Book’s passages raise questions of plagiarism

[YDogg]

A minor third in “Tuscaloosa Knights" rang familiar to Margaret Butler.

The first story of Brad Vice’s story collection “The Bear Bryant Funeral Train" begins with a passage about a bugle blast that drops “a minor third on a long wailing note."

“On the first page, I said to myself, 'I’ve read this before,’ " said Butler, who as reader’s adviser to the Tuscaloosa Public Library picks up everything literary about the Druid City.

Specifically, she heard echoes from one of her favorite books, Carl Carmer’s 1934 “Stars Fell on Alabama": Those three bugle blasts, “then a drop of a minor third on a long wailing note."

“I knew immediately," Butler said. “I can’t believe I was the first one to notice it."


http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051021/NEWS/510210365/1007

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[sybylla]

1. Plagaiarism is always a tricky issue

Brad Vice nabbed a snappy turn of phrase that's been floating around for over 70 years. It could have come to him through any number of sources, including his own highschool music experiences, and just stuck with him.

How do you credit something you heard to something you may have never read or,if you did read it, read it so long ago that you no longer remember the source?

There are several people in my family who love quoting snippets from movies in their everyday conversation. If you've never seen the movie, you'd never realize it or know the source. It's always in the back of my mind that I'll put something I heard once in my writing and later find out it came from a published source unknown to me.

Heck, there are so many words and phrases that we use everyday that came from Shakespeare and yet I never hear anyone cry plagiarism when they appear uncredited in the works of others.

If this is the only borrowed snippet, then I'd put it down to an accidental or coincidental act. There would have to be more borrowing for me to believe the "plagiarism" is intentional in this case.

[Taxloss]

2. I think plagiarism has to be systematic.

Use of a phrase in a book by a dead author is, in my view, excusable even if deliberate. Wholesale reproduction of a creative work - plot, form and character - is deeply immoral.

But on a phrase level, I think some "plagiarise" without realising it, just to get some form of words that has been banging around in their head for years onto the page. They don't remember the source. Also, there's the matter of the "tribute" or literary reference - is that plagiarism?

On an aside, the word comes from the Latin for "kidnapping". Appropriate.

[Kire]

3. copyright might be lapsed

but it sure makes a good headline

[Kire]

4. "Pulling down her copy of the Carmer book, she noted more:

similar settings, descriptions and dialogue, she said."

[YDogg]

5. The book has been recalled by the University of Georgia Press ...

... and will be pulped. I guess the Press didn't like what they saw, upon closer examination.

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051027/NEWS/51027008&SearchID=73225526622634

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051028/NEWS/510280344&SearchID=73225526426902


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