food for thought
at what point does inspiration turn to plagiarism? to what extent can an artist use material from an external source to express himself? i hadn't heard of wallace stegner or of mary hallock foote until i read this article in the los angeles times magazine back in march, it was foote's striking prose that made me want to go and get hold of the first book by her i could lay my hands on. stegner, for all his stellar reputation and numerous literary accolades still emerges from the story as someone who far too liberally used the material of a less well known but at least equally talented writer to pen one of his most famous novels. from the los angeles times article, consider this comparison,

"And then Helena dawned on my nineteenth year like a rose pink winter sunrise, in the bare halls of Cooper, sweet and cold after her walk up from the ferry. Staten Island was her home; a subsidiary aunt had taken me in that winter who lived on Long Island and I crossed by an uptown ferry and walked down."
-- From Foote’s description of meeting Helena de Kay Gilder, a friend whose husband later edited some of Foote’s work at Century Magazine.

"And then Augusta dawned on my nineteenth year like a rose-pink winter sunrise . . . sweet and cold from her walk up from the ferry. Staten Island was her home. A subsidiary aunt had taken me in that winter who lived on Long Island, and I crossed by an uptown ferry and walked down."
-- From the 1971 Penguin edition of “Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

more recently was the david bowie story which made the wall street journal front page, here's a related article, and an excerpt,

In Dylan's song "Floater" from his 2001 album, "Love and Theft," the rock legend sings, "My old man, he's like some feudal lord, got more lives than a cat." Another lyric includes, "I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound" and then, "Sometimes somebody wants you to give something up, and tears or not, it's too much to ask."
On page six of Junichi Saga's book "Confessions of a Yakuza," the protagonist recalls: "My old man would sit there like a feudal lord." Later, he says: "I'm not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded." On page 182, he says: "Tears or not, though, that was too much to ask."

both stegner and bowie have of course a sufficiently large body of work not to be labeled as plagiarists, indeed, if they used material to create a work of art that reached a larger audience and was much appreciated, they, in a way, did a service to the original work. it is often not possible for an artist to keep track of all the different material he's inspired by but in both of these cases the 'inspired works' involved a sufficient degree of similarity to the original work as to deserve to be acknowledged appropriately.


posted by ubaid - Saturday, August 02, 2003 at 10:24 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously