Intertextuality

The recent controversy over Brad Vice’s short story collection has led to some discussions about intertextuality – the idea of merging scenes and ideas, or even actual text, from a previously published work, into one’s own work, to create a new work.

Some claim that this has being done, without attribution to the original author, from the times of Homer, Shakespeare, Eliot, and others.  On the other side of the fence are those arguing that copyright and fair use laws render this an idea that is out and out stealing.

I asked those in the EWN what they thought about the topic and a little over 30 different authors, publishers, editors and readers responded as you’ll read below.  The range of responses goes from other authors admitting to having used a similar process all the way to asking for five minutes alone in a room with those who would.

The question I posed is next, followed by the individual responses:

Where do you fall on this idea?  Is it ever okay for an author to use another author’s work within their own – be it as a means of looking at a similar situation from a different perspective, or meant to be an homage, or any other reason?  If so, what level of acknowledgement needs to be made – footnotes?  An acknowledgements page?  An epigraph?

_____ _____

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”  -T.S. Eliot

I’d want an epigraph.

Gary C. Wilkens – poet

_____ _____

Kathy Acker didn't acknowledge her pirated sources. Sometimes her book titles, such as Great Expectations and Don Quixote, made it obvious. Like duh. Still, when she appropriated the text of a Harold Robbins sex scene she was denounced as a plagiarist and dropped by her British publisher. Brad Vice is no Acker-esque pomo pirate, but the Tuscaloosa Nights/Knights wordplay makes it perfectly clear that the story is a revisioning of Carmer's work. That's enough acknowledgement for me, but both writers would've avoided a good deal of duress and dumbassery (I stole that phrase) if they had thanked so-and-so for permission to reprint the following material from such-and-such from the get-go.

Noria Jablonski
author of Human Oddities       

_____ _____

I recently surprised some high school students when during a visit I told them that my short story, "The Onion and I" (one of the stories in Ordinary Genius, U. of Nebraska Press, 2005), was inspired by Sherwood Anderson's "The Egg and I."  Here's the story.  My friend Jeanne Schinto asked me if I might have a story for a new anthology she was editing: Virtually Now, Stories of Science, Technology and the Future.  I told her I'd get her something, but was a bit stymied, not having written in that vein before.  But I thought of Anderson's story, which I consider to be one of the best about the turn of the last century.  Basically, I used his idea of a "cheerful, kindly man" making changes as he adapts to a virtual world of the 21st century, just as Anderson's "cheerful, kindly man"
adapts from being a farm hand to trying chicken farming, and eventually running a restaurant near Bidwell, Ohio.  In my story, an onion farmer moves into a "cyber" village in a virtual town created by the Bidwell project.  I took three lines from the Anderson story.  The first and last sentences, and a transitional sentence.

Now, to your question of attribution.  I think any literate person who knows "The Egg and I" would be alert to the homage I'm paying to that story.  I deliberately use the Bidwell name and other small "tippings of the hat" to Anderson.

I can cite many recent novels that have borrowed characters:  The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Insect Dreams (borrows Gregor Samsa), etc. And of course people borrow plots:  the Odyssey in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou, and in Joyce's Ulysses.

My sense is that if one does it openly, in the spirit of conversation, of addendum, of homage, of deepening the understanding of the original text, character, story, then this is not plagiarism, it's art.

I hope so! 

Tom Averill

_____ _____

"Intertextuality," like "permanently borrowing," is a rhetorical dodge to avoid the word "theft." When your neighbor mows his lawn with your mower that he borrowed 3 years before, you are not receiving an homage. No one in  the neighborhood recalls the good old days when you mowed your own lawn--now overrun with weeds.

The issue is simple. Borrowing is OK--provided the rules are followed. The basic rule is that one does not present another's work as one's own.

The exception in current intellectual property laws is parody and satire. If I write a play called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" I don't have to credit Shakespeare--that's parody or satire, and it indeed results in a very different work. The notion of "intertextuality" as a form of "homage"--done without acknowledgement, permission, or credit--is stealing.

Homer worked from an oral tradition. There is no other way to preserve such literature except by repetition and elaboration. There is also no Copyright Office housed in a corner of the Parthenon. Mr. Vice's borrowings were not an oral tradition made textual.

Shakespeare read well known public domain histories and chronicles to find the plots and characters for such plays as Macbeth and Julius Caesar--but the operant phrases are "well known" and "public domain." He had a reasonable expectation that his audience knew who Richard III was, and a reasonable expectation that his audience would know what he had invented and what he had used to germinate invention. Falstaff is no less a marvel because Sir John Oldcastle once existed. If I compose a musical called "West Side Story," I need not acknowledge Shakespeare: not only do I have a reasonable expectation that my audience has heard of "Romeo and Juliet," but the original play is in public domain. It belongs to our culture--not to Shakespeare's estate or descendants. Mr. Vice's borrowings were from sources neither well known nor in public domain.

Eliot's "The Wasteland" is filled with intertextuality--it's also filled with footnotes placed at Ezra Pound's urging. Allusive references are not "intertextual"; they rely on a level of knowledge on the part of a reader and so constitute a risk on the part of a writer that meaning will evade a reader--but allusive reference is a long way from "intertextuality." It's tough to read Eliot without ever having seen a tarot deck; it also helps to have read Kyd's "The Spanish Tragedy." But unlike Eliot, Mr. Vice's "intertextual" borrowings were neither noted nor allusive.

