A classic, or a fraud?
Plagiarism allegations aimed at Stegner's 'Angle of Repose' won't be put to rest.
Plagiarism is apparently so rife these days that it would not be surprising to discover that "The Little Book of Plagiarism," by Richard A. Posner, has itself been plagiarized.
What is this modern-day phenomenon that has spread like poison ivy through the ranks of novelists, historians, academics, scientists, students and almost anyone who uses and publishes words?
Plagiarism is a species of intellectual fraud that an author claims is original but has been copied from another source without permission or acknowledgment, thus deceiving and harming the reader.
I just committed plagiarism.
The first paragraph was lifted nearly verbatim, without quotes or attribution, from a review of three books on plagiarism by Charles McGrath in the New York Times. McGrath is the former editor of that newspaper's Sunday Book Review. Surely he knows what he is writing about, which is why I used his words. Why use someone else's words without attributing them? Well, because it makes me look smart and original if I pretend they're my own.
The third paragraph is a slightly altered version of the definition of plagiarism in Posner's book. It uses some of his original wording. I assume, because he is a federal judge and teaches at a distinguished law school, that Posner knows what he is talking about. Thus, I too look learned.
These are examples of the type of borrowing, plagiarism, literary theft or copyright infringement -- take your pick -- that occur in Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose," which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.
Of course, "Angle of Repose" was a work of fiction -- but that doesn't mean it can't have been plagiarized. As it happens, Stegner used the private letters of Mary Hallock Foote and additional portions of her unpublished memoir intact, edited or combined with invented material for the basic structure of his narrative. He included page-long passages and entire paragraphs unaltered, slightly changed or invented, and borrowed specific details of her life for his most memorable character, Susan Burling Ward.
In the process, Stegner brought Foote to the attention of a new generation of readers. Foote was a magazine writer, illustrator and author in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who wrote about the American West and lived in Colorado, Idaho and California. Stegner was responsible for a Foote boomlet by teaching her stories in his literature courses at Stanford University and including them in two anthologies of American writers before he inserted her semi-fictional character in his prize-winning novel.
