So, Ian McEwan got accused of plagiarism. The case against him seems pretty weak, and he winds up defending himself. His defense is basically a definition of "research," amounting to an admittance that he learned various historical details from reading other books. The really interesting part of this, though, is that a lot of writers, including the notoriously reclusive Thomas Pynchon, have rushed to his defense, saying that this level of scrutiny says very bad things for their art, and detailing the ways that their own works involve "plagiarism" at McEwan's level.
This has some relation to the current debates over copyright legislation/enforcement, and is of course, interesting due to the types of discussions still happening in the wake of the James Frey scandal and the Kaavya Viswanathan debacle and that whole James T. LeRoy thing. As much as I find Viswanathan's actions dubious, I'm ambivalent about Frey, and pretty nonplussed about LeRoy. How "original" do new works have to be? How exposed should their sources be? And, really, who gets to decide if things in creative works are true?
Thursday, December 07, 2006
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And also, what's with this sort of mean-spirited "caught you!" spirit among critics and audiences? Why would a fiction writer "owe" his/her audience some kind of totally original piece? And why do people punish writers so heartily when they find "evidence" like this? A perception that writers are overcompensated for what they do? Or just an attachment to art that demands that it be "pure" in some undefinable way?
I think a lot of it has to do with the deployment of "authenticity." Frey's work was busted because he was, in some way, claiming experiences he had not had.
I personally love the whole LeRoy thing, because I love hoaxes. But, it raises the question, too, of why a hoax was necessary -- why couldn't they have just been some sort of lurid, sort of mediocre pieces of fiction?
You know what I think is nuts? Apparently (and this has got to be connected to the moral panic over "authenticity") some novelists are now adding works cited/consulted lists ... as if the fact that one FICTION writer did more research makes them a better writer of FICTION than one who writes well...or something ... I'm probably not making sense.
I think the works cited might be more of a cover your ass move than anything else -- it's not plagiarism if you expose your sources, right?
Speaking of which, this is a funny URL, Carly:
http://www.everytopicintheuniverseexceptchickens.com/
What's interesting (to me) about that link is that it is done by the guy who does Dinosaur Comics, which I have apparently read for long enough that I immediately picked up on the tone and knew who did it. Secondly, the entry for "elephants" on Wikipedia is actually locked because it got hit so hard after being referenced on the Colbert Report. (Seriously, check the entry it's huge.)
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