Yesterday, I heard the news about a novel being pulled by its publisher for plagiarism. This morning, I read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg's article in the Wall Street Journal about the novel in question, a spy novel by Q.R. Markham (a pseudonym of poet Quentin Rowan):
The book is a thriller about an elite CIA agent chasing a shadowy international group of assassins. But Tuesday, publisher Little, Brown & Co. recalled all 6,500 copies of the novel on the grounds that passages were "lifted" from other books. One sharp-eyed observer says he had identified at least 13 novels with similar material.
[...]
On the first page of chapter one of "Assassin" is this paragraph: "The boxy, sprawling Munitions Building which sat near the Washington Monument and quietly served as I-Division's base of operations was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular work space."
In the book "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford is this: "In June 1930, the boxy, sprawling Munitions Building, near the Washington Monument, was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular workspace."
Thirteen passages (at least) of that kind of straight theft is most definitely plagiarism.* I don't see how it could possibly happen unconsciously. There again, until last year, I didn't believe any plagiarism could happen unconsciously. But then I realised I'd done it. This kind of utterly unconscious borrowing is apparently known as cryptomnesia. (Thanks to @BuffySquirrel for the word.)
My borrowing was tiny in comparison--a matter of two images from the same poem--and I caught it long before publication. But it scared me rigid: I imagined just this kind of public crucifixion. I fretted for quite a while.
I relaxed gradually, and thought I'd put the matter to rest. But this case has put me on alert again. I don't much fancy the notion of obsessively plugging successive 10,000 word chunks of Hild into a Google search box, just so I can relax. Does anyone know a more efficient way to check a manuscript?
ETA: I checked out iThenticate, the version of Turnitin for individual authors. It costs $50 per submission. A submission is 25k words. That would end up costing me around $400 for Hild, which I think is ridiculous. I'll keep looking. Sigh.
* It turns out to be way, way more than that. Over at Reluctant Habits, Edward Champion turns up literally dozens of serious steals by Markham/Rowan in the first 35 pages of the book. It's truly mind-boggling.
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I think there is something that professors use to check for plagiarism in papers, but I'm afraid I have no idea what it is called. You could try asking a professor.
ReplyDeleteThere must be a search engine designed to do that because English professors I know check their students' papers against a database. (And end up having to fail three quarters of the class for cheating.)
ReplyDeleteMy professors used Turnitin. It looks like they also have a service for authors:
ReplyDeletehttps://turnitin.com/static/products/ithenticate.php
Turnitin is what universities mostly use, I believe.
ReplyDeletehttps://turnitin.com/static/index.php
Oh, of course! Turnitin. Excellent. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI am respectful of your concern about plagairism, but you have such an individual and original way of writing, I don't see how it could happen to you very often. Perhaps I am naieve, and I know it could affect your livelihood.
ReplyDeleteTo have so many lifted words seems like more than cryptomnesia in this case. If it was a line or two, maybe a single similar sounding paragraph and I'd be willing to believe it was accidental. But to have dozens? No way.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea there was anything out there that could check for plagerism. I'm deffinately going to make use of it from now on. The idea of accidentally lifting a line or so from someone else and have people think it was intentional. . . I don't even want to know what that would feel like.
Now there's one more thing to add in my steps for writing. . . *sigh* checking every story is going to get soooo expensive :(
barbara, I know I'm not being entirely rational about all this. If I had to bet money, would I bet that I had lifted something? No. But, oof, just the thought of it brings me out in a cold sweat. So I'll definitely be checking.
ReplyDeletetranceptor, no, theft like Markham/Rowan's is not cryptomnesia. It's cynical thievery. But, yes, unconscious lifting is scary. And, yes, sigh, one more step to add to the editing process.