised we haven’t heard from him.
I agree with Lauri. We can’t un-know that Adrien Brody was originally published as nonfiction on Calloway’s blog. Changing some names does not make the essay fiction. The coda basically says, forget the truth. It says hey, just pretend this is fiction. It isn’t fiction so asking us to treat it as fiction doesn’t make sense. Are we supposed to do this pretending as an academic exercise? Why? I also don’t think that art is or should ever be free from judgment.
This interview seals the deal. I am an admirer of Marie Calloway.
I disagree with the judgment statements in the comments above, feel like judgment limits understanding and imposes the preconceptions/prejudices of readers/viewers on the art.
That said, of course you can understand something and still “like” or “not like” it (be moved by it, want to revel in it, share it or feel inspired by it, etc.) but I distinguish this from the kind of judgment Stephen and others are talking about above.
That said, I also agree with Roxane’s “forget the truth” critique of Stephen’s p.s. In this context, pretending the “work” is fiction seems silly.
Finally, I’m impressed by the traction of this story (story behind the story) which dwarfs the written story (original words on the page/screen) in a huge way. Funny how the underground lit scene is in some ways no different from People magazine. End times, y’all. Here’s to 2012!
Jesus, I’m interested in your comment about People magazine, because I think one explanation for the energy around the story is the need communities have for gossip. Few of us are above it, if “above it” is even the right term, but we crave more meaningful gossip than we get from People magazine/reality TV, which sort of prey on the need, IMO.
I don’t necessarily mean gossip here in the sense of who got cheated on by whom, although obviously that’s of interest to many. I mean a common basis for conversation about personal, messy, titillating issues that might help us understand or feel better about ourselves while also entertaining us, and that might give us an excuse to talk about these things. The sharing of info and links and judgments connects us, or so it’s seemed to me. I’ve bounced all over the internet reading and commenting on this. It’s felt very social. If there weren’t a lot of significant issues touched upon by the story–including the aesthetic issues of the prose style and structure–and if Marie didn’t seem so complicated and human–because even confessional writing can seemed stock or canned–it wouldn’t have generated as much heat in literary circles no matter who was squirting semen where.
Or maybe I’m wrong about that last bit.
I like what Zoe is saying because I think gossip can be engagement and gossip is community and gossip can be art and a lot of my favorite artists create gossipy art and also gossip is also a labor of marginalized people.
…Can we tease out what we mean by ‘judgment?’ Because I agree with Jesus that applying moralism to art is generally a very bad road to go down but I think that is different than critically engaging with art or using art to generate an ethical conversation like the one Roxane introduced at htmlgiant. And I feel like maybe all Stephen meant was let’s not issue judgments about MC as an individual separate from this set of texts?
I think MC comes across as really smart and thoughtful in this interview, and as an artist who constantly and deliberately risks having my work dismissed as something I am just doing for attention, I really like the work she is doing here to break down the discourse of attention whoring and to differentiate between different kinds of attention. I think we need to always ask: Why is attention-seeking a “problem?” What kind of attention? And why does this lead to automatic dismissal of the art?
Okay this is a hoax.
“I did things to help to protect the character Adrien Brody’s identity on Muumuu House, like ask Tao Lin to “x†out references to his blog etc. I’ve also refused to answer questions people have about/discuss the person Adrien Brody.”
Wow, so pleased Marie has cleared up her ethical role in all this.
Wake up people. Learn how to read deep. Trust no one, esp anonymous ‘sources’. Think about sociopathy. Think about motive. Think about your scene. Think about your ‘idols’. Study half the comments at HTML G. And listen to Roxane Gay.
Wow, this is a really boring subject.
I’m so conflicted about this, because the way this has all been set up now, as Stephen implies in his regrettably unconvincing P.S., to criticize the story is apparently to criticize this young woman’s subjectivity. Which above all else I am not interested in doing.
But I guess what I keep thinking, when I come across articles like this, which, it seems, must at all costs be illustrated with a picture of Calloway, I feel like I’ve read it before, I’ve seen it before. And it makes me feel kind of tired and dispirited about writing at all.
“I and a few other of my female artist friends created an art “philosophy†(for lack of a better term) called “girlcore†which basically holds at its center an unapologetic expression of and admiration of young female subjectively.”
