Sifting Through Information

Last Wednesday, November 30, 2005, the New York Press, an alternative free paper, published an article about "The downfall of Brad Vice." The article was written by author Robert Clark Young, who had previously commented on the University of Georgia Press’ decision to pulp Brad Vice’s short story collection, and the accusations of plagiarism that surrounded that decision, in the comments section of a couple of blog posts over at www.storySouth.com.

Mr. Young argues that "One of the many problems with plagiarists is that their behavior, like that of other people who steal, often tends to be compulsive," in his article. He believes he has found the smoking gun that is case number two for author Brad Vice, and that a duplication proves that Vice is a plagiarist and not one who could possibly have made a mistake with his story "Tuscaloosa Knights." The question for readers of this article? How credible are both Mr. Young, and the case he brings forward?

First off, the case he brings forward. This second example that Mr. Young has discovered really doesn’t hold much water. He points out how some lines about screwworms in Vice’s short story "Report from Junction," are similar to lines from Jim Dent’s "The Junction Boys."

The examples he lists are as follows:

1.

Dent: They often were victims of screwworms, a parasitic blowfly that would lay eggs in the sores of the living animals.

Vice: Screwworms are the larvae of blue-bellied blowflies, which lay their eggs in the wounded flesh of living animals.

2.

Dent: The screwworms attached themselves to the animal’s vital organs and sucked out the life.

Vice: [T]hey will screw themselves into the vital organs and suck the life right out.

The full sentence is actually: Some of the worms have probably already burrowed deep into the calf’s body, and soon they will screw themselves into its vital organs and suck the life right out of it.

3.

Dent: They sometimes would screw themselves into the brain and then exit through the eyeballs.

Vice: [T]he maggots will most likely screw themselves into its brain … before they exit back through its eyes.

The full sentence is actually: In fact, with worms already on the calf’s head, the maggots will most likely screw themselves into its brain and drive it completely mad before they exit back through its eyes.

4.

Dent: He kicked the gelding and rode up on a ghastly sight.

Vice: Kurt kicked the gelding and charged up to a gruesome sight.

The first three examples are descriptions of scientific facts about screwworms. There can only be so many different ways to describe how screwworms bore into a creature, do harm to the creature, and exit. As to the fourth example, Vice was writing a story about Bear Bryant having taking over the Texas A&M football team and about a high school senior named Dennis Goehring (in Brad’s dissertation, the character was named Dennis Schaffer. It was changed to Kurt Schaffer by the time the story was published) – the incident Vice writes of stems from Goehring’s life, a fact that makes it likely that there would be similarities with his and Dent’s work about some of the specifics.

In an email, C. Michael Curtis, Senior Editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and editor of "Report from Junction" as it appeared in The Atlantic Monthly V. 290 n. 1 (July-August 2002), let me know that he was aware of the Dent book "… and decided to postpone its publication until we had worked with Vice to prevent easily-avoided overlap in some particular details. The story of Bear Bryant’s first A&M football team seemed to us well-known and not the property of Mr. Dent or anyone else. Further, the heart of the story we believed, then and now, to be the invention of Brad Vice, even though elements of its drama is placed in the familiar setting, as above."

Going back to Mr. Young’s original idea that plagiarists repeat their efforts – if you remove this second case, I believe you can go back to at least considering the fact that Vice actually may have made a horrible mistake with his intentions in regards to "Tuscaloosa Knights." It doesn’t mean you believe Vice should be off the hook, just that Mr. Young may not have nailed the coffin as tightly as he believes.

There seem to be other reasons to re-consider Mr. Young’s article in general. Jason Sanford at www.storySouth.com has detailed his own reasons for believing the article to be one of poor journalism, specifically noting that Mr. Young makes a large issue of pointing out how plagiarism is typically an offense found in the first draft, and gives a link to Vice’s dissertation – the first draft versions available to the reading public. However, when Mr. Young gives his examples of Vice’s "plagiarisms" as shown above, the examples come from the final University of Georgia manuscript version, not the dissertation.

Sanford also notes that while actively searching for examples that prove Vice a plagiarist, Mr. Young ignores something that might help one believe that Vice never intended on hiding the fact that he was well aware of his usage of Carl Carmer’s work – his dissertation (that again, Mr. Young refers to, and so, is aware of) has an epigraph from Carmer just before the "Tuscaloosa Knights" story.

