MAGAZINE REVIEW
Plagiarism, politics and England's setting sun
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Jan. 25, 1997) -- This week we look at a magazine ruined by an Englishwoman, a Briton's take on what ails American government, and an English journal's portraits of a nation in decline.
The New Yorker
Has the New Yorker -- where literary standards have noticeably plummeted since Tina Brown, late of Vanity Fair, took the helm a few years back and, in the words of former New Yorker writer Garrison Keillor, "turned Carnegie Hall into a disco" -- fallen so low as to condone plagiarism? Apparently so, if James R. Kincaid's essay, "Purloined Letters," in the Jan. 20 issue of the New Yorker, is taken to be reflective of its editors' thinking on the subject.Kincaid uses the publication of poet Neal Bowers's "Words for the Taking" -- a non-fiction account of how Bowers was victimized by David Jones, who as David Sumner published numerous poems by Bowers under his own name -- as the launching pad for a quasi-philosophical look at plagiarism.
Kincaid muddles the issue by confusing journalists' use of unattributed wire copy -- reporting that is specifically written in order to be used by other journalists -- with stealing another's sentences, and by referring to his congressman, "who is given to saying that he is neither a borrower nor a lender," as a plagiarist.
To these examples of plagiarists Kincaid adds Shakespeare, Montaigne, Coleridge, Plato and other literary lions, further confusing the issue by likening historical research and literary influence to Sumner/Jones's wholesale theft of Bowers's poems.
"Most of us will cede that absolutely pure `originality' is an over- the-rainbow idea; none of us invent the language we employ, our education, our culture, or our history," writes Kincaid. I put that sentence in quotes to denote that the words are his, not mine. The idea those words express is indeed provocative, perhaps even one worth thinking about. But just because we do not "invent" our own languages from the ground up doesn't mean we cannot tell the difference between plagiarism -- the act of stealing and using the ideas or writings of another as one's own, to paraphrase the American Heritage Dictionary's definition -- and the influence of our education when it comes to original expression.
Kincaid writes, "If we can acknowledge that originality is relative, existing on a scale, then we may even grudgingly admit that plagiarism must also be." Baloney. That may be good enough for Kincaid or the New Yorker, but it's certainly not good enough for me, and I strongly doubt it is good enough for the Berkshire Eagle.
The Atlantic Monthly
In "Running Scared" in the January issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Anthony King argues, in his own words, "that American politicians' constant and unremitting electoral preoccupations have deleterious consequences for the functioning of the American system."The wave of political and electoral reform, writes King, is moving in entirely the wrong direction. Calls for more voter initiatives and referendums, term limits and electronic town meetings are prescriptions for disaster.
"The mainstream reformist agenda...rests on extremely tenuous conceptual foundations," writes King. "America's problem of governance is not insufficient responsiveness on the part of its elected leaders. On the contrary, America's problem is their hyper-responsiveness."
What we need to fix our political system, suggests King, are measures to strengthen the ability of our elected officials to focus on their work and to reduce the pressure on them to run permanent campaigns. Specific suggestions include lengthening Congressional terms from two to four years (such a "radical" notion was proposed by none other than President Johnson in 1966) and scaling back the primary system. Strengthening the power of the political parties would also serve to protect individual politicians from the distorted influence of lobbyists and interest groups.
Perhaps because he is a Canadian living in Great Britain, King stops short of recommending a wholesale shift toward the parliamentary system that most of the world's democratic nations seem to favor, for fear of having his suggestions be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of a mad Brit. That's too bad, because it has long been apparent to me that precisely such a changeover would in fact solve most, if not all, of the problems that plague our wheezy, tired form of government.
Granta
Speaking of England, the world's best literary quarterly, Granta, is published there, and the winter issue is dedicated to examples of what editor Ian Jack calls that nation's new literary movement, "valedictory realism," or "the literature of farewell."Hanif Kureishi's "In a Blue Time" is a vivid example of this style, whose common thread is the false promise and dark underbelly of Thatcherism. The story by the novelist and screenwriter best known for his 1986 film "My Beautiful Laundrette" concerns two long-time friends whose paths have diverged drastically -- one is a coke-sniffing, yuppie screenwriter and the other a homeless boho -- but who find themselves remarkably interchangeable.
"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled," writes Kureishi of his main character. "And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, had thought of as `culture,' were irrelevant."
In the same issue, Irish journalist Fintan O'Toole's "Imagining Scotland" looks at that forgotten nation's struggle for identity and independence in the wake of Mel Gibson's hit film, "Braveheart."
[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Jan. 25, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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