Wondering if instead of “subjectively” it’s supposed to read “subjectivity”?
My only problem with Adrien Brody is the anonymity double standard that Roxanne brought up in her HTML Giant piece. “Marie Calloway” is a pseudonym; “Adrien Brody” is not well enough disguised that I couldn’t figure out who he was in five seconds flat when I read it a few weeks ago, and I don’t know the guy – had never heard for him before. Otherwise, while it made me feel sad when I read it, I found the story to be a valid, absorbing reflection of something that often happens for young women.
I agree with Lauri and Roxane. Adrian Brody is memoir, not fiction. We can’t pretend that isn’t true. That doesn’t affect the work’s merits–I really enjoyed Adrian Brody and this interview–but let’s keep it real.
Tim–I love what you wrote above about how gossip can be engagement and gossip can be community and gossip can be art. All this buzz surrounding Marie Calloway is like an embodiment of that statement. Gossip can be creative and destructive and conductive; sometimes all at once.
I have to read this as memoir. I can’t pretend it’s something it isn’t. I don’t see “a fucked up girl seeking attention,” but I do see a young woman trying to understand herself and her experiences in a super public way, putting herself up to tremendous scrutiny, in real life–not fiction–and I guess I have a hard time with it because it *isn’t* fiction. I’m interested in this kind of story, and think it should be told, but I don’t want it to threaten the integrity of its writer.
“There’s often times a big difference between what you actually thought/felt in a situation and what you think you thought/felt.”
When I read Adrian Brody I had the sense of a writer definitely and masterfully conscious of that difference, one of the things I love about the story.
Also, this: “Anything with a strongly and unapologetically feminine point of view I tend to be interested in.” Me too.
this girl knows truth and is out to save us all
Hi Zoe. I like your layered definition of gossip as “a common basis for conversation about personal, messy, titillating issues that might help us understand or feel better about ourselves while also entertaining us.” I also think it’s as simple as getting into other people’s personal business, which is complicated when people have grown up making their personal business public. Whatever people wanna do on either end, I don’t really care.
Thing is, I’m not convinced the dialogue (across the “‘literary’ social networks”) on this particular story is a more elevated discourse than what you might find among readers of People magazine. Gossip is gossip. Talking about other people’s business is talking about other people’s business. This “story” is a jumping off point for a conversation that’s not all that uncommon. How’s it so different from discussions of sanctity of marriage or fame-whoredom post Kardashian divorce? Just because the people talking are educated and can type words well doesn’t elevate their discourse above others who maybe do their gossip in person over coffee with the TV on.
I think the story’s “heat” has everything to do with the writer’s age and the fact that she posted her come-splattered face on her blog with the original piece. The “micro-fame” snowballed from there. I think it’s straight sensationalism and all of us talking/writing about it are voyeurs and gossips. Sure, we’re engaging in a social activity, so to speak, and ideas are being turned over, but let’s be honest: it’s not because of the “work,” nope; it’s because the girl is young and she posted a picture to go with her Live Journal-styled story. Whoop whoop… I’m not feeling it as art, but that doesn’t matter because (from what I’ve seen/read) this isn’t about art.
Though Calloway seems like a thoughtful young woman, let’s remind ourselves that most of the mileage ‘Adrien Brody’ has accrued is due to the fact that it isn’t fiction, and that the person on the other end of this ‘shitstorm’ is probably somewhere feeling humiliated and ruined. If you search ‘marie calloway’ on google, his name is the 6th suggested entry, so let’s not pretend we’re all solely interested in her writing. The juiciness of the story is validated by the reader thinking ‘I wonder if Adrien Brody and his girlfriend are still together after all this?’ Gawker, largely responsible for the mega-exposure of Calloway, is a website which touts its ability to expose public figures for ‘bad’ behavior (refer to the website and peruse its contents).
But this is not the first person’s career that was forged from the humiliation of another, and it won’t be the last. In our world, it’s entirely irrelevant how you got famous, or if people even like you. It just matters that people know your name.
Were this a hoax, it would mean the entire thing — posting the original post, posting a hasty rewrite/anonymization, and then sitting back to watch the inevitable, conflicted, belabored conversation — was planned out as an act of art. Where would we go from there?