Lastly, nowhere in Mr. Young’s article does he mention that he has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. This is possibly the most egregious of Mr. Young’s efforts as he spends just under half of his article blasting both the Conference itself, and many of those who are involved with it, either as instructors or visitors – just so long as they have anything to do with Brad Vice.

It is Mr. Young’s contention that the reason Brad Vice has made it to the level he has (however you’d like to consider that) is through his involvement with Sewanee. He notes that during the 12 day long conference, many of the South’s leading writers will gather and decide many things. In fact there is a list Mr. Young has come up with:

which attendees should be considered for future scholarships to the conference

which writers should receive letters of recommendation to graduate programs

which new novelists should receive blurbs

which attendees should be nominated to New Stories from the South

what attendees have manuscripts that should be considered for the Flannary O’Connor Award in Short Fiction.

I cannot state for a fact that this list was built with the accomplishments of Brad Vice in mind, but he did receive scholarships to Sewanee; he did go to a graduate program that had at least two professorial connections to Sewanee; his book was blurbed by Barry Hannah, a pretty big wig over at Sewanee, among others; he’s seen two stories in the New Stories from the South; and he was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction (which was subsequently withdrawn by the University of Georgia Press).

However, that first story that appeared in New Stories from the South, "Mojo Farmer" did so in 1997 – the year before Brad even showed up at Sewanee according to Mr. Young’s article. Of course, this fact is only important if you believe that this cabal of writers actually has some input on New Stories from the South. My understanding, from having read many of her introductions, was that Shannon Ravenel read copious amounts of literary journals and sent along a selection of stories as finalists to whomever the Guest Editor was each particular year. And I have always read that the University of Georgia Press had a standard method of submitting your manuscript of short stories to the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction contest.

This section of Mr. Young’s article makes it quite clear – if not for Brad Vice’s activities at Sewanee, and the, as Mr. Young puts it, "coloring one another’s Easter eggs and then filling one another’s baskets," he never would have made it this far in his literary career.

Mr. Young also points out that Brad Vice, in the acknowledgements of his dissertation gives thanks to "the entire faculty and staff of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference past and present," and notes that he singles out Hannah, Erin McGraw, Josip Novakovich, Tim Parrish, Allen Wier, Pinckney Benedict, Claire Messud and others.

A look at that section of the dissertation notes that Vice acknowledges many, many people. Specifically looking at writers, teachers and other literary folks – Vice breaks them into two categories:

Friends and Teachers:

Tim Parrish, Ted Solotaroff, Allen Wier, Kent Nelson, Josip Novakovich, Erin McGraw, Andrew Hudgins, Tom LeClair, Jim Schiff, John Drury, Don Bogen, Will Allison, Dick, Lois, and Gilda Rosenthal; and

"the Entire faculty and staff of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference past and present (especially Wyatt Prunty, Pinckney Benedict, Barry Hannah, Claire Messud, Cheri Peters, Phil Stephens, Greg Williamson, Danny Anderson, Leah Stewart, Leigh Ann Couch, Liz Van Hoose and Ron Briggs.)"

This may be semantics, but the way that Mr. Young states it, I would assume that the names Erin McGraw, Josip Novakovich, Tim Parrish, and Allen Wier would all certainly appear in that second grouping due to their affiliations with the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

The important thing for Mr. Young however, was not where in his acknowledgements that Brad Vice thanked these folks, but the fact that his name can be linked to theirs somewhere in the literary world beyond Sewanee – the whole Easter egg thing.

Going through the list:

Erin McGraw was a faculty advisor for Vice, and she has blurbed his work. Reading Mr. Young’s article, I’m still not sure how her own eggs have been colored.

Josip Novakovich was a fiction fellow at Sewanee, and the head of the advisory committee for Vice’s dissertation. Brad praised Novakovich highly in a review he wrote for an e-zine, Wordgun. I suppose approving of Vice’s dissertation is where the coloring occurred for Brad here.

Tim Parrish was a student of Allen Wier’s at the same time as Vice and is a friend of his. Vice reviewed one of Parrish’s works, comparing him to Carver and Dubus. Vice also uses Allen Wier as the name of a journalist in the short story, "Report from Junction."