Any pedant who teaches Freshman Composition would not pardon student plagiarism as "homage" without acknowledgement. Anyone with a Ph. D. could not have been confused by these issues.

So, yes, it is OK--provided the rules are followed. The rules are clear.

Best,

Perry Glasser

_____ _____

Ideas are universal, however how those ideas are penned are not. Therefore if one writer is going to 'lift' another's words, i.e. quote then there should be a note of that.
In the novel I am working on I have 'borrowed' two lines from Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy as a tribute to this fine work and its influence on me. I will certainly be pointing out these lines on the acknowledgments page.

All best,

Soniah Kamal

_____ _____

Here are my ten cents:
      
First, let's be honest - we are all impacted by the stories we read.  Otherwise we would never improve or learn as writers. 

Second, I don't see a problem with using something as a baseline as long as the original author is given credit.  But I think that this is more effective as a writing exercise rather than targeting the new story for publication.  I don't see why a writer couldn't use a prompt to begin the idea and then once the initial draft is complete, rewrite the prompt out of the new story.

Third, I don't think this should be done in practice.  I think that writers should use all of the tools they have at their disposals but this isn't a tool that is necessarily the most effective nor will it provide the most original work.

I think I'm done. :)

Lisa Coutant

_____ _____

Merging the published or unpublished material of other authors into one's own work without attribution is theft no matter how artistically clever the result might be.

One might make exceptions for short proverbs and other well-known phrases that are widely known and out of copyright where attribution might be cumbersome and unnecessary.

The use of attributed quotations at the beginnings of chapters and sections is quite common. Within the text of a work, though, one might footnote the material or even consider using new page formats to allow the borrowed material and its citation to stand out on the page as separate though intended to be read with the adjacent text from the author.

Best,

Malcolm R. Campbell
"The Sun Singer"

_____ _____

This holds no water from a legal standpoint... but I can't help feeling like it's largely of concern only when there's a monetary issue.  As long as work "stolen" promotes the original author, I can't see why anyone should care. But if the work in question somehow robs the original author of a likely sale, or ruins an ending or something, I can see why there'd be an issue. But honestly, when money leaves the equation, as in the case of poetry, nobody ever seems to mind.

Finally, I'm not sure why anybody would neglect to credit, as with an epigraph, unless they were being sleazy...

From me,

Laurel Snyder
http://jewishyirishy.com/

_____ _____

As someone who dabbles in historical fiction and has done his fair share of re-purposing of cultural material, I shuddered when I read what happened to Mr. Vice. The events, descriptions, and turns of phrase that one digs up from old newspapers and other source materials are essential for creating a world that is both credible and enjoyable to inhabit. But I think Vice crossed the line. If I'm writing about the Ali v Forman fight, the historical record offers a plethora of information for me to incorporate, but if I "use" another writer's rendering of the event, say Norman Mailer's The Fight, and include dozens of descriptions and snippets of dialogue, in other words, copy the creative decisions of another writer, I must acknowledge the use, otherwise people will assume the writing is mine.
Jim Ruland

_____ _____

As a publisher of parodies & satire  and a casual observer of the recent Suntrust vs. Houghton Mifflin case (Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind vs Alice Randall's Wind Done Gone), I can offer you some novice legal commentary and my opinion of what makes for clever literature.

Although Houghton Mifflin settled out of court with the Mitchell estate, it's widely believed that Houghton would have won the case because the Wind Done Gone could be defended as an instance of parody of the original work. (For your readers unfamiliar with the book, Randall retells the classic through the eyes of its ancillary black characters, not its white protagonists.) Although most people think of parody in the Weird Al Yankovich sense, I believe parody applies in less blatantly comedic senses, such as Randall's -- and hence, Houghton probably would have won.

In my opinion as an editor, I think it's fine for a writer to inject existing fictional (and live) characters into his/her works -- provided these characters act as a foil to original characters he/she created. The existing characters -- in my humble opinion -- should not be driving the plot, but acting as sounding boards and objects of reaction for the new characters. (Bret Easton Ellis did this recently with Lunar Park; public figures regularly appear as themselves in movies, a la Brett Favre in Something About Mary.) Often the existing chracters greatly add perspective or comedy to the new work, and I'd hate to see litigation/legislation that prohibits that.

R A Miller
Managing Editor
Arriviste Press, Inc.
www.arrivistepress.com

_____ _____

I don't know that this applies to Brad's situation (guess it falls under the rubric of "looking at a similar situation from a different perspective"), but I generally feel free to make reference to material that I think will be widely known. For instance, last spring I published a story call "Mudman" in TIN HOUSE that is heavily modeled on legends of the golem from Jewish folklore, setting it on a dairy farm in Appalachia. I have to admit that it didn't occur to me that I might need to make explicit reference to the legend (and I'm not sure where I would have done it, or how, exactly), because I didn't want to belabor what I took to be an obvious relationship. But I would hate to have anybody who recognized the similarity of the material believe I felt I was "getting away with something" by not acknowledging my source. Given this recent kerfuffle, I will likely put some sort of tip of the hat in the notes when the story is collected in a volume of my short fiction.

Pinckney Benedict

_____ _____

A question I've been asking myself a lot after reading the short piece about the "scandal" in Poets and Writers. And I find the reaction of the Press -- taking away the award and canceling the book -- outrageous.

I don't know to what extent Vice "stole" material, how much or how little he incorporated in his own story, and how much or how little he re-worked the material. And true, an acknowledgment in the back of the book would have been in order. But that's exactly the
point. Why doesn't the publisher add that darn acknowledgment and put out the book?