Also, TJY, I think you hit it on the head when you ask “Why is attention-seeking a ‘problem’” in art? Isn’t all art made with an audience in mind, even if that audience is purely Platonic?
Jesus, I utterly agree. The story might have literary merits, but the only reason anyone cared was because of the backstory. It’s gossip through-and-through and to treat it as something other than that ignores the enormous ethical questions at play here. I’m shocked nobody is calling out Marie on her gross irresponsibility for releasing this with his name and pictures, and just as shocked that Tao Lin made next to zero effort to cloak Adrien’s identity. They both wanted people to know the person’s identity, which is fine on a personal level (I don’t think the person helping someone cheat has a responsibility to protect the cheater) but they knew this would be broadcasted throughout the Internet. It’s despicable, and every time we treat this story as something other than something that affects real people, we do everyone a disservice.
Oh Drew, people are definitely calling Marie out.
I view any question re: the ethics of possibly exposing her subject or writing unflatteringly about him to be a non-issue, if not downright insulting to her. I’m actually angered by these kinds of responses because I find them nakedly condescending and obtuse.
Hemingway’s thinly veiled portrayal of Lady Duff Twysden as Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises is an often unflattering depiction, including recounting her affair with a bullfighter, that was well understood by the chattering classes at the time. I don’t think anyone would suggest writing that book was unethical. Writers write honestly about their experiences (or try to) and sometimes there are personal repercussions. If artists concerned themselves with this nonsense, many instances of brave, important art would have been censored.
Thomas Wolfe was despised in his hometown for the depiction of its denizens in Look Homeward, Angel. I could go on an on with similar examples. Anyway, she says it is fiction and we should respect that. How vain and small-minded to focus on the gossipy aspects of the piece rather than respond to it as a work of art!
I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and it’s very hard for me to accept that artists have no responsibility to protect the people who happen to wander into their lives. I think most artists (bravely) create things that may, or perhaps must be, in some personal or very limited public way, painful for the people who inspired them. But the publication of this story feels different than that to me. We all know that Marie originally wrote this about a real person, who, we can assume, did not consent to it, as the details, including his real name and the name of his blog, were changed (though I have to agree with others that the supposed effort to conceal Adrien’s identity was either a total sham or extremely careless). I suppose it’s possible that the whole thing is some sort of performance art that I don’t completely understand.
I am fascinated by the concept of privacy in digital times, and I’m glad that people are discussing this incident, because it brings up a lot of the artistic and ethical issues that all of us face in these times. However, when I look at the story from a literary perspective, it just feels a lot like plain old gossip.
As I said above, I believe Adrien Brody is an important piece, but I agree with those who’ve said it’s a fallacy to call it fiction, especially after it was first published as nonfiction. I don’t know if anyone would have read it if it were presented first as fiction. Kind of a like A Million Little Pieces. I’d never have picked it up if it were labeled a novel.
Maybe it would have made sense to call Adrien Brody autobiographical fiction from the start, with names and identifying details changed. But I think part of what makes the piece so powerful and resonant and emotionally charged is knowing who those people really are – or at least one of them.
Sari, that’s exactly it: Part of what makes this piece so powerful and resonant and emotionally charged is knowing who these people really are (or rather one of them). And had Adrien Brody consented to being written about that would be one thing. But he didn’t, and Tao Lin made little effort to protect his identity. The piece is powerful because Calloway and Lin sacrificed someone’s privacy, ruining his reputation and possibly career, not to mention his girlfriend’s privacy. How can anyone defend this piece on those grounds?
Is Brody’s career and reputation ruined? I think it may be enhanced by all this. I had never heard of him before but now am reading his stuff and appreciating it, like a lot of people must be now. I have empathy for his girlfriend but hardly any couple escapes issues of monogamy and infidelity. Too bad it has this public element to it, but the issue itself was obviously there and not caused by Marie.
And MC is young and admits that using the real name was a mistake, something she regrets and has learned from.
But I thought Marie said she told him she was going to write about it and he agreed? If he’s now saying that’s not true how would we know who to believe? We know Brody has already lied at least once.
