“The Highest Form of Flattery? In Praise of Plagiarism” by Jeremy Gavron

An excerpt from “The Highest Form of Flattery? In Praise of Plagiarism” by Jeremy Gavron, posted in The Guardian:

 

 

The Highest Form of Flattery? In Praise of Plagiarism

The age of the internet, where everything is connected, has made plagiarism both easier to commit and more difficult to hide, as many a student has discovered. It has also exposed writers to new levels of examination, such as the recent allegations that Emma Cline, author of the best-selling novel The Girls, took ideas for the book from her ex-boyfriend’s emails, and the various claims that Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar contender, The Shape of Water, is based on a 1969 play, Let Me Hear You Whisper, or has copied scenes from two French films, Amélie and Delicatessen – allegations which Del Toro, or his representatives, have denied.

Two short stories published in the past few months also raise contemporary, as well as age-old, questions about influence and debt in works of fiction. Where exactly is the line between homage, reference, fair borrowing, and plagiarism? And is acknowledging such debts enough – or necessary?

“Foreign-Returned”, by Sadia Shepard, published in the New Yorker last month, tells of a professional Pakistani couple working and socialising in America. In an interview published online to accompany the story, Shepard acknowledged the “great debt” her story owes to Mavis Gallant’s “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street”, itself published in the New Yorker in 1963, which tells of a professional Canadian couple working and socialising in Switzerland. “Ice Wagon” is a story she returned to “year after year”, Shepard said. In doing so she thought “this feels so Pakistani” and was excited by the idea of applying its “universal” truth to “a completely different context”.[…continue reading here]