Stealing is fine, and Vice obviously only stole material for one story of his collection. It's not as though he's stealing a whole book. And all these laws to protect one's ideas are only an expression of our growing bureaucracy. Sure, I'd hate to see my book being published under a different guy's name, but I'd pee my pants if someone should find a paragraph, two, or two pages good enough to work them in their own texts. Authors have stolen characters, plots, scenes etc. forever, and that's just fine. It's a dialogue between people who love the same thing, between authors of different backgrounds, generations,
etc. What could be better?

Since we do live in a bureaucracy, where we can't even copy the CDs we buy for ourselves and our friends, where people don't write what they think out of fear no one's going to publish them, where writing is often done only to advance careers in academia; a
bureaucracy where lawsuits stifle artistic projects, and noise is more important than sincerity, hey, why not acknowledge your sources? Is it necessary? Not really. Does it save you from losing a well-deserved publication? Hell, yes.

Stefan Kiesbye

      _____ _____

I don't see anything wrong with it. Really all you're doing is telling the story from a different perspective, no harm done right? Besides by doing so you can come up with some really amazing work. Its almost like music, people take selections from one song and merge them with parts from others and it turns out really great.

Grant Parker

_____ _____

As I am fond of quotes and especially song lyrics that require clearence to use I am told-it is my thinking that using these lines should have the author or songwriter in parenthesis after the quote. A fellow writer who read my short short pieces said he felt that the quotes and songs were confusing to the material ---I told him many of the pieces were based on the song quoted so for me it is impossible to remove.   

Rob Kunkel

_____ _____

It is never ever, ever, ever ok for an author to lift text from another writer.  Ever!   Copyright doesn't enter into the question - it is a matter of ethics and showing respect for the art of writing.  Any writer who lifts text from another writer should be banned from ever publishing again!  (Forget acknowledgement page etc.)  Of course, every writer gets ideas from another writers work - indeed - but to actually steal another writer's prose.  What is more shameful than that!!!!!!  I just cant fathom how someone who has any self respect and true regard for the craft of writing can stoop to such a crime and pawn another person's work off as their own.  Give me five minutes in a room with any bastard who perpetrates such a deed, that's all I ask.  Muggha!!!   As for quoting another writer, well that is something else again and completely fine.  I quote Camus in my novel THE WEIGHT OF NOTHING but I make clear the work is Camus and don't hide anything in the text and pretend it is mine.  There is a HUGE difference.  And that's it from me.  One man's opinion.

Steve Gillis

_____ _____

I've appropriated material for my stories over the last 30 years.  I believe what I am doing is the kind of "transformative" use of copyrighted material that the Supreme Court sanctioned in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 517 (1994).  Maybe I overvalue the "A" I got in Intellectual Property in law school, but I always think I'm in the clear as far as "fair use" is concerned.  Of the four factors in the test for fair use --
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I believe that weighing them (I don't really make much money from my stories, but I guess I would like to; my stories are fiction while I take material from nonfiction, like newspaper articles and government reports; I don't take all that much; and no one would "buy" one of my stories instead of the work I have appropriated), I have no liability legally.  Morally may be another matter, but you already know I'm an evil person.

Some examples of my stealing material: http://www.rioarts.com/rio8/grayson8.html, http://web.archive.org/web/20041013193218/www.rousemag.com/040920/grayson.htm, http://www.tokyogumbo.com/Richard_Grayson/.  No acknowledgement at all.  If you could stir up a decent-sized scandal, I'd be eternally grateful for the publicity.  I think people who are not respectable -- take the late great Kathy Acker, for example -- will not suffer the same consequences as a Ph.D. who publishes with university presses and is a professor in an MFA program.

Eliot: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

McLuhan: "Art is anything you can get away with."

Thanks for the opportunity to bore you at this holiday season.

Best,
Richard Grayson

_____ _____

I just finished reading an article in Poets and Writers magazine about the Vice incident.  It left me with a sad feeling.  I doubt it was a case of Mr. Vice out-and-out plagiarizing, but that opinion is based strictly on the article in P & W.  A lot of embarassment would have been spared if those who judged the contest had recognized BEFORE awarding the prize that material from another book was incorporated. 
Most authors I know would never dream of plagiarizing another writer's work.  Many reputable writers avoid contests like the plague because they are convinced the outcomes are skewed, political, and questionable.  This situation with Mr. Vice will not help change those beliefs.
In short, As Mr. Vice admits, he should have acknowledged the source incorporated in his book, but judges of literary contests have a responsibility also.  I sympathize with everyone concerned.
Laurel Johnson
_____ _____

Intertextuality. Sounds like sampling, pure and simple.  It's art. It's real. It's worthy. It can be amazing and important and have mucho literary merit. It also begs a lot of questions about what "originality" means, about what "memory" means. Sampling in hip-hop, R&B, and (current) rock asks hard questions of music and musicians -- "intertextuality" asks writers if the Age of (True) Invention in literature is past.

As with music sampling, though -- I do believe one has to pay to play.

Danyel Smith
MORE LIKE WRESTLING (Crown, 2003),
and BLISS (Crown, 2005)
nakedcartwheels.blogspot.com

_____ _____

Aside from the copyright issues, there's a question of intellectual integrity involved in taking text from another author without attribution.  I have certainly used well-known phrases in humorous settings without attribution...but they're always short.  For example,  I assume people know who wrote, "To be or not to be...well that certainly limits one options."