The thing that struck me about the piece when I read it last week wasn’t anything about its writing style or that the writer was smart and perceptive. It was that within one quick, curious, slightly shameful google search, i’d found out the identity of ‘adrien brody’ – i’d never heard of him before but this was, without doubt, the dude. It was ridiculously easy to identify him. The result? The reality of the situation hit home, and I felt so, so sorry for his girlfriend – and even for him, actually.
I think the fact his girlfriend wrote to the Hairpin for advice and then her letter had to be removed shows even just a little that people have been hurt by this – that it has real life effects that are genuinely damaging – never mind newfound literary celebrity. I don’t, of course, think Calloway (or whatever her real name is – that’s not her real name, either, right?) is fully to blame; the guy involved is too. And of course you could argue that his girlfriend is best off without him, if he’s capable of cheating on her. But still, to find out like that? Awful. Both ‘marie calloway’ and ‘adrien brody’ do actually both come across as decent people in the piece. But that’s not the point. The point is that I couldn’t stop thinking about his girlfriend and how terribly, terribly hurt she must be. I also, despite his questionable morality, feel sympathy for, ahem, ‘adrien brody’, since his neuroses, his innermost fears & his sexual behaviour and preferences are all up there for public consumption. Excruciating. Cheating is awful, but that’s one deeply humiliating punishment he’s got for it. So I feel sorry for him, too.
Incidentally, I followed Momus’ Click Opera for years and will agree that although he did indeed write fascinating stuff about femininity and his japanophilia (and loads of other things besides), he rarely talked about his own personal life. Very, very rarely. It simply wasn’t confessional narrative. Looking at how this confessional narrative has hurt people, I see a world of difference between Momus’ many, many writings and Marie Calloway’s piece, and am confused that someone who focuses entirely on the rest of the world is such a big influence for someone who focuses entirely on herself. I’m genuinely not meaning to be provocative. I’m just, you know, sayin’.
Am I the only one who finds this whole thing incredibly sad? I am so tired of reading the story of the sweet young thing whose literary career takes off only after she writes about the editor/writer/rock star she slept with. Can’t we do better? I recently read this article about Faulkner’s affair with Joan Williams–did I get the link from the Rumpus? I don’t remember–but Williams, after her affair, shrewdly asks Faulker to blurb her novel. That would be worth more than making $40/$60 an hour as a sex worker, wouldn’t it? I can’t really wrap my head around it, but this article depresses me beyond belief–and it depresses me that The Rumpus feels the need to promote this story further. http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/13499728771/on-not-rolling-the-log
I wonder what Sugar thinks of all this?
RE. the idea of his career & reputation being enhanced by it – unlikely. The point was that by sleeping with Calloway, he showed his ethics (which he’d forged a writing career on the basis of & which Calloway admired so much) to be a lie. He was meant to be truth-seeking, truth-selling, etc – a bullshit exposer. No-one has to be squeaky clean, but there’s something utterly rubbish about acting like a wondrous Marxist saint and then being so willing to be disingenuous and duplicitous when it comes to your own life. Yes, there’s a distinction between personal and public morals but he’s tainted; it spreads. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I’m not quite sure how exactly he’s going to be able to write anything with all that much veracity now. Once you’ve shown that there’s a fucked-up difference between the ethical standards you expect of the world and the ethical standards you subscribe to yourself, how can you expect to have a career based on touting the first?
He’ll probably write a best-selling book about hypocritical idealists, though, and everyone will be happy.
I think it humanizes him, actually. (I’d never heard of him until I googled the obvious clues in the story.) All of us live and write a public ideal that we don’t really live up to behind closed doors. All of us.
My only take on this is that it would have been so so easy to smudge the details a little bit more to make him (and/or her) less recognizable, to achieve the goals of the story without all the ensuing carnage in the real world. I’ve been in analogous situations before and I’m glad they’re my own to carry around and not being debated all over the Internet by a bunch of strangers.
Also, unless those Marie pictures are fake, she’s not exactly writing from the cloak of anonymity herself, as some have claimed. She’ll probably be outed at some point; otherwise it will be hard for her to ever write under her real name in the future.
