5:50 pm - 12/11/2012
Didn’t get a chance to read Girls creator Lena Dunham’s $3.7 million book proposal when it leaked online last Friday? Too bad — Gawker, the site that originally published the proposal, has removed it after being contacted by Charles Harder, the 26-year-old multihyphenate’s lawyer. Buzzfeed has taken down every image from a post titled “9 Passages From Lena Dunham’s Book Proposal Illustrated By Her Instagrams” as well.
But while Gawker writer John Cook got rid of the proposal itself — though it’s probably still floating around on the Internet, since Cook posted it as a downloadable Scribd file — he neglected to scrub several of its quotes from his original blog post despite Harder’s cease and desist. Instead, Cook has added snide commentary meant “to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham’s proposal” to each excerpt. Example: “The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn’t serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.”
Girls returns to HBO Jan. 13.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying posture of precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is revelatory of Dunham's character in that it provides evidence that she has been examining her own thoughts and desires analytically from an absurdly young age. It is also indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of Dunham's self-dramatizing narcissism inasmuch as it presents what is obviously a desire for an attention-grabbing condition as a fear of developing said condition. It is also indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal. It also demonstrates her obsessive and boundaryless relationship with her mother, who is friends with Meryl Streep.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates an oblivious cluelessness about time and its passage.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates a self-awareness on Dunham's part that the subject of her proposal—herself—was raised in exquisite privilege.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham was so desperate to have the minutiae of her life—and her dietary choices—validated by cultural arbiters that she participated in coverage of a dinner party by the New York Times. It also demonstrates that she periodically deploys such validation as suits her needs.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: Come on. Poetry camp?
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates, by way of a blithe and effortless reference to her mother's domestic service-provider, that Dunham exists in a navel-gazing bubble of privilege where one's mother simply has a nutritionist.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is preposterously hackneyed and demonstrates an "I workshopped it at Oberlin" level of quality that permeates the proposal.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham and her friends cruelly mocked a young girl struggling with her weight.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn't serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.
source 1 and source 2
Lena Dunham threatens legal action, Gawker removes leaked book proposal, adds commentary
Didn’t get a chance to read Girls creator Lena Dunham’s $3.7 million book proposal when it leaked online last Friday? Too bad — Gawker, the site that originally published the proposal, has removed it after being contacted by Charles Harder, the 26-year-old multihyphenate’s lawyer. Buzzfeed has taken down every image from a post titled “9 Passages From Lena Dunham’s Book Proposal Illustrated By Her Instagrams” as well.
But while Gawker writer John Cook got rid of the proposal itself — though it’s probably still floating around on the Internet, since Cook posted it as a downloadable Scribd file — he neglected to scrub several of its quotes from his original blog post despite Harder’s cease and desist. Instead, Cook has added snide commentary meant “to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham’s proposal” to each excerpt. Example: “The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn’t serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.”
Girls returns to HBO Jan. 13.
I went to my first Women's Action Coalition meeting at age three.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying posture of precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.
I've been in therapy since I was seven.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is revelatory of Dunham's character in that it provides evidence that she has been examining her own thoughts and desires analytically from an absurdly young age. It is also indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.
When I was about nine I developed a terrible fear of being anorexic.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of Dunham's self-dramatizing narcissism inasmuch as it presents what is obviously a desire for an attention-grabbing condition as a fear of developing said condition. It is also indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal.
When I was about nine I wrote a vow of celibacy.... I knew my mother had waited until the summer after she graduated [high school].
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is indicative of a nauseating and cloying precociousness that permeates the entire proposal. It also demonstrates her obsessive and boundaryless relationship with her mother, who is friends with Meryl Streep.
At 24 I felt like an old maid....
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates an oblivious cluelessness about time and its passage.
When I got to college I suddenly had the sense that my upbringing hadn't been very "real."
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates a self-awareness on Dunham's part that the subject of her proposal—herself—was raised in exquisite privilege.
Once I had a vegan dinner party which was chronicled for the style section of the New York Times.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham was so desperate to have the minutiae of her life—and her dietary choices—validated by cultural arbiters that she participated in coverage of a dinner party by the New York Times. It also demonstrates that she periodically deploys such validation as suits her needs.
Once at poetry camp I saw my friend Joana in a bikini.....
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: Come on. Poetry camp?
I immediately started seeing my mother's nutritionist, Vinnie.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates, by way of a blithe and effortless reference to her mother's domestic service-provider, that Dunham exists in a navel-gazing bubble of privilege where one's mother simply has a nutritionist.
Every ice pop I ate, every movie I watched, every poem I wrote was tinged with a fearful loss.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence is preposterously hackneyed and demonstrates an "I workshopped it at Oberlin" level of quality that permeates the proposal.
Cassie was a very fat girl we knew who we had nicknamed fat Cassie because she also wasn't that nice.
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham and her friends cruelly mocked a young girl struggling with her weight.
I've never kept a diary, [because] if a girl writes in her diary and no one's there to read it did she really write at all?
Update: Lena Dunham's personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham's proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn't serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.
source 1 and source 2
whether or not you like dunham is completely beside the point
and fwiw they added literally nothing that half the articles about her don't already say
Edited at 2012-12-12 02:00 am (UTC)
Lena Dunham and her book proposal are still insufferable though.
there may be some sort of nda with the publisher about it in which case they are correct to protect the contents of the proposal, who knows
bottom line is who cares. gawker can't seem to do anything without whining endlessly about it. it would be less irritating if it were the first time tbh but this is basically their mo at this point.
what i'm saying is them snarking on her is not original or clever and just adds to a pattern of frankly unprofessional behavior from people who would occasionally like to play at being journalists
i ain't her biggest fan either for the record but gawker bitching like this just makes me dislike them more. ymmv obviously.
I mean, I think there lots of are legit criticisms of gawker, but looking unprofessional is kind of missing the point of what their site was conceived as/continues to be.