If a direct attribution in the body itself would be distracting, then it should be given in a preface or acknowledgements.  Particularly if the majority of the piece is a compilation of others' works, which is a fascinating idea, then the author has a responsibility to let the reader know from where the segments were taken. 

The issue is more complicated when one takes an idea or scene from another author and rewrites it, but it still seems to me that one's integrity can be compromised unnecessarily by doing so without some acknowledgement somewhere.  I can't see the downside in erring on the side of caution--why create needless controversy that can distract people from the piece itself.

Mark Schannon

_____ _____

As a fiction writer, I'd say that it's always acceptable to use others' work in your own, provided some acknowledgement is made somewhere, in the text itself or on an acknowledgements page, but I wouldn't worry about it until after the work is complete. After all, we are writing stories, not term papers.  Also, I think another helpful question might be: how do you stay authentic to YOUR story and does the "outside material" contribute to that in a meaningful way?

Chris McClelland

_____ _____

Collages are common in art and Gris, Picasso or Braque pasting a slice of newspaper into their work to create something entirely different and for the purpose of this material's own physical look, not its words or ads that nobody reads and are put in upside down anyway: that's all right. Nobody will dream of accusing these artists of theft. Rather of originality if they're the first to use every day items in their oeuvre.

Written works are collages sometimes. And on one level it's OK to say things like: She walked straight out of a Graham Greene novel, into his arms. Vienna was dreary and damp. The rim of her fedora hid her eyes, but her mouth broke into a smile.

Or: It was a bad scene. Mailer would have drawn some ridiculous conclusion from it, but no him. Sure he picked a fight some times, but his underlying reason was always genuine.

So quote a line, or mood, or a muted criticism, recalling an event of the day in which another writer or his work figured in a remote sort of way, in other words producing justifiable context while immediately making proper reference in your own narrative, to me this is quite acceptable.

Stealing characters, plots, entire passages without identification of same is a big no-no if anything on artistic grounds: it doesn't enrich but cheapen a work. Except to excess perhaps and for the obvious purpose of high parody.

Hope this helps people decide for themselves.

Regards,

Anthony Steyning

_____ _____

I think that any use of another authors work is and should be subject to copyright laws. Fair use – where a few words are used and the author acknowledged - or
paraphrased - again with the author cited - maybe, but just "borrowing" a section of someone's work and not acknowledging - definitely no.

I once did a nonfiction piece and submitted it to a national magazine in which I cited part of a Robert Frost poem and was rejected because I could not furnish a release from an owner, even though I pointed out he would be a bit hard to contact. This would indicate to me at least, that print media tends to view this very narrowly.

Nolan Lewis   

Author;  MAULED - A fun mystery.   
CLOUDS ARE ALWAYS WHITE ON TOP - WW2 Saga -
IONE. Youthful memories of a small town.
www.pendoreillepress.com

_____ _____

I'm not familiar with Brad Vice, but I do know that appropriation has been a long-accepted practice in the visual arts world as well as in pop music, where it's called "sampling".  In the art world, the most famous appropriator may be Sherrie Levine, who copied well-known paintings exactly (only changing their size) and presented them as her
own work.  I think the important thing is that the source of the material should be obvious to a reasonably well-informed reader. For example, a novel featuring Jay Gatsby meeting Emma Bovary would be fine.  If the source isn't obvious, then the author should provide some sort of note to the reader or acknowledgment of the source.  This kind of note is easy enough to provide and doesn't detract from the work in any serious way.  I can't think of any reasonable author who might object to this kind of use of his work.  In fact, given how little books are read these days it could be considered an honor just to be noticed.  We in the literary world have to face the fact that we live at a time when the premium on originality and craft is losing its value, while manipulation of found
material is becoming an increasingly dominant mode of making art.  We may not like it (I certainly prefer to write my own material), but that's what's happening around us. As long as found material is acknowledged as found rather than created and put to some new use that differs in some important way from the original context, I think it's fair game.

Best,
Aaron Hamburger

_____ _____

From what I read, the texts were appropriated nearly whole-cloth and smudged a bit here and there, and the result just felt stolen. I'd be seriously pissed if somebody took my work so obviously and fully and didn't bother to attribute it to me. I'm not above an homage myself now and then, but it's a bow to a specific character or perhaps a riff on a theme by someone obvious and frequently read, like Shakespeare. Much of my joy in using such blatant references lies in the knowledge that the odd reader will catch it and enjoy the discovery. But this was pretty obscure work--at least to those of us who don't hold MFAs--and it certainly appeared that he'd literally tried to make them his own. If he truly felt that what he did was honest, IMHO, he could at the very least have cited a reference to the original on his dedication page.

I mean, hell--I had to PAY to use a few lines of T.S. Eliot in my collection. There are reasons for laws governing rights. Why should somebody be permitted to steal my literary work and profit from it because he "appreciates" or "respects" me?

Sue O'Neill

_____ _____

I think authors who quote other authors should always give the attribution preferably  immediately after the quote but at the very least somewhere in the text (footnote or attribution at the beginning). The quoting author should also be sure that the quote is  correct, word for word. By "attribution" I mean not only the quoted author's name but the work from which the quote was taken. Anything else is stealing. Personally I'd be flattered to be quoted as often and as fully (and correctly) as anyone wanted to do as long as they gave credit where credit was due. It is one way to keep one's work alive.