What disturbs me about MC’s writing and her account of herself is that, while she claims to have this “girl core”/empowerment philosophy, the only significant female influence she mentions is Joyce Maynard, through Maynard’s book (and the connection there is painfully obvious). There are so many smart, sex-positive women writing today on the internet and elsewhere; why does she only (in these accounts of herself, which is all I have to go by) seem to seek validation about her writing solely from men? Yes, she asked Emily Gould for advice, but only after this whole thing broke. Throughout Adrian Brody, through all her tension and indecision, and in the subsequent interviews, she never mentions reaching out to a female friend. Maybe she thinks we don’t want to hear that? I have no idea. I just wonder why someone so obsessed with female subjectivity seems uninterested in, well, other female subjects — their input or guidance or support. Anyway, I’m not crazy about her writing, but I wish her well, and I hope she has a support system beyond random guys she meets on the internet.
ditto kate flaherty’s comment.
I’m kind of new to the whole story, so haven’t read what’s on htmlgiant or Gawker. But I liked the MC story a lot and thought it an interesting exercise. I wonder if the commotion hasn’t got something to do with our anxiety about what is real and what is invented vis-a-vis everything we’re told. If a story is presented as a story, isn’t that enough to read it as a story? I think it also gets mixed up, though, with what politicians tell us, what CNN tells us, what the papers tell us. A good story only works if we believe it, regardless of the truth or the motivation or the impetus to create it. Art is a form of gossip. It’s a way of feeding back to the world what we’ve made out of what we’ve experienced/seen/thought/etc. It is, I agree with what’s been said before, a way of creating and being part of a community. Are we uncomfortable/titillated by women’s sexuality (think: The Sexual Life of Katherine M.), and younger women’s sex lives in particular. Gay men have been writing openly and honestly and in generous detail about intimacy and sex for a long time. We write, yes, as a form of gossip and also to work out and share how we function in the world, and whether we call it fiction or non-fiction or memoir or whatever, seems irrelevant. My main concern about “genre” and “reality”/reality is when young men (women, too, but mainly men) who have been brain-clogged by computer games and pornography are sent to fight in wars in places where communication is almost impossible due to language differences, and the difficulties these men (and women) have in distinguishing between what is fiction and what is lived experience, and the brutality that ensues from that. And if MC’s story was brutal – well, no one got killed, no one got hurt more than they would have anyway. The proof of the story’s merit lies in the future, I guess, like Hemingway’s stories, like countless (all?) other artists who have shaped their gossip into an aesthetic form.
@Angela, I am pretty sure he knew what he was getting into. She let him know that she writes about this kind of thing. If his relationship has been damaged or his reputation tarnished, I think he’s at least partly responsible. I would have less of a problem with his identity being so easily discovered if she weren’t covering up her own true identity.
This is a hoax. This is a “morality tale” written by a female misogynist.
Yes, there are lessons here about the lines between fiction and memoir, the fraught responsibilities of storytelling, and the relationship between a story and its linguistic expression. But for me the takeaway is, when you receive an e-mail from a co-ed who says she loves your writing and is coming to your city and wants to sleep with you, you should go ahead and take the ten seconds to follow those links she sent to her essays on Thought Catalog. Yes, it can be tempting just to lie and say you did, but this story illustrates perfectly why that is NEVER a good idea.
And maybe an
And maybe another 10 secs to say “thanks, but I have a girlfriend “?
@me @SariBotton: The Observer piece says that he consented to be written about, but the Observer reporter also made it clear she didn’t talk with “Adrien” for the piece. We are going on MC’s word here, and she pretty clearly has an agenda. Why on earth would someone who has consistently maintained a low-key public profile consent to such a thing? The fact that we haven’t heard a peep from him points to him not wanting a thing to do with this. She didn’t just post the piece with his name, she posted highly identifying details.
@Eleanor: Have you read “Adrien”‘s work? I used to read his blog somewhat regularly, and he doesn’t make himself out to be a saintly Marxist. MC does that on her own in this piece because she clearly idolized him. He shouldn’t have cheated, but it’s not like he’s blogging about “family values” and fidelity. Were he doing that, we’d have a Newt Gingrich/Spitzer-type hypocrisy going on. But he’s blogging about, like, the housing bubble.
@LX, can you say something more about that? How is she a misogynist? Are you saying that in being this self-destructive she’s *deliberately* advancing hatred of women, starting with herself? But then she’s inadvertently (or intentionally?) written a “morality tale”?
