Batgrl: Bookish Hooha

Contents:

Preface

1. Oft Thought, Ere Expressed: From Classical Imitation to International Copyright

2. A Good Reade: Malfeasance and Mlle. de Malepeire

3. The Epstein Papers: Writing a Second First Novel

4. Quiet Goes the Don: An Academic Affair

5. Trampling Out the Vintage: The Fight over Falcon Crest

Postscript

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

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The cases in the various chapters:

Chapter 1: history of the progression of written work from imitation/reworking older material to copyright

Chapter 2: "novelette" Mlle. de Malepeire by Mme. Charles Reybaud - published as "The Picture" by Charles Reade (Author Reybaud found in French wikipedia here)

Chapter 3: Jacob Epstein plagiarizes Martin Amis

Chapter 4: Jayme Aaron Sokolow, professor at Texas Tech

Chapter 5: Anita Clay Kornfeld's suit against Falcon Crest (she alleged that chunks of the plot from her novel Vintage were used by the writer Earl Hamner.)

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The most interesting thing to note, especially about the more recent cases of plagiarism as well as some referenced in this book - the person accused almost always blames it on

1) sloppy note-taking

2) forgetfulness

3) did it without realizing.

This happens over and over again - and I'm thinking of cases that have occurred in the last few decades in the newspaper business. There's either something going on psychologically here and/or this is a standard lie people think will work.

Having been in academia - there's no way if you really know your subject and you are doing your job as a researcher, that you don't know you're lifting entire sentences and even paragraphs from someone else's work. The instances in nonfiction always involve sentences that are long enough and styles of writing specific enough that you don't just "accidentally" write the same thing.

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Author cites (among many other books) Handy-book of Literary Curiosities (1909) which you can read online here. You can find the entry about Plagiarism on page 891

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I should note here as a Ch. 4 update: Sokolow did get his work published as a book [here] - in which he used a great quantity of material plagiarized much of the from the work of Stephen W. Nissenbaum:

"Eventually the matter wound up before the American Association of University Professors, and the result was that "errata slips" were included in copies of the book still not distributed – slips that included numerous footnotes giving credit to Nissenbaum's publications."

(Quote via article by Warren Boroson cited below.)

Sokolow wasn't exactly punished for plagiarism - he was allowed to quietly retire from Texas Tech, and even though his book had been refused multiple places (who had all asked Nissenbaum to review the work, as Nissebaum was noted in the field, and he explained the plagiarism) he still managed to get it published by a university press. He now works in a non academic field (and you can easily find him if you google).

I'll also add that in no way was the Sokolow case nebulous - academics from multiple universities agreed this was plagiarism.

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A news story about the book and Jayme Aaron Sokolow, whose story is told in Chapter 4.

A memorable case of plagiarism has its roots in New Jersey

Warren Boroson, New Jersey Newsroom.com, 26 July 2010

"...Jayme Aaron Sokolow was born in 1946 in Perth Amboy. He received a B.A. from Trenton State College in 1968 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1972. He joined the history department of Texas Tech University in Lubbock in 1976. (A few years earlier, a reviewer of the history department supposedly said, "What this department needs is a good New York Jew." Mallon interprets this as a prescription "admiring brains, energy, and sophistication.")

Sokolow was prolific. He published article after article on all sorts of diverse historical subjects, Mallon reports, from the 18th century American scientist Benjamin Thompson to Benjamin Franklin's supposed influence on Leo Tolstoy. He had even put together a book-length manuscript called "Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America."

Texas Tech's history department was at this point considering Sokolow both for tenure and for promotion to associate professor of history.But then came revelations that some of Sokolow's publications had borrowed heavily from earlier publications, without sufficient attribution. In 1981, Mallon writes, the "undoing of Jayme Sokolow really began."Sokolow had submitted an article entitled "Thomas and Mary Nichols and the Paradox of Ante-Bellum Free Love" to an academic journal. The journal's editor sent it to Professor Lawrence Foster for evaluation. Foster concluded that the article had clearly been plagiarized from the work of Professor Stephen W. Nissenbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. (Nissenbaum, by the way, now professor emeritus, informs me that he was born and raised in Jersey City, N.J.) Foster wrote to Nissenbaum on Dec. 18, 1980, that it seemed to be "the clearest case of plagiarism I have ever seen."

Read the rest at the link above.Other useful and interesting links:

Book Review at albany.edu (part of the Science Fraud database) On Sokolow:

"This is a sad telling of a simple case of plagiary and one which would have led to the expulsion of any undergraduate at any university in the country. Faculty get away with much more than undergraduates do."

The Plagiarist: Why Stephen Ambrose is a vampire.

David Plotz, Slate, Jan. 11, 2002

"...Plagiarists steal good stuff and they steal garbage. Some of the liveliest writing in Epstein's novel Wild Oats was embezzled from Amis. Ambrose misappropriated many vivid sentences. Newspaper plagiarists generally pirate boilerplate quotes and analysis that would have been easy for them to gather on their own.No matter what they steal, they fall back on the same excuses, as Thomas Mallon shows in his wonderful plagiarism book Stolen Words. Before the computer age, they blamed their confusing "notebooks," where they allegedly mixed up their own notes with passages recorded elsewhere. These days, plagiarists claim they mistake electronic files of notes with their own writing."