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January262006

Plagiarizing? At least know the literature

Filed under: Looked Into   Tagged: , ,

As always, Scott McLemee, a.k.a. The Bravery, stylishly whips centuries of thought into a graceful meringue in his essay about, among other things, confronting a "light-fingered academic" with the evidence of his crime:


I would give him a chance to explain himself, of course. But really there was not much he could say. Plagiarism is one offense where simply presenting the evidence often amounts to conviction.

To be honest, researching the story had involved a certain amount of aggressive glee on my part. There is a special pleasure that comes from establishing an airtight case. (Besides, the superego is a bit of a sadist.) But now, with the prospect of actually talking to the guy looming, it was surprising to feel contempt give way to pity. His luck had run out. In a couple of days, he would be notorious. It felt as if I were serving as his judge, jury, and executioner—not to mention the court stenographer. Oddly enough, I felt guilty.

Besides, the psychology of the serial plagiarist is so puzzling as to be a fairly absorbing mystery.... Continued.

He also reviews the new journal Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification (which, says its editor, may even be "willing to consider articles from plagiarists"). Scott writes: "[T]he topic of plagiarism itself keeps returning. One professor after another gets caught in the act. The journalists and popular writers are just as prolific with other people’s words. And as for the topic of student plagiarism, forget it—who has time to keep up?" He goes on to consider the tricky distinction between "allusion" and "theft," as well as the revealing roots of the word "plagiarism" itself.

I've long been happy that plagiarist.com is a poetry-resource site, and a pretty good one. I like to think of students happening on it by accident in a caffeine fog and smiling for a second as they realize the little joke that's been played on them. And then they read some poems and...but let's not get out of hand.

And for all your New Yorker needs, here's that Malcolm Gladwell piece about plagiarim that everyone liked so much. Except I didn't, really, because although it's a fun story, Gladwell falls into his tendency to set up straw people and subtly polarize his subjects—nice, flower-bringing playwright; modern, laid-back journalist; literal, stingy psychiatrist—and that makes it all seem a bit unfair.

I like the typeface on the Plagiary website; is that New Century Schoolbook? It reminds me of a type I used to like to write in. Maybe when I was turning down my overwhelmed roommate's offer of $100 to write her First-Year Seminar paper, then realizing how many hot bagels and scallion pancakes that would've bought. J., where are you now? You were so smart, and so stressed. I hope you're calmer now.

1 comments

Comments

yum. scallion pancakes.i've got a question for you - who first used the phrase "kiss kiss bang bang" to describe Hollywood cinema ?? i thought louis menard (sp) might be implying in his NYer essay that it first appeared in edmund wilson's personal diary . . . did someone use it before that? or did that use post-date pauline kael? just wondering . . .

zpJanuary 26, 2006

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