Pinckney Benedict has been a Sewanee writer and Vice wrote the Benedict entry in The Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vice also wrote a piece on author Claire Messud, another Sewanee writer, in a Writer’s Digest back in September 2000. I’m not quite sure what any of these last four authors has done for Brad – sure he thanks them in his acknowledgements, but without some specific point (say for example, in the UGA Press version of the book where Vice thanks Shannon Ravenel – I assume it is for including the story in two New Stories from the South anthologies), when I see a list of authors in an acknowledgements section, I generally assume they were friends who supported, and maybe even critiqued the author in question. Weak pastel coloring at best.

The big name on the list that Mr. Young makes the biggest point of the tit for tat nature of literary writers scratching the backs of each other? Barry Hannah. Mr. Young points out that while "most reviewers" were negative towards Hannah’s 2001 novel, Yonder Stands Your Orphan, Vice raved about it in the San Francisco Chronicle (7/8/2001).

A quick google search of "Barry Hannah Yonder Reviews" yields plenty of results. The first seven reviews that I found were all positive. Granted, neither of Mr. Young’s examples (New York Times or The Baltimore Sun) popped up for me in the first few pages of results, but the following did:

The Review of Contemporary Fiction – written by Brian Evenson – June 2002

"But plot and focus are hardly the chief reasons why Hannah should be read."

Powell’s – Review a Day (originally in Esquire) – written by Sven Birkets – 6/27/01

"…Hannah, too, has written an apocalyptic ballad, a work of such gut-churning American gothic surreal-realism (or whatever you want to call it) that it has to be compared not just to Flannary O’Connor, but to Dylan of the great early mid-period, circa ‘Highway 61 Revisited’."

BookReporter.com – written by Joe Hartlaub

"Love of language however, will be enough to keep most going."

Rain Taxi Online – written by Brian Beatty

" … the rewards include authentic literary art and a folk wisdom that is as valuable as it is simple and true."

Portland Phoenix – Year in Review 2001

"…beauty and the absolute control of his prose."

City Beat – Written by Richard Hunt – January 2002

"He’s wicked in his delights, twisting and greasy, bent on vengeance, high on the language."

Boston Phoenix – written by Julia Hanna – July 2001

"…Wonderfully baroque orgy of fornication, degredation, …" (Though, Ms. Hanna did suggest that his earlier story collection, Airships, would be a much better entry to Hannah’s work)

Quite the beating from the critics. What else did Brad do to help entice Hannah into writing a blurb for his story collection? He praised the hell out of him in an interview with Matt Kunz – he of the Mississippi Writers and Musicians website (a Starksville, MS high school web project).

To be as up front as possible, some of the names within this post might ring familiar to those who know me. Erin McGraw – I’ve reviewed her works very positively, and have consistently listed either her, or her book, The Baby Tree, as one that should absolutely be read by more people than currently have. Pinckney Benedict – while I’ve not reviewed any of this trio of books (all published prior to my online activities), he has participated in a live E-Panel and I’ve consistently mentioned his individual stories when appearing in literary journals. Both are members of the Emerging Writers Network. As for Brad Vice – my dealings with Brad consist of emailing him and asking if he’d do an interview back when I received a galley from University of Georgia Press, and his saying yes. Before I got around to that interview, the pulping had occurred.

If anything, I’ve bitten a bit of the hand that feeds me by posting a question as to whether or not UGA Press reacted a bit hastily, even questioning whether or not a recent online issue had them a bit gun-shy.

Each reader, as they pick up details, must make their own determination about Brad Vice’s abilities and intentions. Personally, I think he made a huge error in not fighting for the epigraph to appear in his collection, and for not having an acknowledgements page that mentioned both Carmer, Dent, and any other Bear Bryant source books he may have read while writing his stories. I’m still not sure the University of Georgia Press needed to pulp this book so quickly, but I understand that the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction is a huge deal to them, and is not something they want tainted in any shape or form. What Mr. Young has given each reader is another bit of information to possibly help them form their own opinions.

Again, it is up to each reader to make a determination as to the credibility of Mr. Young’s article. Based on the above details, I’m going to take this piece the New York Press felt fine to run with a grain of salt about as big as my head.

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

David,

I understood what you meant - that was meant as a joke.

[David Milofsky]

Thanks, Dan. And thanks for following up on this. I'd lost track of the thread and am glad to have the update. And, P.M., those of us who deal with plagiarism on a regular basis do see it pretty much as a yes or no issue. I make no personal judgement of Vice or his intentions; he may be a terrific person. But he made a serious mistake in representing another's work as his own in his book.

