Today I want to write about a topic that is near and dear. Copying. Yeah, plagiarism. For all of us that grew up before the Internet was a blip - think of those book reports and the encyclopedia's that made a fifth grader sound a little too knowledgeable about the life and times of Jim Thorpe, this is for you.
John Donne, who is a slightly better writer than I, says it best about plagiarism...
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated..."
Jonathan Lethem makes the same point in his excellent article in the February Harper's. I know, February, but it hasn't left my brain simply because examples keep popping up. Lethem brilliantly illustrates that plagiarism can be found everywhere and despite our attempts to regulate - copyright laws - plagiarism in all its glorious forms makes us better. Without Jamaicans King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry taking the break beats from songs they liked, would we have hip-hop? Recently departed William S. Burroughs, who was one of the most original authors ever, used a "cut-up method" borrowing from American science fiction of the Forties and Fifties. You see kids, imitation is not only one hell of a form flattery, it's necessary.
But, even as the law becomes more restrictive, technology (the lovely Internets) is exposing those restrictions as bizarre and arbitrary. Here, I'll give you an example - download A-Ko's "Soul 69" FOR FREE. He took something old and put his own spin on it - and that's what it is all about. Let's rok Finley Quaye's "Ultra Stimulation" as well, if not for any other reason than because it's great.
Ultra Stimulation
I downloaded both tunes just now. Internets is crazy, yo.
As for plagiarism, I admire the post. It's an important one. But I'm not sure I fully agree. I see all these writers coming to the aid of their comrades who get busted - Please. As far as I'm concerned, James Frey is a hack job anyway -- wouldn't nobody want to bite that style. And his story: just another 12 step bad boy. Nothing original there. It's simple -- if you didn't do significant time in the Cincinnati clinker, then don't say you did.
More interesting is the case of Brad Vice, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction a couple years back. Automatic book publication by University of Georgia Press (Good title -- THE BEAR BRYANT FUNERAL TRAIN). Book goes to print, gets in stores and bibliotecas, a librarian recognizes whole passages from Carl Carmer's 1934 book STARS FELL ON ALABAMA. Brings it to other's attention. Long story short, UGA decides to pull all copies and pulp dem mufuckas. All writers have a pity party for poor Brad Vice, who, of course, was only using a postmodern device to pay tribute to Carmer (keep whining, you academics). It's an intertextual thing, you wouldn't understand. Well, maybe I don't understand, but the point is, I don't want to.
And now try to find a copy of the book for under 400 clams on Amazon or Abebooks.
Though no ideas may be new, and though our created text of course owes to thousands of others, Mr. Vice was simply lazy, if you ask me. There's homage and then there's slacking on your duty to do something new, even if that duty is impossible. Don't try to pass your MFA thesis off on me, homeboy. I want more.
[1] Linwood, I was hoping you of all people would chime in on this subject and chime you did - thanks.
And I must say that I agree with you statements. I only addressed the influence of those that came before, I should have been more clear that outright copying doesn't help us - one must put their own stamp on isht, but I think you understood the spirit of my argument and that's all that matters.
I don't understand the James Frey referrence in relation to plagerism. He didn't plagerize, he fictionalized events and then passed them off as actually having occured. Which, by the way, I don't think is that big of a deal. Certainly, much less so than outright theft of others ideas. I read the book. I enjoyed it. I didn't feel cheated when I found out that large parts were completely madu up. I thought the media frenzy was ridiculous. Millions of people who heralded this book one day were ready to burn it the next, despite the fact that they enjoyed the story as they were reading. Further, if Frey had added the generic "based on real events" tag, I'm sure that most readers would have preferred remaining ignorant to which events were real and which weren't because just like any other feel good schlock that's released through various forms of media, people want to believe every treacly drop in order to maintain that the world really is a good place and that there are such things as real life heroes. I think that Oprah and all the rest of the whiners who were embarassed that their hero was revealed as just another coddled schmuck should have the balls to stand by their convictions and admit that when they read the book they liked it. I got off topic, but the hypocrisy of that entire episode really got under my skin. As far as my thoughts on plagerism; don't do it.
Thunderpants has moved me to respond. First, he makes a good point in that what Frey did was not plagiarism, but instead a "fictionalized" version of true events. Agreed, although some of us thought such books were called novels. As far as everything else Thunderpants writes about the Frey fiasco, I completely disagree.
Bear with me. I want to agree with Thunderpants, and maybe if I truly thought this book was great or even good or even halfway decent literature, I might be willing to do so. In fact, before he was revealed as a liar, I liked Frey based solely on a curse-laced interview I'd read in which he humorously discounted the pretty boys of contemporary fiction (I hadn't read his book -- memoirs by relatively young men who've gotten clean and sober strike me as self-aggrandizing). Now, I see that Frey was either just a dumb shit all around or a calculating surveyor of sales trends of memoirs versus novels.
In other words, like most readers, I only cracked the cover AFTER the controversy, and what I found was . . .
I digress. I'm not here to bash the guy's lack of craft. I'm here to say that if Frey wanted to do what Thunderpants has suggested is no big deal, that is "fictionalize" events, then do what everybody else has to do -- call it fiction. Why didn't he do this, you ask? Because the manuscript wouldn't get agented much less sell more than a couple thousand copies. Its gimmick, its very essence as a seller was the fact that it purported to be the truth. To me then, in this case at least, not telling the truth is a big deal.
P.S. C$, if you really want to continue this fascinating discussion, why not have your next blog entry be about the case of JT Leroy. Don't get me stawted.
wow, this blog is going all upscale and isht. what ever happened to penis power, lindsay lohan, white rappers and morphing?
Thanks for both of your comments. This is the sort of dialog that makes my effort worthwhile.
As for Thunder's argument, I see the merit. If a story moves you, isn't that paramount? But, I see Linwood's side as well. One thing I can't stand in life are poseurs and real recognizes real AND those that front. That, in my opinion, is the truly evil side of plagiarism.
[6] There's plenty of room for all of it, Dale.
NERDS.