Sari: Adrien Brody did not give permission despite what the Observer “reported.” Marie admits this in a roundabout way:
“I guess it might also be worth noting that anyone I’ve had as a main character in a story I’ve written has had full knowledge that I am a writer who writes about the people in her life. a lot of people have given me permission. I should note that it’s common knowledge that I first ran “Adrien Brody†using pictures and real names on my blog, and I now see how that was a really horrible and irresponsible thing to do, and I will never do anything like that again without permission.”
Being a writer who writes about people in their life is not the same thing as being a writer who willfully and revengefully exposes former sex partners.
this is kind of like barely legal’s special sweet valley high issue w/Tao Lin insisting on showing everyone he passed rhetoric 101. a slow news in a boring world.
Speaking of truth, what about the real Adrian Brody? I don’t see anybody here thinking about HIS feelings. After all, he is the only actual celebrity involved here. An Oscar winner, no less. At the very least, Marie Callender should, in the spirit of equanimity, have ironical literary sex with him, or perhaps, if she is woman enough, Manolete himself.
Damn…Marie Calloway (or whoever she claims to be) certainly knows how to work the American dream. A twenty-one year old college student who tempts a man and then blogs about her experience…dismembering the myth of her famed conquest like he is a holiday Christmas tree tossed curbside. Her writing is hardly legendary, but that isn’t the point. Her objective was to tell her provocative tale and take little or no responsibility for the bloodbath of destruction. She can hardly be surprised at her rising fame and subsequent publication…as well as her hate mail. She left enough clues pointing to his identity that he’d be visible in a Wyoming whiteout. It’s all about shock and awe and she nailed it. She is young, but not too young to know how to make a buck.
I feel interested in what nia said: “read deep,” “think about sociopathy, think about motive.”
If you are someone who thinks sociopaths are all serial killers, you won’t understand this comment.
I don’t think bashing MC is very helpful. I don’t think she should have been exposed this way. Sure, a twenty-one-year-old, in theory, is mature enough to handle the consequences of making her writing public. But this never would have happened in a print publication. It sounds like she doesn’t know what she’s doing (i.e. she’s unapologetically exploring the “bad” parts of her character???). She’s inexperienced. People she admired encouraged her to publish this–“yeah, let’s publish this! great idea!”–and now she’s under the bus.
When you allow yourself to be exposed in notoriety based exploitation which has its roots in instantaneous internet connection, you must be prepared to incur the instantaneous ups and downs orbiting in cyberspace. A 21-year old should understand that concept, because that is the nanosecond world in which they operate. What I find disturbing is that she profited on his weakness…which may just be an extension of modern day dog-eat-dog capitalism. Through all the internet outlets such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc., we have exposed the deep human desire for recognition, and the” Fifteen Minutes of Fame.” I think this applies to amd’s comment about this most likely never happening in print media…But in cyberspace, there are no secrets, and widespread publication is at one’s fingertips. Bashing the puddle-jumping MC is not my intention, but people have to understand that what they do, write, and say will have consequences. No longer can we stand behind a wall of naivete, and at the same time claim that as “well-read writers” we don’t understand the implications.
All this fuss about such lightweight writing. Sheeesh. Back to Colette. Back to Duras. Please!
So much moralism. It’s kind of astounding. I mean, “the bloodbath of destruction”! – really? Are we talking Iraq or the Marie Calloway aftermath. And @Annie, too – “she profited on his weakness”! What? Poor innocent older man seduced by nymphette?! And yes, this would definitely have appeared in print, as this kind of work has been appearing in print for centuries. What about Duras’ The Lover? And David Copperfield? And The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas? People have been exposing their lovers and loved-ones/”loved-ones” forever. Though maybe “Adrien Brody” wouldn’t have appeared in print because it’s not that brilliant a story. It’s good enough. But the Internet, thank the gods, provides writers with an immediate audience, and an attentive one at that, and one that is willing to engage, like we’re all doing. I also agree, though – it is a moral question, or a question of what does caring about others mean. I’ve been writing a sex blog for the past two years and trying to be as honest as possible while only changing idetifying details, though there haven’t been any celebrities involved (except one porn star) and maybe that is what’s really behind all this. Writing’s bloodbath of destruction means nothing unless a celebrity’s involved.
wish I could have jetted into NYC when I was 21 to pop someone’s cherry and then blow a bunch of money eating out, shopping at Tiffanys, etc…
naaaa…..
way to go Elliot…having read Rumpus for over a year now, I have noticed that the articles getting the most comments (attention) are all gossip oriented.
the pond is getting more and more shallow.