Sandra Shwayder Sanchez
Author of the novels: The Nun, Plain View Press, 1992 and Stillbird, Wessex Collective, 2005

_____ _____

i am not an "author" in the published sense, but i write a lot, so i think i'm qualified to answer, or at least put in my two cents.

literature is organic by nature, and attempts to make it anything but organic are, perverse, in the truest sense of the word. long ago, literature was, to the body of society, the lifeblood; today, it is the mustache, the fake fingernails, and the versaci belt. it was the meat; it has become the garnish.

literature has been transformed from a means of survival (hyperbole is not my strong suit) into a means of "pure" expression. when literature conveyed information, lessons, morals, etc., that were essential to survival, no one cared if the ideas were original, per se, so long as they were there. now, when literature is merely (merely, indeed!) a means of exploring the intricacies of existence, and especially now that our every word can be recorded for posterity, every person who picks up a pen or sits at a keyboard feels inherently entitled to unilateral ownership of anything original.

homer "stole," but he made it beautiful and useful; shakespeare "stole," but he perfected borrowed material to such an extent that the result was his own (or was it?).

a friend of mine related an author's practice of taking a well-known statement by a famous individual, or simply a quote of anyone else's, and expanding on it for several sentences - a kind of strength-building exercise for the mind. that is where we have come: the free use of another's words is relegated to the privacy of our minds.

the question of when certain forms of borrowing are ok seems to me hardly the most pertinant to the state of literature, unless one wants to examine the dying as a springboard for rebirth. i have been thinking about/discussing the (ir)relevance of poetry (and by extension, all literature) and i have thought more than once that poetry, and all literature, is being maimed by the individual's rights of ownership, whatever they may be. we all want to be recognized for our talent, for the greatness we all feel crouching deep inside, waiting for the perfect sentence or stanza to leap out. but what good have you done the world in being published? how many anonymous blogs are there, cranking out nothing but fiction? i dare say there will never be many. we want to own our words, but we have forgotten that they already own us. they are ours and we are theirs, but "we don't even belong to each other."

the world is shrinking, yes, but it is also expanding, and much more quickly. literature must be community-based, freely exchanged, and, effectively, open-source. we all want to decide which version of our own words are greatest, but that should not be our concern. history decides, posterity decides, the community decides; we merely contribute our part.

to answer the question, then, it is always ok. or, at least, it should be.

(i may have to think more on this and answer you again...)

Matt Lafferty

_____ _____

A pastiche:

"Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal." --T.S. Eliot

Eliot once said--and you might remember the quote-- "Good poets borrow. Great poets steal." He does not of course, mean steal whole poems.

"TS Eliot once said, 'Good poets borrow; great poets steal.' I have no intentions of being a good poet." --Dunston Procott, 1994 (repeated by Todd Zuniga)

Someone once said that bad poets borrow and good poets steal, thus suggesting that acts of theft, as well as their subsequent cover-ups, may lie behind some . . .

. . . applying this quote to the whole of writers in the most general way "lesser poets borrow, greater poets steal" [sic]; writers and poets can only work . . .

Good poets borrow. Great poets steal. And bad poets have lots of sex.

I don't know if there's a lesson in there, or even a viewpoint (no one ever gets anything right? Life is shades of difference?). But I would say it's bad practice to crib whole sections, wholesale, from one's own genre.  It seems like cheating, and not enough like enacting difference.  Like hopping a taxi in the middle of a marathon, because taxis go faster.

Best,

John Gallaher

_____ _____

To me it is stealing. Footnotes perhaps and certainly an acknowledgement page. Use the work but always give the source credit.

Steve Clackson

_____ _____

Poets do this all the time. They deal with it in the notes section, in epigraphs, etc. Seems
perfectly fine to do in fiction with similar notation. Seems to me it's like anything else:
the key is to be above board about it.

Gabe Welsch

_____ _____

Yes it’s okay, and in fact been done before.  Acknowledgments MUST be made, however.  Especially in something as blatant as Vice’s Tuscaloosa Knights.  I’d prefer an epigraph, also an acknowledgments page.  Refer to Jason Sanford’s article on this in storySouth.

In a part of a work in progress I use the term “darkly gesticulating trees” to describe part of a scene.  I doubt anyone would note where it came from … even I wasn’t sure when I wrote it.  It’s from a Nabakov story, as it turns out.  Three words.  All the time, writers unknowingly “repeat” things they’ve heard or read before.  Phrases, descriptions, etc.  There are those real plagiarists (the ones with high rates of recidivism <grin>) who actively seek and copy other writer’s words, maybe modify them to try to hide the fact that they are “stealing” and then they try to “get away with” doing this.  And there are writers like Brad Vice who pay homage to another writer by using his/her words verbatim at times…in a piece of their own…in order to put a new spin on it.  Intertextuality --- I see nothing wrong with it if acknowledgment is made and permission given from the copyright owner.

Best,

Mark Richards

_____ _____

Since my first novel, Red Weather, is coming out from Random House in May, I want to tread lightly here.

But I have to admit that I have sympathy for poor Brad Vice. His name -- after all -- does sound a bit too Dickensian. Who'd believe that the writer at the center of a plagarism case would be named Dr. Vice? 

And Jorge Luis Borges would no doubt be pleased with all of this uproar. In his story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," Borges writes a mock-analysis of the (imaginary and) recently deceased French symbolist, Pierre Menard.

According to Borges, Pierre Menard decided -- as his greatest work -- to rewrite Don Quixote. Not to paraphrase it. But to rewrite it, word for word.