[John McNally]

I haven't read either Vice's story in question or Carmer's work, but if I were going to intentionally plagiarize a story, I wouldn't simply change the title from "Tuscaloosa Nights" to "Tuscaloosa Knights." Only an idiot would intentionally plagiarize in such a way, and I'm sure Vice isn't an idiot. That's not to say that he didn't abuse fair usage -- clearly, he did -- but I hate to see his career implode because of an error in judgment, even one as serious as this one.

The problem I have with the Robert Clark Young story is that it's full of logical fallacies. In Part Two of his story, he writes, "One of the many problems with plagiarists is that their behavior, like that of other people who steal, often tends to be compulsive." (In this fallacy, someone states something that’s controversial as being true and then proceeds with the argument as though his assertion were indeed fact. What’s controversial here is Vice’s intent.) And so the fallacy in the above passage is the implication of Vice as a serial plagiarist before proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Vice's motives. Young then goes on to present one other example of plagiarism on Vice's part, and an example that I happen to think is extraordinarily thin: the screwworm passages. And yet Young would have you believe that Vice's compulsion to plagiarize is rampant. He writes, "Plagiarism tends to be a first-draft offense; it is now possible to trace Vice's plagiarism from its genesis in his original documents. The pattern sketches itself out—plagiarism in manuscript form, plagiarism in a dissertation, plagiarism in a story appearing in the small magazine Five Points, plagiarism in a story in the Atlantic Monthly, plagiarism in a story reprinted in the anthology New Stories from the South, plagiarism in at least two stories reprinted in a book that is awarded the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction." After reading this last sentence, a reader might be inclined to think Vice has plagiarized over and over and over, when, in fact, Young is still referring to the Carmer story and the story with the screwworm detail in it. In other words, Young is trying to make his case sound bigger and more dramatic than it really is. Too bad he doesn't know the number of photocopies Vice made of each story so he could throw those numbers in as well, as in, "No fewer than fifty times..." In fact, the tone of the entire piece is so histrionic ("You knew, Brad, you knew.") that it's hard not to think that Young has an agenda for bringing Vice down. But what I find appalling is how Mr. Young starts rounding up anyone who's ever been in contact with Vice, as if they, too, are somehow culpable by association. His final section on Sewanee is nothing more than an ad hominem attack that should raise red flags about Mr. Young's own credibility. He ends his essay with what he seems to think is a parallel story, as if Vice travels only in circles with other writers of dubious intent: "Vice and [author Tim] Parrish have something else in common. The University Press of Mississippi threatened to pulp Parrish's collection, Red Stick Men, when it was discovered that Parrish had used the names of real people in his short stories. The offended parties threatened to sue Parrish and the press. His publisher, unlike Vice's, gave Parrish a second chance, and he quickly saw the benefit of succumbing to the pressure. He agreed to save his book by changing the names in the paperback edition, and he managed to keep his teaching job." There's no evidence provided in this essay that Parrish was going to lose his job. And there's really no corollary between plagiarism and having to change character names in a book for legal reasons.

Young's article is irresponsible at best, and I can't help wondering, why is all of this so important to him? I'm certainly not making excuses for what Vice did. And I'm not shooting the messenger. The problem is, sometimes the messenger comes in the form of, say, Dick Cheney, who will say something over and over and over in a public forum until what he's saying starts to sound something like the truth. If you read what bloggers who've read only the Young piece have to say, you'd think Brad Vice was evil incarnate. Young's article is full of speculation presented as fact, and spin – lots and lots of spin.

[P.M. Cormano]

The comparison of Young to Chambers wasn't a joke, it was an attempt (albeit an offhand one) to say, "Just because a guy is unpleasant doesn't mean his information is bad." Generally a good thing to keep in mind, but not applicable here. There's obviously a direct relationship between Young's unpleasantness and the quality of his information.

And I'm not arguing that Vice didn't make a serious mistake in failing to acknowledge Carmer --- I think he did, absolutely. I'm arguing that, the moment Young entered the fray, this issue jumped from being a technical debate about what constitutes plagiarism to a morality play about intent to deceive, insiderism, outsiderism, and revenge. And while I think it's fine, David, to focus on the technical question --- and while I do appreciate both your experience in dealing with these kinds of cases and your voice of moderation --- I think it's a little bit sanctimonious to deny that these secondary aspects have become justifiably central to what people are talking about here.