I followed the link, skim read to the bit about where he walks by her on the street at their meeting, and stopped…..boring, very very boring.
you guys can do way better than this…..
Sorry Harry. We don’t actually control which articles get the most comments (attention). You do. Maybe you’ll like this interview with Adrian Tomine, which was the homepage feature the day this interview ran.
Yes Stephen, I agree, and indeed I did enjoy the Tomine interview as I have many other interviews published here over the course of this passing year.
Indeed, I think that the two interviews relate, if one were to apply Tomine’s feeling of changes in young artist’s development due to available technology.
I just finished James Wood’s review of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s book “Pulphead”, where the case of the essay form as an alternative to the conservatism of mainstream fiction is made. I think the essay form is what Calloway is attempting, but without the usual, shall I say, career development, due to new technologies which don’t filter art from …well…blogging.
“Adrien Brody” wouldn’t be on my radar at all if it weren’t for The Rumpus…so I continue to be grateful for a place that stimulates thought and discourse.
Who would have thought a story like this could rattle such diverse hornets nests:
* “Artistic merit” (as if that means something specific and universal)
* The pop culture reality-tv-esque appeal of a soft-core sex story about the pseudo-famous
*The ethics of MC’s “Oops! I accidentally published without changing the names”
* Porn, sex work and feminism
* Whether the knowledge that an act will be story-fied actually alters the act itself
And so much more!
Frankly, the conversations the story has ignited have been infinitely more riveting than the story itself (and I enjoyed the story). The truth is, there’s nothing particularly new or revolutionary about WHAT MC has written (just see one of MC’s own literary influences Joyce Maynard), or even the style or form in which she’s written it. It’s what happened NEXT that’s become so compelling.
It’s hard for me to tell just how knowing MC really is or was about the potential fallout…particularly related to its first publication with names, photos, et al. It seems slightly disingenuous for someone who’s been marinated in this media soup since her early teens to shout “mea culpa!” about that particular misstep. This ain’t her first trip to the rodeo after all.
Whatever her motives (and she’s the crypt keeper of those) people are having some mighty interesting conversations as a result. Just think how many new thoughts have been thought (some outraged, others titillated, heart-broken, reverent, conflicted, judgmental…)!
Her 15,000 words had thousands, maybe millions of babies! Articles, comments, letters, e-mails, and stories, surely some really GOOD STORIES are being unleashed on the world as a result. And THAT, to me, is exciting.
MC’s experiences are indeed subtly infiltrated by her political reading, particularly Marxism with its focus on power and who has it. It seems strange to see someone so young interested in Marxism and its relation to cultural studies: very retro somehow. But I’m pleased to see confessional writing being scrutinised and talked about in this way.
The dude in the story reminded me of this ol’ sleazebag in my department who is still arguing that Escorts enjoy the power they wield over men.
I’m not sure why MC was interested in Adrien or whoever in the first place, but anyway, her work and ideas are valid.
The original essay by “MC” was interesting enough to keep me reading ’til the end despite multiple deadlines and thus a short attention span–which is saying a lot. In addition, the story served as a cautionary tale that, even fictionalized, “Adrien” was very easily identified. (Yikes–I hope I never make that mistake!) But what I’m really loving are people’s reactions to the story, from annoyed to reverent to outraged. That in itself is entertaining and thought-provoking.
I can see why “bored” middle-aged men (and maybe some 20 year-old girls) would find this whole thing titillating, but I’m surprised anyone else does. I skimmed the “fictionalized” essay and didn’t think it offered a particularly fresh view of this kind of experience, which is sometimes best forgotten. Easy enough to google the real “Adrien Brody,” and no way would I have ruined someone else’s relationship to sleep with that dude. The only good to come of this is that his girlfriend now knows he’s a shit. I feel badly she got dragged into this, as well as Momus’s long-term, live-in girlfriend, who must be feeling similarly nauseated.
