“His eyes were a cold blue. He had the kind of weather-beaten face that suggested years of outdoor activity, and the square jaw of a matinee idol." (original by Raymond Benson)
"His eyes were a warm blue and he had the kind of weather-beaten face that suggested years of outdoor activity. Chase almost had the look of an old-time matinee idol, but there was a certain quirkiness, a wistfulness, a rueful irony to his face that left a different kind of emotional trademark."Both versions put together, a bit incongruously, matinee idol looks and a weather-beaten face. Benson makes it make sense; it's only his square jaw that belongs to a matinee idol. In Markham's version, why he has the "look" of a matinee idol is never explained, and just hangs there at odds with the weather-beaten face. The rhythms, too, are incomparably better in Benson's version, and the precision -- "almost had the look," "a certain quirkiness," far too vague.
I immediately emailed the publisher,... asking them to remove the Q&A I had done with him from their websites – he had of course also plagiarized many of his comments in it, from Dream Time by Geoffrey O’Brien, which was also the source for much of his book’s prologue – and to withdraw the book.posted by muddgirl at 7:09 PM on November 8, 2011 [6 favorites]
Thomas Mallon, best known these days for his historical novels, such as 'Henry and Clara'' and the recently published 'Two Moons,'' examined plagiarism in a 1989 nonfiction book, 'Stolen Words.'' He favors the notion, first advanced about 20 years ago in an American Scholar article by Peter Shaw, that plagiarism is a form of kleptomania.and later,
'The most striking thing is there's this lack of need to do it,'' Mallon says. 'Just as kleptomania tends to be a crime of upscale people - the woman slipping a can of soup into her fur coat - frequently what you notice about plagiarists is that they are themselves talented people, and it's not a question of their being unable to produce.''
Novelist Mallon, again citing Peter Shaw's kleptomania theory, says he's convinced that plagiarism has its compulsive aspect, and that if a writer does it once, he'll do it again. 'What Shaw says is that, after a while, the thrill of getting away with it,'' Mallon says, 'can at some point be replaced with the thrill of getting caught.''Here's an essay by Peter Shaw (though not the same one mentioned in the article, I think), called "The fatal pattern of plagiary."
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posted by Revort at 5:37 PM on November 8, 2011 [11 favorites]