[david milofsky]

Well, P.M. all I can say (sanctimonious or not) is tht they're distinctly secondary to me. I have no problem with Vice being well connected or networking or using his friends for recommendations. More power to him--and anyone else for that matter. If Barry Hannah's backing him, it's because Barry thinks he's a talented writer and this is how the system works. In my view Young is just being naive about all of that. None of this is big news to anyone with any sophistication or experience. But for Vice or anyone else to claim that it's all right to use someone else's work and represent as his own is simply insulting to our collective intelligence. That's why Georgia pulped the book and why they should have. If that's technical. sobeit. I will say that I hope Vice is dealt with gently, especially if he shows any sign of knowing he made a mistake.

[P.M. Cormano]

Fair enough.

[Richard]

Just one more comment, if anyone's out there. It bothers me a lot that UGA Press pulped the book. I hate to see books destoyed. Rachel above commented that the press doesn't have the funds to sustain a lawsuit, but as I mentioned on the storySouth blog, state actors (and the University of GA Press is "the state") are immune to lawsuits for copyright violation because of the Eleventh Amendment. That's pretty settled caselaw. So it was not a question of liability.

I hope someone else will publish the book.

[jdb]

Did anyone hear how an anonymous link to the RCY character assasination was emailed to all of Brad Vice's collegues? And when someone replied to said email account claiming that RCY sounded like he had a beef with Brad more than just the accusations of plagiarism, the anonymous sender, in not-so gracious language accused the woman, who is a well repected writer and prize winner herself, of being a literature whore and of having carnal relations with Vice. Niether of which are true.
I wonder who this ananoymous person could be?
RCY is an imbalanced man who teaches writing online for the university of phoenix. He got his feelings hurt that Barry liked Brad and not him. So, he has a score to settle.

Does this mean RCY dealt out bad info? He certainly wasn't within the bounds of full disclosure.

Also, folks, where are the questions of the bigger issue--literary tradition? With folks copywriting plot lines to pulp thriller novels and not being challenged we who write are about to be put in a hard spot. Again, what of Shakespeare and Seneca--Chaucer and Boccaceli. There is nothing new under the sun,so the Heavy Book says.

For those of you who haven't read Vice, you are in no place to take RCY's allegations that butt kissing has landed Brad in print seriously. And anyone who fails to read the stories in question as whole pieces, take the art at full value, really has no platform to judge from. The excerpts were tiny and aren't even important to the story lines as wholes.
Also, why do we claim that Brad has stolen from Carmer when Carmer's work was NONFICTION. A chronicle of the south. Songs, people, sayings overheard and put to paper. No doubt The Stars fell on Alabama is a fine work, but it is not creative material. Carmer heard these things and put them to print. Brad wanted to use a real clan rally, with authentic speeches and actions. He did so, I feel, beautifully.

[Zoe Clarkson]

I used to be close friends with Robert Clark Young.
I ended our friendship many years ago due to his serious mental problems and his need to get "even" with me for self-perceived offenses. He is one of the most unbalanced individuals I have ever met and I would wager his article has a lot to do with a personal vendetta against Brad Vice. By the way, Bob has been misrepresenting himself as having an MFA from UC Davis. He does not. He has an MA. Please check out this link: ww-ucdmag.ucdavis.edu/fall99/ClassNotes_80s.html Bob's virtue in the categories of misrepresentation of himself are not spotless, to say the least (this is just the tiny tip of a very big iceberg). There are a lot of folks who've had the misfortune to cross path with him over the years who'd be happy to attest to his absolute lust for vengefulness and the satisfaction he gets from it. I would wager Brad Vice has been on his radar screen for some time. Bob, like the elephant, never forgets.

[Zoe Clarkson]

Sorry, link was broken--look in class notes for 1988. If you google Robert Clark Young, you will see articles and online entries he has made, claiming he has an MFA.

[Rachel Solomon]

Well, Mr. Robert Clark Young may or may not have an MFA, but his novel ONE OF THE GUYS from HarperCollins is still in print, unlike Mr. Brad Vice's, which is floating in a landfill somewhere, and there has never been, as far as Google has revealed to me, any allegations of plagiarism, which is really what his article is about, so let's stick to the matter at hand, folks.

[David Milofsky]

I'm pretty sure you meant Boccaccio, JDB, and actually he and Chaucer were contemporaries. I've read Seneca and can't really see how Shakespeare stole anything, though retellings of the same story do occur in his oeuvre. But Rachel's right: Young may be an absolute scumbag, but that doesn't excuse Vice's plagiarism, defined generally as representing the words or ideas of someone else as your own. Doesn't matter if it's fiction, non-fiction or a cookbook.

[Dan Wickett]

I'd have to disagree with a bit of the recent postings:

JDB - While I do agree that one should really read the entire works before making judgement, I disagree with the statement that "The excerpts were tiny and aren't even important to the story lines as wholes." At least when it comes to Tuscaloosa Knights - after all, Vice meant the story as an homage to Carmer and has stated he wanted his characters to see what Carmer did - the sections he has "borrowed heavily from" (to quote Brad) have quite a bit of stature within the story. I would agree, however, that the screw worms in Report from Junction were quite minor as to the storyline as a whole.

I also have to disagree with Rachel's statement that "...allegations of plagiarism, which is really what his article is about." The article uses an example of plagiarism to attack cronyism in the literary world. Young spent more than half the words in his article blasting the Sewanee Writer's Conference and how the cronyism there helped, and allowed, (in his words) a plagiarist to continue moving forward. His response to Letters to the Editor from Richard Bausch and Sheri Joseph in a later edition of the paper notes this ("What I object to is the cronyism of review trading, blurb trading and the inside route to publication.", "In myopposition to cronyism, I rejoice in the ...", "Out of the small number of people who have either defended Vice or attacked me, the vast majority have connections to Sewanee, which demonstrates yet again that the conference is a center for an ugly straight of cronyism.").

I must also add though, the disappointment in the delving into name calling - referring to Mr. Young as "an imbalanced man," and having "serious mental problems". I had just had an email conversation with another gentleman noting that things had remained very civil in a lengthy comments section about a seemingly divisive topic. If one finds faults with another's arguments or statements, have at it, but please refrain from making general statements about one another.

[Zoe Clarkson]

I apologize to the members of this board for not sticking to the topic and saying negative things about Robert Clark Young, however based in fact they really are. I did not wish to divert from the very important topic of whether Brad Vice plagiarized or not--I was attempting to add personal experiences to the concerns within this subject as to whether Bob may have had a run-in with Brad Vice and if Bob's attack in his article was based on a need for vengeance. I have had first-hand experiences of this directly from Robert Clark Young, but I'll leave the subject of Mr. Young himself to those of us who discuss among ourselves our own recollections of Bob and his ways. By the by, I am on the side of Brad Vice. It is a shame his book was so quickly pulped. There is something called due process in this country, even in small-press publishing!

[Zoe Clarkson]

By the way, having one's book still in print while Brad Vice's languishes in a landfill someplace still does not salve the concerns that Mr. Young may (or may not) have written his article because he ultimately "had a score to settle" with Brad Vice and the Sewanee Writers Conference. And yes, Bob does misrepresent to the public that he has the terminal degree of an MFA. To me, that is dishonest--maybe not as dishonest as plagiarism, but it's still misrepresentation. Follow the link (not broken, I hope) and page down for a bit to the letter Robert Clark Young wrote about his degree from UC Davis (the letter is quite far down and has the heading "MFAs "weed out the whiners" . . ) Research Mr. Young on the 1988 Class Notes from UCDavis and you will find he has no terminal degree. There are also Internet articles in which he claims to have an MFA. I am only posting this to show that Bob maybe doesn't have plagiarism that can be found by a Google search, but he does seem to disseminate false information about his academic degree. Granted, I am comparing class notes with other information, but it seems UC Davis did not award an MFA in creative writing at the time Mr. Young attended. I think one really does have to maintain at least a reasonable amount of personal integrity if one decides to blow the whistle publicly on folks about plagiarism or anything else. Thus the concerns coming out about Bob having a personal score to settle in this plagiarism scandal--stories of which are coming out elsewhere on the Internet from people who were at Sewanee with Robert Clark Young. That is my point for this post and I do not wish to steer it out of the direction of this important plagiarism topic--I just wanted to clarify something for a previous poster.