Those of you familiar with the Borges' story know that it's hilarious. Borges takes a passage from Quixote, and then comments on it -- first as if it were 'written' by Cervantes, and then as if it were 'written' by Menard.

Cervantes -- Borges claims -- is boring and pedestrian. His work is dated. It shows signs of its age.

Menard, on the other hand -- according to Borges -- is a genius. A visionary willing to recast a 'classic' in a contemporary light. When Menard writes the same exact words in the twentieth century, they become deliciously ironic. 

This is very funny, yes?

Perhaps Vice was simply offering up an homage to Borges.

At any rate, the publishing business is a strange one. Now, Vice will probably get a six-figure, two-book deal with oh -- I don't know -- Hyperion. Whereas, if the prize hadn't been revoked, he'd merely be another lauded craftsman of literary fiction.

So maybe I don't feel so bad for Dr. Vice, after all.

In my own book, I have a critical scene where the teenage protagonist takes a bunch of books off of his shelf and looks through them. He finds some quotes that are relevant to his life. I decided to attribute all of these quotes directly to their sources.

But -- at another point in the narrative -- I steal a line directly from Joyce's Ulysses: "The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit." And I don't attribute that to it's source. But then again, I just admitted this in a public forum.

It was such a beautiful line, though -- how could I resist?

Happy New Year to All,

Pauls Toutonghi

_____ _____

I don't know Brad Vice or his stories and I certainly don't know the work he supposedly appropriated, so I can't comment on that situation. But I was just talking about this very issue with my editor yesterday.  In my new collection, one of the stories, which will also be published in the NY'er sometime soon, uses an oral account of NW Indian's first encounter with white men --specifically, that account tells the story, from a native perspective, of the first sighting of Captain Cook.  I took the account and rewrote it   
slightly for my purposes, stripping the historical references from it, and then set it in italics; within my story it functions as strange disembodied dialogue that may be coming from the mouth of very old woman --a woman who, according to her great granddaughter, no longer speaks-- or it may simply be an aural hallucination drifting in the air or, finally, it may be inside the head of the main character, Kype.  To me, the variability of interpretation, and the uncertainty of context surrounding this cultural artifact, reinforces the meaning of the story.  In other words, I'm commenting on what I've borrowed, to some extent.  I would be thrilled if a reader recognized the passage as an artifact, and I believe a fair amount of readers in the NW will --the passage is familiar in the way that Chief Seattle's famous speech is familiar to people in the region.  And like Chief Seattle's speech, the passage I've appropriated is not subject to copyright issues.

That said, I think I need to call attention to the passage in some form.   I'd hate for someone to read it and recognize the story and think that I was trying to pass it off as my own.  I'm not.  Again, I'd be happy if someone recognized the passage as an artifact, and 
could compare the original context with the new one in my story, but I have to protect myself against the charge of ripping the account off by attributing the passage to a source.  I've decided to do it in the acknowledgments in the back of the book, which is the only elegant way I've come up with; I'm certainly not going to footnote it.

I mentioned that the story will be published in the NY'er, sometime this winter --and I don't know how they're going to handle this issue, because my guess is they'll be loathe to acknowledge or attribute the passage to a source, only because there's no slick way to do it --all the choices are visually ugly or cumbersome or whatever.  I may have to rewrite the passage substantially for magazine publication; I don't know.  At that point, the issue is not just about what 's ethical or fair for me as a writer; the magazine has to think of their editorial integrity and reputation.

I have no qualms about sampling such a passage.  In that same story I describe a river with language stolen the Book of Revelation, and I have no problems with that, either.  But the Bible is a no-brainer.  You can allude to it until the cows come home and no one will care.

I've gone on too long with my little anecdote but I would like to say that the current climate in this country is conservative, anti-intellectual, and paranoid, and our public discourse is more and more in the hands of bottom-liners and morons from business schools, and that's disastrous.  Whatever happened to the commonweal?  The rehabilitation of the businessman that began in Reagan era has fully arrived, and we're now paying for it.  Just last week one of the big music publishers shut down a small programmer with a cease and desist order --the guy coded a little program that searched the web for lyrics to songs.  Lyrics to songs!  It's pathetic; and it makes me want to steal, merely on revolutionary grounds, to assert once again the value of public discourse.

Anyway, I should stop.  I'll get all riled up.

Charles D’Ambrosio

_____ _____

Thank you for the invitation to think about these issues. I gave your questions considerable thought.

Before I can even think about the greater issue of whether Brad Vice violated fair use practices, I have to express how stunned I am that "Tuscaloosa Knights" is part of a prize-winning work. While Vice does exhibit a facility with language and spins some nice imagery here and there, the story has several huge weaknesses that prevented me from 
finding redeemable qualities. It does not, in my opinion, merit comparison to Flannery O'Connor.

From the outset, the two main characters, Marla and Pinion, are mere outlines. Vice relies on the types they represent - Southern gentleman-cad, well-to-do lady newcomer – and this conveyed only through Marla's words, to establish who they are. He does not
individualize them, doesn't show the reader what these people want, what they think, what they believe, and therefore he does not provide any motivations for their actions. Thus, when they act, I don't feel the action is rooted in any conviction or even any basic desire. So their words and actions ring hollow.

