Plagiarism
Feb. 24th, 2019 07:50 amOn ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mexpatriot's recommendation, I tracked down and rewatched A Price Above Rubies.
I’d seen the film when it first came out—1998? 1999? In fact, I’d interviewed Renee Zellweger: Sonia was her first role after Jerry Maguire, and I’d found it—ummm—an interesting career choice.
I hadn’t liked it much when I first saw it, but I liked it last night. I particularly liked the magic realism aspects, the drowned brother, the ancient gypsy beggar woman, the magic words: You’ll know. And the dialogue between Sender and Sonia about the nature of sin and God’s love.
The problem with coming across dialogue you like when you’re writing your own thing, at least for me, is that there’s a very strong desire to use that dialogue. It fits so perfectly! And who would remember its original source?
Writers have used other writers’ dialogue and descriptives from times immemorial. It’s actually a part of the composition process; the grit of sand that forms the pearl. Nothing is original; everything is combinations and permutations.
Since the advent of the Internet though, tracking down primary sources is very easy. And that redoubles the penalty. Not only is it ethically wrong to pass off somebody else’s words as your own but sooner or later, you’re gonna get busted.
Most of my plagiarism is unconscious. Other people love jewelry or sunsets or flowers. I love pretty words. Pretty words stay with me. I weave them into the magpie nests I build. I no longer remember where I first found them.
###
Some of the prettiest words I’ve ever read belong to a fairly obscure fantasist called John Collier.
Rik turned me on to John Collier. Gave me Fancies and Goodnights as a high school graduation present. A week or so later, gave me Defy the Foul Fiend.
Collier’s novels are not particularly good. But his short stories are amazing.
I thought of John Collier for the first time in—what? 25 years?—last night when I watched my mini-Twilight Zone marathon because the episode The Chaser is derived from a Collier short story.
It filled me with this overwhelming urge to order Fancies and Goodnights, so I can read it again.
But I’m a bit apprehensive.
Collier's descriptions are so wonderful, they’ll embed themselves in my mind, and I won’t be able to come up with any of my own.
Collier’s story Wet Saturday can be found online. It’s the slightest of works by an author whom one might say specialized in “slight.”
Here are its opening two paragraphs:
It was July. In the sprawling house they were imprisoned by the swish and the gurgle and all the hundred sounds of rain. They were in the drawing room, behind four tall and weeping windows, in a lake of damp and faded chintz.
This house, ill-kept and unprepossessing, was necessary to Mr. Princey, who detested his wife, his daughter, and his hulking son. His life was to walk through the village, touching his hat, not smiling. His cold pleasure was to recapture snapshot memories of the infinitely remote summers of this childhood — coming into the orangery and finding his lost wooden horse, the tunnel in the box hedge and the square light at the end of it. But now all this was threatened — his pride of position in the village, his passionate attachment to the house — and all because Millicent, his cloddish daughter Millicent, had done this shocking and incredibly stupid thing. Mr. Princey turned from her in revulsion and spoke to his wife.
“The swish and the gurgle and all the hundred sounds of rain” just knocks me off my feet. No commas! The placement of the definite article before “gurgle”!
Likewise the guided tour through Mr. Princey’s boyhood memories.
It really is a perfect example of what all descriptions should be.
Prose descriptions are inherently boring unless they are also character studies.
###
In other news, I did Debby Sue’s taxes again.
I slipped several times and called Debby Sue “he” while I was talking about her returns with the QAer.
I instantly felt very terrible.
But she is a singularly sweet and—shall I say it?—Prince Mishkin-like person.
And she knew my intentions were pure.
And she did not hold it against me.
(I know I have written about Debby Sue before because every time I do her taxes, I burst into a Buddy Holly medley. But I can’t find the earlier reference.)
mexpatriot's recommendation, I tracked down and rewatched A Price Above Rubies.I’d seen the film when it first came out—1998? 1999? In fact, I’d interviewed Renee Zellweger: Sonia was her first role after Jerry Maguire, and I’d found it—ummm—an interesting career choice.
I hadn’t liked it much when I first saw it, but I liked it last night. I particularly liked the magic realism aspects, the drowned brother, the ancient gypsy beggar woman, the magic words: You’ll know. And the dialogue between Sender and Sonia about the nature of sin and God’s love.
The problem with coming across dialogue you like when you’re writing your own thing, at least for me, is that there’s a very strong desire to use that dialogue. It fits so perfectly! And who would remember its original source?
Writers have used other writers’ dialogue and descriptives from times immemorial. It’s actually a part of the composition process; the grit of sand that forms the pearl. Nothing is original; everything is combinations and permutations.
Since the advent of the Internet though, tracking down primary sources is very easy. And that redoubles the penalty. Not only is it ethically wrong to pass off somebody else’s words as your own but sooner or later, you’re gonna get busted.
Most of my plagiarism is unconscious. Other people love jewelry or sunsets or flowers. I love pretty words. Pretty words stay with me. I weave them into the magpie nests I build. I no longer remember where I first found them.
###
Some of the prettiest words I’ve ever read belong to a fairly obscure fantasist called John Collier.
Rik turned me on to John Collier. Gave me Fancies and Goodnights as a high school graduation present. A week or so later, gave me Defy the Foul Fiend.
Collier’s novels are not particularly good. But his short stories are amazing.
I thought of John Collier for the first time in—what? 25 years?—last night when I watched my mini-Twilight Zone marathon because the episode The Chaser is derived from a Collier short story.
It filled me with this overwhelming urge to order Fancies and Goodnights, so I can read it again.
But I’m a bit apprehensive.
Collier's descriptions are so wonderful, they’ll embed themselves in my mind, and I won’t be able to come up with any of my own.
Collier’s story Wet Saturday can be found online. It’s the slightest of works by an author whom one might say specialized in “slight.”
Here are its opening two paragraphs:
It was July. In the sprawling house they were imprisoned by the swish and the gurgle and all the hundred sounds of rain. They were in the drawing room, behind four tall and weeping windows, in a lake of damp and faded chintz.
This house, ill-kept and unprepossessing, was necessary to Mr. Princey, who detested his wife, his daughter, and his hulking son. His life was to walk through the village, touching his hat, not smiling. His cold pleasure was to recapture snapshot memories of the infinitely remote summers of this childhood — coming into the orangery and finding his lost wooden horse, the tunnel in the box hedge and the square light at the end of it. But now all this was threatened — his pride of position in the village, his passionate attachment to the house — and all because Millicent, his cloddish daughter Millicent, had done this shocking and incredibly stupid thing. Mr. Princey turned from her in revulsion and spoke to his wife.
“The swish and the gurgle and all the hundred sounds of rain” just knocks me off my feet. No commas! The placement of the definite article before “gurgle”!
Likewise the guided tour through Mr. Princey’s boyhood memories.
It really is a perfect example of what all descriptions should be.
Prose descriptions are inherently boring unless they are also character studies.
###
In other news, I did Debby Sue’s taxes again.
I slipped several times and called Debby Sue “he” while I was talking about her returns with the QAer.
I instantly felt very terrible.
But she is a singularly sweet and—shall I say it?—Prince Mishkin-like person.
And she knew my intentions were pure.
And she did not hold it against me.
(I know I have written about Debby Sue before because every time I do her taxes, I burst into a Buddy Holly medley. But I can’t find the earlier reference.)
