McEwan, Atonement, Plagiarism... What?
Novelists Defend One of Their Own Against a Plagiarism Chargeinteresting who rose to defend him!
posted by VVG @ Thursday, December 07, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
interesting who rose to defend him!
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1 Comments:
Also of interest, this article on the recent surge of bibliographies/appendices in works of fiction.
I don't know about you guys, but when I turn the final, resonant page of a novel and am faced with an extensive bibliography, the motivation of the author becomes distressingly muddled to me. I know it might be a precautionary step against plagiarism accusations (though that didn't help poor McEwan), but this choice seems often defensive, self-aggrandizing. I don't expect a novelist to be a journalist, historian or scholar. I like the mystery of it all; I like playing detective. "How on earth did he come up with that?" "I wonder if that really happened to her?" I never want to know (except in The Prestige) how a magician's illusion is accomplished. So I invoke the spirit of Jim Crace: "the confidence of vocabulary over the sweat of research." Or The Wizard of Oz: "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am the great and powerful Oz!"
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