Marla calls herself a Yankee, but Vice writes her like a belle - down to the sugared bourbon held to her neck as she sits on a veranda, talking lazily with a man she can't stand but feels drawn to – it's no wonder she's writing a cheap, tawdry novel; she's also living one. We don't know why she's drawn to Pinion, especially when she'd formerly 
found him vulgar. Raw sexual attraction? Boredom? I don't feel the boredom, and I don't know what would excite her because she never says. Is Marla also bored with her husband? Is she independent, someone who doesn't mind being alone and hanging out with his golf buddy, or is she a delicate lady who needs a man around? The reader is left to decide.

The minor characters in the story, Odett and Puddin are also cardboard stand-ins. They are propped up to serve the drinks and supply the flimsy basis for Marla's eventual existential shakeup that the reader is unprepared for—that is, unless the reader can smell it coming, from having read cheap, tawdry novels. We go from a lady sipping bourbon and hardly noticing the servants - who we evidently are to assume are black - to having something inside her break because she associates a racial slur with Puddin. I don't see her as deep enough to feel that break, so I don't believe it.

Presumably, one of the themes Vice is treating here is racism, and yet he doesn't indicate how either of his main characters view racism. We never really know if Puddin black; we're left to infer that from Marla's "breaking" response at the rally when the speaker used the n-word. I consider it very poor form for Vice's to expect the reader to assume the servants are black just because it's the South in the 1930s.  As written, Odett and Puddin are reductive stereotypes, and this makes Vice at least unenlightened, if not somewhat racist. It is definitely poor writing.

Puddin and Odett deserve to be shown as more than the people who fetch food and drink for Pinion and his guests. Since Marla is the narrator, offering a fuller description of them - physical and psychological - also would strengthen her characterization by giving the reader a deeper view into her via how she views them. As a Northerner, someone
educated enough to find the local gossips "insipid," and who studied German in school, surely Marla has thought about the social realities of the South; the reader needs to hear them before Marla has her breakdown that sends her to the backseat with Pinion.

Incidentally, one of Flannery O'Connor's greatest trademarks was the one-line characterization, a few words that gave you a whole person: "Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings." Vice doesn't come close to crafting a line as rich as that, and none of his paragraphs reach the pointed, concise rendering of a character's psychology that O'Connor gives in the rest of that opening paragraph to "Good Country People."

Because Vice falls so far short in basic storytelling technique, he has nothing to build the tale on, and therefore it just doesn't stand.

It may be that Vice nevertheless improves on the original - certainly he brushed up the snippets he is accused of plagiarizing. But as this person notes, why plagiarize mediocrity?  www.storysouth.com/comment/2005/12/new_attack_on_brad_vice_is_mer.html#69

To return to the greater question of how much borrowing is too much, I think the rub with literature and literary types is that many writers - if not most - identify as intellectual craftspeople before they identify as artists. Myself, I am an artist. I think craft should only be discussed with regards to amateur writers; to be a professional, accomplished writer is to have mastered the nuts and bolts. To be an artist is to have carried that mastery beyond the rote and developed confidence in one's own voice and, further, to communicate complex ideas and illustrate meaningful character and situations in that voice, with the objective being to challenge the reader intellectually and stimulate the reader emotionally.

I don't think it is categorically wrong for one artist to use another's work to create a new work, be the works dance, painting, music, or prose. Again, in the visual and performing arts, this is de rigueur—much of the jazz canon, for example, derives from the American
musical theater songbook. Literature is a bit tricky, however, because our medium—language—is in everyday use in a way that scales, paint, clay, trumpets, pliés, and cameras are not. The mark of an artist, again, is to develop a personal vernacular within the language of the chosen medium; a writer, then, is developing a language within a 
language—and one which her audience (readership) speaks fluently.  (Surely someone has already extrapolated on this.) So that, whereas it is not remarkable for a dancer to borrow a particular hand move or twist or twirl, or for a sculptor to use a particular metal or stone, for the writer, individuality takes more effort to develop. Writers who push our concepts of how language can be used to communicate—Gertrude Stein, for example—are lauded over those who reuse others' devices—anyone who's written a mass-market romance. But for the most part, we expect writers at both ends of the scale to write their own sentences. We may be intrigued when a Gertrude Stein repeats the same phrase several times, but if a so-called paperback writer does it, we find that boring.

I believe that this is largely why plagiarism is so heinous a crime in literature (as opposed to in the academy): one's mastery of the language lies in how many new ways one can devise to use language, so "borrowing" another's work would be just as unimaginative as using one's own sentence twice, which a writer would be loathe to do.

That disqualifies any highly derivative work as art, which diminishes its value as literature. Vice fails the test on both the craft and the art levels: his story is weak because it's poorly constructed; and his borrowed pieces neither expand the bounds of storytelling nor enhance linguistic artistry. I don't think he should lose his professorship over it, but I do think it qualifies "Tuscaloosa Knights" as pulp fiction that should not have been included in any prize-winning book.

Cheers,

judy b.
Onze/11
http://onzeproductions.com
write * edit * record

_____ _____

You are correct in noting that art has always borrowed from prior art. Thank goodness for the cavemen. Where would we be today if someone hadn't taken the initiative to draw and sing and tell stories? I think all writers, to an extent, borrow or repurpose pieces of others' works. In some cases, it's taking a well-known story and modernizing it or retelling the tale in a fresh way (see each and every version of Pride & Prejudice). In others, it's borrowing a phrase or notion, creating an
homage to someone you admire. If you're a voracious reader who also writes, you will often find yourself using lines floating around in your head -- only to recall (hopefully!) that you did indeed read them somewhere else. I know I've repurposed a line from Cormac McCarthy -- taking his idea and putting the sentiment into my own words and voice. This is my most conscious example of thievery, but even then, nobody but me would know the truth. In many ways, the line between using another's
work as a jumping-off point and  plagiarism comes in the execution.

Current copyright laws do not, I believe, protect artists in the way the original copyright laws were envisioned. The goal, as I understand it, was that the State would protect the works of an artist for a limited period of time. In return, the artist would give back to the world in the form of allowing their work to enter the public domain. Quid pro quo. This changed, frankly, with the imminent entry of Mickey Mouse in the public domain (yes, the irony is lost only on Disney). This change is causing us not only to re-evaluate our concepts of copyright (in my mind, what is government doing involved with protecting corporate property?), but also our notions of fair use and even borrowing (I mean
borrowing in terms of ideas or even turns of phrase, not out-and-out copying). I think this change is a very bad thing for art for many reasons.

I do think, whenever possible, that artists should give credit where credit is due. One reason is because you want to honor those who inspire you. Another is that your readers (viewers, listeners) might want to delve deeper into your subject or inspiration. Then there are those who want to compare your paltry effort to that of the master and find you lacking....

Kassia (yes, a bit passionate on the topic)
(www.booksquare.com)

_____ _____

What writer has not, consciously or unconsciously, 'borrowed' from another writer?  Obviously I'm talking about the more subtle influences of other writers on one's own work, but when it's overt (i.e., using a scene or text from another writer's work), I think the issue boils down to integrity. If I, as a writer, weave something from another writer's work into my own, I would figure out a way to make an allusion to that writer in the text or, if appropriate, make some acknowledgment in an epilogue.  What concerns me when we start talking about copyright issues and fair use is the chilling effect on the imagination. The use of song lyrics, while not quite the same, raises a parallel question. Let's say, for example, a character of mine hears a song in her head. The song suggests a lot about her inner life, as well as the time frame of the story, and becomes integral to the narrative. I want the reader to hear the song the way the character hears it, so I quote the lyrics. In this circumstance, I have to find out who wrote the song, who owns the copyright, etc., etc. Then I have to contact the owner of the copyright for permission to use the lyrics, which often carries a fee. It would be a lot easier to scrap the lyrics, just as it would be a lot easier to never allude to another writer's work. But again, what impact does this have on the creative process?

Deborah Batterman

_____ _____

Personally, I lean towards the reasoning shown above by those who feel some form of acknowledgment is necessary.  I think relying on the fact that your readers will know the work in question so well that they will realize you are putting on your own spin, or creating an homage, is asking a bit much. It seems that the effort is wasted if there’s even a remote possibility that your reading audience doesn’t come to the realization that you’ve done so. 

Dan Wickett

Comments

[steven gillis]

Hey Dan - Great job in putting these comments together. I must admit, I was completely shocked to read that so many writers dont actually mind and, in fact, condone stealing of another writer's work. I guess I dont get it. I mean, how is it writing if one lifts entire passages from another author's work and claims such as their own? IS that not fraud? As noted, being inspired by another writers ideas and creating a completely unique story based on such is fine and even encouraged, but to steal another writers work word for word? Come on! What's next? Shall I cut the face out of the Mona Lisa, slap it to a poster board and tell the world I painted it? Geez! Happy Holidays - Steve

[danyel]

excellent responses. good reading. we're all over the place.

dSW

[Bernita]

Some seem to wander into the superstitious region of Tabu in a neo-puritan attempt to cleanse any author's work of any influence, overt or not.
At the same time, I tend to agree with Sue O'Neill that "respect" and "love" sounds much like the pedophile's defense.
Margaret Atwood in "Negotiating with the Dead" in a disclaimer "any such notions ( of literary theory) that have wandered into this book have got there by the usual writerly methods, which resemble the ways of the jackdaw: we steal the shiny bits, and build them into the structures of our own disorderly nests."
Seems to me that the issue is pretty clear. If one copies much more than a sentence from another protected writer without attribution, one has committed plagerism, caught or uncaught.
With due respect for the arts of mitigation, all else is rationalization.
And yes, the sky is blue and the devil is in the details.

[Pete]

Dan, excellent discussion on an important literary topic. Among my own stories are two potential offenders: one based on the Iroquois Theatre fire which has a quote from Anthony Hatch's "Tinder Box" as an epigraph (I obtained permission from the publisher); and one based on "Casey at the Bat" which includes Thayer's original poem in its entirety. I think I'm okay with the latter, since I acknowledged Thayer in an endnote; to the best of my knowledge, the original is also in the public domain.

[judy b.]

Well, as long as people are offering personal examples...

Here's one I've published, trusting my readers to know the original, but if they don't, I don't think anyone's estate suffers. I've only read the original twice, years ago, and I can't imagine that I managed to replicate more than the spirit of it. You tell me. At anyrate, one college dean who read it was impressed and not incensed.

http://tinyurl.com/9ygpg

[Henry Swanson]

[..] disclaimer: The following (sampled) quotes belong to nobody

"I don't see like I'm breaking any rules.. because I don't see any rules to break." - Attributed to Bob Dylan

"Exterminate all rational thought." - William Burroughs

"La propriété, c'est le vol!" - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake" - Jill's Nipples

"Sorry, I can't give you any reliable references for the impossible insubordination of words; they're indirectly unattributable to the non-stop evolutionary mutation of an ongoing critique of your dying world." - with love always, Henry Swanson

ps. This comment, and eveything above and below it automatically released into the 'libre public domain.' Do what you have to but do it fast
= = =