The prime time evening news was almost surreal yesterday. There they were, the second woman US Secretary of State twisting and turning words and condoning 'renditions' but claiming the US does not torture (of course, that depends on one's definition of torture), and the first woman, and former East German, Chancellor calling for 'transparency' and for respecting international law. There was a complete mix-up if the US admitted a mistake or not and what the former German government knew or not. Meanwhile, the newspapers here report in detail about the plight of the German citizen who was hauled away, drugged and held under horrible conditions for months without access to lawyers or the rule of law, and then released because it was all an incident of mistaken identity. Of course, he is not allowed to enter the US even though the ACLU is suing the CIA on his behalf. Take a deep breath and repeat: times are different now because of terrorism.
Once upon a time, there were many who used to justify slavery. Remember the concept of blacks only counting as 2/3's of a person for the census, but were owned by their masters? Words twisted and turned so that people could be counted, but not really and all for politics.
Once upon a time, we used to believe in following the letter of the law. Remember going to see that film about the Nuremburg trials and how Spencer Tracy lectured the German judge played by Burt Lancaster? Wasn't there a great quote in there about law and morality and how Lancaster looked so downcast because he got it all wrong?
The times, they have changed. Last Saturday I met an American friend of over 20 years here. Her brother is presently serving in Afghanistan (after having done a year in Iraq) and is due home in March. Then her sister leaves for another tour in Iraq. The family is deeply divided on the war, but only one is gun-ho war, others are not admitting it openly but seem to be souring on it, and she is totally anti-war. Of course, this gets put aside just hoping her relatives survive. What she told me is exactly how I have felt for months now: each time you think the news can't possibly get any worse, it does. It has become unbearable just listening to it.
Rice Visit Fails to Build Bridges is Der Spiegel's take on her stop-over here yesterday at
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,389057,00.html.
Looking for something special to give an American friend on her birthday, I unexpectedly found the last two hardback copies of The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster in English in a German bookshop for 17 euros each. About Brooklyn, by a very good writer, and for a surprisingly decent price for a 'foreign' book published this year, I couldn't resist buying both. Some books you just don't want to borrow or give away. Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem had me feeling the sidewalk heat and I wondered how those who don't know Brooklyn (like I do) could ever really get it. Yet, Lethem's book was well received here and people were encouraged in reviews to try to read it in the original. Some books translate well, some don't. Some authors seem more popular outside their countries like Auster who is widely read in German. My friend had never heard of him but she is now interested in digging into his older works.
There has been a lot written here on plagiarism recently. What constitutes it, what are an author's responsibilities to previous authors if their work is being referred to or used in a new work, how to appropriately pay homage to another author in a creative work? Lots of grey area but the rule of thumb is to acknowledge what you are doing either at the beginning of the work or at the end. Nobody wants to be hit over the head with a signpost within the story, but give credit where it's due, and think about all your readers, including those outside your language. This is probably not a theme within the US which rarely looks outside its borders. It was, however, what bothered me most in the recent discussion. It seemed rather limited to a handful of those intimately acquainted with Alabama literature, the nature of copyright laws, and writers.
Readers shouldn't have to wander through a desert for forty years looking for what's behind it all. Good books should be able to stand on their own without a roadmap. If, however, the work is experimental or very regional and a map is needed, provide it. It was troubling that neither that author's editor nor the members of the committee who gave him a prize recognized the homage. If they didn't, can a reader in Germany or China, picking up an acclaimed book on the American South, find it on her own? The question, of course, is would it have made a difference? In this case, yes, most probably, because it would have shown an important link to the past. A reference to the older book would certainly be of interest to most readers. So why not provide it.
Brad Vice Followup
My
article on Brad Vice received an anonymous comment which I will repeat here:
Hi Fred--
From today's New York Press:
"If Vice's plagiarizing from Carmer is in fact an homage to Southern literature, then how are we to regard Vice's plagiarizing from Dent? Is it an homage to the screwworm?"
http://nypress.com/18/48/news&columns/RobertClarkYoung.cfm
Care to revise that "gross injustice...against Brad Vice" part of your post?
You were right about one thing. Mr. Vice's troubles are far from over.
Additionally I received a signed e-mail with the subject "Brad Vice stole again!!" and message "And now Brad Vice has been completely destroyed," then a link to the Robert Clark Young article.
To summarize, Brad Vice has been accused of plagiarism, has had his book "The Bear Bryant Funeral Train " and Flannery O'Connor award withdrawn, and stands now to lose his job. But from my point of view these charges of plagiarism are not at all clear cut. I have read the referenced article by Robert Clark Young. It indeed makes Brad Vice look bad. I still maintain it is a gross injustice to deny someone due process, to not examine both sides, before declaring them guilty.
I had never heard of Robert Clark Young until reading some of his comments at one of the Story South
articles on Brad Vice. They struck me as being especially provocative, vindictive and uncalled for. I responded directly to these comments myself. Now it is no surprise that his name shows up on an article attempting to deliver the knock out punch to Mr. Vice. I do wonder about Mr. Young's motives and the energy he has apparently put into destroying a fellow author. Based on the comments and his volunteer investigation he seems to me to have some hidden agenda, which to some extent discredits his arguments.
My quick response to his New York Press article would be:
1) The original charges:There is clear evidence that Brad Vice's story "Tuscaloosa Knights" was meant as an homage to Carl Carmer's work. The similar title suggests it implicitly and Mr. Vice has acknowledged it explicitly (before the controversy) in interviews.
I'm not in the literary profession per se but I know that there is a long tradition of borrowing and building upon which is something qualitatively different than plagiarism. It would probably be easy to build false cases of plagiarism based on an out of context comparison of texts, as Mr. Young does. My point is that a work must be judged as a whole, and passages judged in their context. Why does Mr. Young not want to do this, although doing so would be called upon by due process? I have read the story in question and see Mr. Vice's use of the Carmer passages as a valid literary device.
2) As for the new instance of alleged plagiarism:What I remember about plagiarism, in the context of high school and university research papers is that it's not OK to repeat word for word passages, but that borrowed passages must be put into one's own words. Even in the line by line comparison shown in Mr. Young's article, this is clearly the case. There is gray area here, and this does not seem to me to be grounds to destroy someone.
3) Accusations of favoritism:Mr. Young describes some of Mr. Vice's friends and associates at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and makes the accusation that Mr. Vice spends most of his time writing favorable reviews for his friends' and mentors' works in exchange for favorable reviews of his own works. I am not in a position to judge objectively, as I do not have an overview of Mr. Vice's critical writings or critical writings on Mr. Vice, though I know his work has been critically acclaimed. I do sense that an alternative explanation is possible, namely that Mr. Vice is simply a person who is very generous with his praise. I would take that to be a positive quality. I've often felt moved to review works that have impressed me, less so works that failed in their impression. This is not a unique motivation. On the other hand, if Mr. Vice is guilty of favoritism, Mr. Young is definitely guilty of the opposite, as he has shown himself to be very generous with his contempt, in the form of attacks and denunciations. That I call a very uninspiring human quality.
Anyone wishing to write a letter of support for Brad Vice to the committee at Mississippi State reviewing his employment may do so at:
Richard Raymond
316 Lee Hall
English Department
Mississippi State, MS 39762
Postscript: Two additional bloggers offer further light on the NY Press article: Michelle Richmond at
Sans Serif and Hayden at
From Here to Obscurity.
Storysouth has also published a
response.
And Now for Something Completely Different go over to
www.aliberaldose.blogspot.com. Read and listen to his post from Sunday, November 27th.
