The plagiarism paradox and 10 famous authors accused of plagiarism

April 21, 1:11 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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Every doctor's nightmare is to be hit with a malpractice lawsuit. Every politician's worst fear is to be caught red-handed with a dead girl or a live boy. And the boggart hiding in every author's closet is the fear that -- someday, somehow -- they will end up branded with the scarlet P -- Plagiarist.

By now, all the rumors flying unchecked around the internet about the filming of New Moon being halted due to a plagiarism suit filed against Stephenie Meyer by her long-ago college roommate have been debunked as a sound and fury signifying nothing. However, the question of plagiarism -- what constitutes plagiarism and how to prove it -- remains a hot topic in the publishing world.

Think of the author's mind like a pool of water. Every book read, every idea considered, every bit of dialogue overheard, goes into that pool. In fact, the only way a writer can hope to continually improve and grow is to put as much water in there as possible. (Consider Stephen King who said in his memoir, On Writing, "If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or tools) to write. Simple as that."). When an author starts working on a project, his or her fledgling ideas are nourished by the water, if you will, taken from that mental swirl of all the things read and considered before.

What happens then, if some of those ideas spring from a book read by another author? By a conversation with another person? By, as Ms. Meyer's old roommate, Heidi Stanton, allegedly claims, from a short story that the two worked on together? When does a writer step over the line of propriety from "inspired by" to "brazenly snagged?"

Even in plagiarism cases that seem fairly cut-and-dried, there is often room for uncomfortable speculation. In Tobias Wolff's novel, Old School, the aspiring young writer reads a  short story written by a young woman from another school and unceremoniously steals the entire tale, with just a few cosmetic changes. Sounds like a completely obvious case of plagiarism -- which it is. However, Mr. Wolff sets the story on its ear by showing how the young man didn't set out to plagiarise the story, but merely identified with its theme so strongly that he truly felt and rewrote it as if it were his own.

 

A nearly  identical scenario was played out in 2006 when Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard sophomore, wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The book was tipped to be a chick-lit hit and had even landed Ms. Viswanathan a movie deal before she fell out of favor when she was accused of plagiarising two books by Megan McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, as well as The Princess Diaries and works by Sophie Kinsella and Salman Rushdie. Ms. Viswanathan lost both the book and movie deal.  On The Today Show with Katie Couric, Ms. Viswanathan claimed that she was innocent of plagiarism and had simply "internalized" details of the other author's books  and that similiarites were "completely unintentional."

Clearly, if Ms. Viswanathan lifted passages and plots straight out of another novel (and the evidence is pretty conclusive) it's plagiarism and can't be tolerated. Young authors, writers (and Book Examiners) need to be damn careful to swish the water in their pool of ideas about pretty forcefully in order not to end up presenting a muddy version of someone else's work as their own.

But is it conceivable that two people can be inspired by the same seminal works, write in a similar genre, and end up writing things that resemble siamese twins separated at birth? I believe so, yes.

As King Solomon once wearily stated, "There is nothing new under the sun." Every idea, every plot, every character trait, every hero tale has been explored and rewritten a gazillion times. We are practically at the point that ANY work or author can be slammed with a plagiarism suit by someone out there, regardless of how obscure the original piece was. And, as is the wont of some of the more unprincipled and litigious-happy among us, fudging or stretching evidence to fit a plagiarism accusation isn't unheard of. When J.K. Rowling was accused of plagiarism in 1999 by American author Nancy Stouffer, the similarities between Harry Potter and characters and ideas in Ms. Stouffer's The Legend of Rah and the Muggles made a few of us Potter-heads pretty uncomfortable. It turned out, though, that Ms. Stouffer was a bit of a crook -- the judge ended up throwing out the case because it became clear that Ms. Stouffer had lied and fabricated evidence. (I'm thinking that Ms. Stouffer would almost certainly have ended up in Slytherin house.)

Yet, when I read Eva Ibbotson's The Secret of Platform 13, I became convinced that Ms. Rowling had almost certainly lifted a number of details from Ms. Ibbotson. The story features an orphaned boy with unknown magical powers who lives with a family who treats him as a servant and their own obese and spoiled son (who has a fondness for Knickerbocker Glories) like a king. The only way the boy can get back into the magical world where he belongs is through Platform 13 at the London Station. Yikes. Do I think that Ms. Rowling borrowed -- whether unintentionally or innocently -- a few ideas from Ms. Ibbotson? Possibly. Does Ms. Ibbottsen think so? Actually, she says she doesn't mind if Ms. Rowling did: when asked about the similiarities in an interview, Ms. Ibbottsen replied that she would like to shake Ms. Rowling, "by the hand. I think we all borrow from each other as writers."

Accusations of plagiarism are nothing foreign to most famous authors. Take a look at 10 famous authors slammed with plagiarism allegations.