2006
If it’s true that there is no such thing as bad publicity, that there is only publicity … well, sign me up for some. There’s a lot of publicity going around these days regarding plagiarism, and I’m not certain that the publicity is really all that bad. These scandals are bringing some authors to the attention of a public that would otherwise not be paying much attention, and, human nature being what it is, the curiosity factor leads a goodly number of these people to buy these books with their purloined passages. Hey, I’m an author, too, and I could certainly use some extra publicity!
The biggest controversy right now is centered on a Harvard freshman who had never before written a novel but who, at the tender age of 17, was given a two-book deal for a half-million dollars. Her first novel was riddled with sentences, paragraphs, and plot lines plagiarized from a couple of very successful novels written a few years ago.
At the same time, the CEO of Raytheon has been accused of plagiarizing an inspirational book that had been written sixty years ago and was all but forgotten until a reader with a good memory made the connection.
After several days of allegedly negative publicity surrounding Harvard student’s novel, the publisher recalled the book from the shelves of bookstores around the country. But the book sold even better in the days before the recall than it had been selling. I’m sure the Raytheon exec’s book has been lifted out of obscurity by the negative publicity.
Dan Brown, the best-selling author of “The Da Vinci Code,” was recently sued for plagiarism in Great Britain and won his case, as it was expected he would. Brown didn’t need the publicity, but the authors of a quarter-century-old book that had been largely ignored by the reading public certainly did. And they got plenty of international publicity for their musty old volume. The cynics among us, and I obviously am one, believe that was precisely their intent. Chances are their neglected book will now sell far better than it ever did before.
Even renowned authors guilty of plagiarism have not been hurt much, if at all, by their literary crimes. Just the opposite may be true. These authors have been embarrassed to be caught, but they’ve probably also been made richer. Popular historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose have apologized for their plagiarism and made the necessary revisions in future editions of their books. That there even were future printings supports my argument.
Little, Brown, the reputable publisher of the Harvard student’s book, finally bit the bullet the other day, canceled her contract, and will not print a revised version of the novel. But that punishment for plagiarists is extremely rare, and I’m so cynical that I can’t help but wonder if some publishers of books that are not selling as well as expected might be blowing the whistle on their own authors just to create more publicity and generate better sales, not just for the bogus version but also for the future corrected one. Publicity is publicity, and chances are charges of plagiarism means an author’s name will stick somewhere in the public’s mind and help sell his next book.
So if these authors and artists are feeling the pain of being plagiarists … well, I wouldn’t mind a little bit of that pain being inflicted on me. In fact, desperate masochist that I am, I’m going to start writing a plagiarized novel right this moment, stealing only from the very best. So here goes (ahem) …
Chapter One. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, and it was the age of foolishness. I know, because I was the fool who lived in those times. Call me … Ishmael. My adventures began with the arrival of a letter to my widowed mother at the Admiral Benbow Inn, which she now sadly kept alone since my father’s unfortunate demise.
“From Sir Joseph,” she said. “You have heard of Lieutenant Bligh, who was with Captain Cook on his last voyage? Your father thought very highly of him, and he is on leave and would enjoy an evening with us.”
I was a rawboned chap of seventeen, lazy in body and mind, but the words were like a galvanic shock to me. “With Captain Cook!” I exclaimed. “Ask him by all means!”
And from that introduction I came to sail on the HMS Bounty. My shipmates were an odd crew. Oddest of all were two French sailors who had been impressed into the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars. One was a man of middle height, stout and hardy, in the strength of maturity; he might have been forty-six or seven. A slouched leather cap half hid his face, bronzed by the sun and wind, and dripping with sweat. His name was Jean Valjean. The other was the most wretched human being I had ever set eyes on, a half-blind hunchback of indeterminate age who claimed to have once been the bellringer at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. This delusional, pathetic creature went by only one name: Quasimodo.
Lieutenant Bligh was the nominal captain of the Bounty, but the first mate, John Silver, ran the vessel. And a cruel master he was. One of Silver’s legs had been carried away close by the hip by a cannonball at Trafalgar, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. The crew called him Long John, not because he was especially tall, but because his cruelty made voyages feel exponentially longer than they truly were. I very soon ran afoul of Long John Silver, the excruciatingly painful details of which event I shall relate to you in Chapter Two.
And there you have the first chapter of my plagiarized novel. So go ahead and blow the whistle on me. Please expose my shame and embarrassment. I beg you! Just as there is no bad publicity, only publicity, there is no infamy, only fame. So go ahead and make me famous, and I’ll rewrite my novel later.