BOOK REVIEW : The Unforgivable Sin of Plagiarism

Stolen Words: Forays into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism by Thomas Mallon (Ticknor & Fields: $18.95; 283 pages.)

Back when there were half a dozen Democrats vying for the 1988 presidential nomination, Sen. Joseph F. Biden was the first to come unstuck. The unsticking was accomplished by the revelation that a particularly fine campaign speech of his had plagiarized an even finer speech by the leader of Britain’s Labor Party, Neil Kinnock.

Biden, who is head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seems to have suffered no long-term ill effects. He was even able to present Kinnock, some time later, with a copy of his own speeches and an invitation to the Labor leader to feel free to borrow anything he wanted.

But then, Thomas Mallon reflects in “Stolen Words”? “Politics is not so serious and dirty a business as literature.”

Mallon is a writer who possesses grace and wit, a delight in incongruity, and a quickness to love hard, and grow furious. The grace, the wit, the incongruity-spotter and the love were all evident in “A Book of One’s Own,” his marvelously beguiling account of literary diaries.

All these qualities are present in Mallon’s book on literary plagiarism, except that the love is pretty much replaced by the fury. He thought of calling it “Not A Book of One’s Own,” but changed his mind, which seems a pity. Instead, he calls it “Stolen Words,” as if to signal that he was feeling angry and not playful.

Mallon, I expect, will never not be playful; but his rage is useful. Plagiarism is the vacuum that nature abhors; it is a quiet, chilly, excavating vice, like picking one’s nose when nobody is looking. It takes Mallon’s fieriness, even if it sometimes seems excessive, to get us to pay attention.

One of the characteristics of plagiarism, in fact, is that there is a certain tendency to excuse it. Writers began to complain seriously about it, or defend themselves against it, around the time of Shakespeare--nobody minded Virgil borrowing from Homer--but almost immediately, Mallon finds the denouncers denounced as petty-minded.

In two of the three cases he studies in detail--he uses each of these chapters to weave in other examples along with general reflections--he discovers a reluctance to confront a fact, and a tendency to minimize it. Like rape, he writes, it is a crime with the odd ability to make others feel guilty.

There is a detailed and absorbing study of a professor at Texas Tech who repeatedly used others’ material, and who was allowed quietly to resign, even though some of his colleagues wanted some more energetic action. The man involved--Mallon names him as Jayme Sokolov--eventually published his disputed version in a somewhat revised version and, when complaints of plagiarism persisted, wrote notes of apology in the American Historical Assn. Journal and inserted errata slips in the remaining volumes. Mallon’s point is the lack of public denunciation by the professor’s peers.

Then there was “Wild Oats,” by Jacob Epstein, a comic novel about the enthusiasms and predicaments of an American college student, which appeared in 1980. It was praised by several prominent writers. Perhaps too snidely, Mallon gives the impression that some of the praise was due to the fact that Jacob’s parents were influential editors; he does not deny the author’s talent.

A considerable scandal resulted when the English novelist, Martin Amis, wrote an article citing half a dozen highly distinctive passages that were almost identical to passages in his own well-praised “The Rachel Papers,” published in 1974. Mallon quotes them. There were 53 such passages in all, Amis complained.

The British author seems to have made his disclosure reluctantly, and Mallon writes that he still rather regrets it. Amis’ own publisher, Corlies Smith--who, one might have thought, would have been outraged--suggested that the affair had been overplayed.

Mallon supplies anger for both of them. It is beside the point, he writes, that the two books were different in spirit and tone, and that much of Jacob’s book was original. That is like saying that although 50 stolen items are found in a burglar’s house, 2,000 items were not stolen. And, he adds in wicked deadpan: “The books don’t feel, overall, very much alike. It’s just that they are, sometimes, exactly the same.”

Once or twice, I find Mallon persnickety in citing transgressions. And there is the borderline case of “Tristram Shandy,” whose author, Laurence Sterne, got a good many of Uncle Toby’s sayings from Richard Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.”

Mallon grants that “Tristram” is an extraordinary original, but he takes issue with scholarly indulgence, and the argument that readers would recognize the Burton adages. Sterne, he said, got a free ride. He has a point; but what is the alternative? Could Uncle Toby really be expected to put footnotes in his mouth?

By and large, though, his distinctions are fair. Not citing the authorship of a well-known phrase is legitimate. “After all, one could put an end to literary allusion if one feared the footnote police behind every punctuation mark.” Self-plagiarizing is generally OK. “No writer wants his work to have just one temporary or inconspicuous life.”

And stylistic influence, or “osmosis” is more than OK. Joan Didion, he is sure, was influenced early on by Hemingway’s sentences. He knows that he himself was influenced by Didion. “No one will ever amount to anything unless his early reading leaks into his first writing.”

Plagiarism is not, mainly or necessarily, using plots or situations that others have used. It is, necessarily and always, using their words, unattributed. Word-stealing is the fuel to Mallon’s fire; it is unforgivable.

Writers write above all more for identity than for money, he tells us. You can bear your wallet being stolen so long as you keep the photographs. Losing one’s words means losing one’s self-respect. “If ego stopped mattering, then, very likely, writers would stop writing or at least, stop writing so frequently and so well.”