MC mentioned Annie Hall in her piece (which was farily interesting, I didn’t expect to finish but did), but Stephen gets it right by mentioning Manhattan and Muriel Hemingway. We’ve seen all this before. I don’t get the outrage–the guy cheated, he knew what could happen. MC wrote publicly about something private, she definitely knew what could happen. It’s encouraged interesting conversation. I pity the girlfriend, but maybe she was just saved years with a lousy boyfriend. Everybody wins.
This all seems so perfect for the Rumpus. Hmmm.
I found it with difficulty. It took some juggling, and I started getting lucky about half way through. The way to justify the fiction, a suspension of judgement, and having been told the characters are real people. Make a decision, or put it down. So I chose. Glad I did. Reading this was one small risk in a long line of mostly close shaves.
Vulnerability, indeed:)
– It’s probably impossible to be a young woman on the internet and write stories with sex in them without being accused of being an “attention whore.†–
Dear Marie,
It’s probably impossible to be a woman and do anything without being accused of being an attention whore.
Alrighty. Having finally read Adrian Brody, with understanding that it was originally a piece of memoir essay, I think I can say this:
1- so she as a twenty one year old wrote about sex. She’s female. Oh lawd, the scandal. Sex is a part of life, a part of writing, and sometimes is the impetus to both of those things.
2- No, I don’t think she’s trying to render her original piece invalid. I think she’s trying a different way to tell the truth. Unfortunately, this isn’t a two step editing process. She backpedaled instead of shitty first drafted- had Adrian Brody been introduced as a work of fiction, even with all of the veiled hints towards the identity of the writer, it still would have caused less of a storm than the fact that it started as a piece of memoir. Trying to change halfway is bad form.
3- I really wish that the internet in general would spend more time talking about the pieces as works instead of as moralistic debates. Maybe it’s an age gap. At twenty three I really could care less who MC slept with, so long as the story- true or fictionalized- is told in an interesting way.
4- Was MC trying to garner attention? Possibly. Why not? Aren’t all young aspiring writers, myself included? I can’t begrudge her that.
And for the record, I didn’t find Adrian Brody interesting. It was choppy and strange, a sort of internet hiccup that I don’t personally find attractive, though I could see why members of my generation are so drawn to it as a narrative form.
marie conway is hot.
malcolm harris is a genius.
this is a good interview.
“I admire self-awareness more than probably any other quality, and I think in terms of what qualities are “good†in a person, it’s a mostly subjective opinion, so I can’t see a reason to think that self-absorption is inherently a bad thing.”
After spending more than twice the time being self-absorbed than Ms. Calloway, I think I’ve seen the difference between something that is profoundly true and something trivial (like gossip). The former highlights the universal qualities of a good (or bad) person that we can sometimes feel and know, while the latter highlights the individual subjective qualities we narcissistically seek in experiences with others.
“Adrian Brody” reminds me of the Monica Lewinsky affair, without a Linda Tripp to blame. Kind of sad. There are some universal truths here, but they didn’t strike me as being expressed through the young writer’s self-awareness.
I find it interesting that many of the people who are critical of Marie Calloway’s writing seem to be upset primarily because it might cause problems between “Adrien Brody” and his girlfriend. Are you serious? If you dislike her writing or think she unfairly exposed the identity of “Adrien,” fine. To discuss the possible fallout in his relationship is to treat the story as nothing more than a gossip rag and join in on the gossip.
This reaction is also interesting in terms of the discussion of feminism. A guy cheats on his girlfriend. The girl blabs and the girlfriend finds out. Instead of placing blame on the guy for being disloyal, people place blame on the girl?
Jessica, I don’t hear anyone here blaming MC for the infidelity itself. Were anyone doing that, yes, that would be a double standard. But I hear them squarely pointing the finger at her for the ethical considerations of broadcasting details about their liaison. That was entirely MC’s decision. You want to talk feminism? “Marie Calloway”‘s actions public actions are causing another woman public pain. Private pain is one thing, and the fallout from their hookup is totally on “Brody”‘s shoulders, not MC’s, not at all. But he didn’t ask to have his name smeared like this, and certainly his girlfriend didn’t either. Saying it’s antifeminist to question her role in this is a feminist red herring.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.