A Warning to Would Be Plagiarists

One more article on books by committee -

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2157647,00.html
"Lit chick debacle that damns the publishers"

Well, I think it damns the packagers, but not so sure it damns Little Brown.
Hard for me to believe that people at Little Brown didn't know about McCafferty's book, but maybe...

It makes you wonder how many have gotten away with it?

Fresh passages in the novel by a Harvard sophomore, whose book was pulled from stores last week after she acknowledged plagiarizing portions of it, appear to be copied from a second author

A Harvard University student's "chick lit" novel has been permanently withdrawn and her two-book deal canceled, publisher Little, Brown and Company announced Tuesday, as allegations of literary borrowing proliferated against Kaavya Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life."

"Little, Brown and Company will not be publishing a revised edition of `How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life' by Kaavya Viswanathan, nor will we publish the second book under contract," Michael Pietsch, Little Brown's senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

I'm not sure they are such saints either. Are editors of big ticket books not familiar with similar best sellers of recent vintage?

Please consider how many Harvard Law professors have also been charged with similar crimes.

Of course. It's not new. Just shocking when revealed.

I'm now wondering how or if Harvard will punish the Student.

If she had any shame, she'd exit stage left and transfer to another school. I'd bet you she won't, though.

She'll probably take a leave of absence and then return to Harvard, as if nothing at all happened.

Well now, I hope you can all understand why I don't read any books while I am writing. I don't look at any TV or movies, nor do I listen to the radio news or music. I remove all the magazines and books from my apartment and if I am going to visit anyone they have to put a sheet over their bookshelves and take away all the coffee table books.

I try to be as culturally illiterate as possible so if I am at a dinner and the people start to talk about the latest celebrity break-up, I put my hands over my ears. I stare at my shoes on the subway so that I don't see any newspapers articles or pictures. I try to remove myself from anything that has ever been written down or sung or movie-scripted so that I don't mistakenly internalize any of the other authors' wording, thoughts or literally tics.

I know I am susceptible. If I see a "Mystery!" on PBS, I often talk in a high British accent for a fortnight. After seeing Kevin Cosner's POSTMAN, I spent two weeks working on a movie script entitled "The Last UPS Truck", and almost the same thing happened after "Dances with Wolves" and "Field of Dreams" only my script was about a hockey player who tries out for the Cleveland Indians.

Both my series about the little witch girl Harriet Miller and my giant mega-novel "A Really Heartrending Work of Incredible Genius" were rejected by smirky agent underlings who made asides about my working off the inside pages of the New York Times Book Review. I can't read that either, too many good ideas.

For the past three years, I have secreted myself against all of the undue influences and I think it has paid off. Tomorrow I am going to send my latest work to a publisher, I feel secure about it's integrity and the importance of it's fresh look at an old subject - It's the story of the Early Christian Church and how due to untoward influences of wine merchants in those early days that the more important references to dairy farmers were completely excised from the Gospels -it's called


The Divinity ala Mode.

Joe(I avoid reading Edgar's posts too , they are too too good.)Nation

I know what you mean, farmerman. I spent a year writing a novel (about 1975). The publisher wrote me a personal note, explaining that the book bore too many similarities to Stuart Little. That and the fact it was not well enough written secured my ms. by return mail.

Is there such a thing among the human race, as an " original thought"?

Re my last post: In my defense, I was steeped from earliest childhood in movies and comic books, in which mouse sized people and mice acting like people, were pretty much the norm. True, I had read Start Little by this time, but I felt I avoided copying it and the other little similar characters. Obviously, that publisher did not agree.

Yes.

A fellow named Albert had one or two and another, a guy in Spain named Pablo, put his on canvas with paint and agony. There was this Dickinson woman who could encapsulate the idea of an entire summer day in a matter of a few words as later my friend e.e. would do with even fewer. And the fabric of the universe is strung together in twelve to twenty dimensions and wrapped and warped and wormholed from end to end to end, or so the original thinkers of such things think.

Yes. There are original thoughts flying all around us. We who are grateful to think of something new to order in for dinner relish reading or seeing or hearing them.

Joe(what do you think?)Nation

When I wrote my comments concerning "original thoughts", I was thinking of authors, specifically, not scientists or inventors.

Oh.

Let me think.


Thomas Jefferson (No. I am not being coy.)

William Faulkner

JD Salinger

Steinbeck
(All having original views of the American life)

Hermann Hesse (Novelized the eternal buddha)

Heinlein (mostly for the word 'grok' and the invention of the "Church of All Worlds or Every World, I can't remember now.)

I'm sure that I could think of more, even more non-Americans... Huxley, HG Wells etc.


Joe(perhaps many more)Nation

Of course, your assumptions have been made based on published material.
As you undoubtedly know, most thoughts ( original or not ) are not published.

Thus, your conclusions are not without fault.

All my thoughts are published.

A copy of them is available at your local corner store.

Joe(Try lifting that)Nation

I grok the smell of fresh typos in the morning.