I Am Become Plagiarism

Bailiff:  Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Scott:  I do.  (Assistant District Attorney John Wells strides forward and begins to question Kaufman.)

Wells:  Is it true that on the tenth of May you wrote a post on your blog called "What's the Word I'm Looking For?  The Opposite of 'Disgruntled'"?

Scott:  I did.

Wells:  And did said post contain the sentence "Today, for some apparent reason, I had my first choate idea in weeks"? 

Scott:  It did.

Wells:  Now refer to Government's Exhibit 643.  Read the highlighted section.

Scott:  "But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads and tails of."

Wells:  Notice any similarity?

Scott:  The phrase "some apparent reason" appears in both.

Wells:  It certainly does.  Now could you read the next highlighted part?

Scott:  "The conversation become more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail."  I know what you're thinking, but I'm no plagiarist!

Wells:  Will the court please instruct Mr. Kaufman to only answer the questions asked?

Judge:  Consider yourself warned.

Wells:  Thank you.  Now please read the rest of the highlighted words.

Scott:  Gruntled, nomer, shevelled, kempt, godly.

Wells:  If I were to tell you all those words appeared in your blog post of 10 May, would I be correct?

Scott:  They're all there, but . . .

Wells:  You'll answer the questions I ask with a simple "Yes" or "No." 

Scott:  Yes. 

Wells:  The State enters Exhibit 644 into evidence.  (hands an oddly shaped box to Scott)  Mr. Kaufman, will you please tell the jury what you have in your hands?

Scott:  A copy of The Complete New Yorker.

Wells:  What would happen if I handed you a laptop and asked you to do a search for an article in the 25 July 1994 issue written be a man named Jack Winter?

Scott:  Nothing.

Wells:  Nothing? 

Scott:  I stare at its outrageously complicated search interface for a couple of minutes.  Then I'd type in his name and be taken to a screen which listed the articles he'd written.  I'd try to access them, but would fail miserably. 

Wells:  And why would you do that?

Scott:  Because it's designed so counterintuitive that you need a doctorate in Computer Science to navigate it.

Wells:  You want this court to believe that someone as technological proficient as you is unable to operate The Complete New Yorker's search function?

Scott:  It's true.

Wells:  (looking flustered)  So what you expect this court to believe is that despite you teaching articles from The New Yorker on a regular basis, you had no idea of the existence of Jack Winter's "How I Met My Wife"?

Scott:  Yes sir.

Wells:  And that the numerous identical "words" in the two text appear through sheer coincidence?

Scott:  Not by coincidence.  We—Mr. Winter and I—were both aiming for the same effect.  There aren't that many words in the English language with the strange usage patterns we both exploited for humorous effect . . .

Wells:  "Yes" or "No" will suffice.

Scott:  Yes then, I suppose.

Wells:  If a student of yours turned in an article with as many "coincidences" as are found in your post, what would your first reaction be?

Scott:  It depends.  If I'd seen them through four or five drafts and watched as they appeared via revision, I'd think it a coincidence.

Wells:  And what would Turnitin.com think it?

Scott:  Plagiarism.  But it can't account for process . . .

Wells:  Thank you, Mr. Kaufman.  That's all.  I have no more questions for this witness . . .

Addendum:  So that turned out far more tedious than funny.  Were I to write it more directly, I'd say "I didn't actually plagiarize the Winters piece, but given the standards I apply to my students, there's no way around the fact that I'm a plagiarist."  So when a friend of mine—who, I should add, I didn't even know read this blog—emailed me a link to the Winters article, my first thought was less thought and more terrible-sinking-feeling.  I consoled myself with the knowledge that I didn't actually read The New Yorker until June of '95. 

How can I date it so precisely?  Because that's when I started working in the used bookstore which introduced me to that and many other magazines besides . . . including The Baffler.  I must say that the idea that I work with people who were on The Baffler's editorial board makes the young intellectual outsider in me glow in much the same way he does when the new n+1 arrives.  (As it did yesterday.)  Point being I think this an interesting test case, since I'm 100% certain I didn't plagiarize the Winters piece but know how high the evidence is stacked against me. 

Comments

[CR]

Can I ask a question - do you read the NY Observer? Ever? On-line? B/c a few days back I thought I spotted a bit of inadvertent plag. here from this week's issue.

Not to make you all paranoid or anything.

You may be developing a tic, M. Sasser... (Maybe our discussion of Sassersaxitus set it off...)

[Belle Lettre]

You should have entitled this post "How Scott Eric Kaufman Got Kissed, Got Wild, And Got A Life."

You should also read Gladwell's New Yorker article on plagiarism: http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_11_25_a_borrowed.html

Either way, I believe you when you say "coincidences" and not Kaavya when she said that her blatant copying was.

But you should definitely change the title! Imagine all the people who will go to your site via googling "kiss AND wild" and how disappointed they will be!

[Matt]

Great post, and definitely funny, not tedious. Especially loved the bit about the Complete New Yorker. A friend of mine, who used to contribute to my blog, has set up a site you might enjoy -- it's devoted to "wading through the Complete New Yorker DVDs." Yikes!

[Kevin Andre Elliott]

You work with people that were on The Baffler editorial board? That makes the outsider intellectual in me glow!

[Adam Roberts]

This is a brave admission, Scott: of the three 'P' words academics fear being branded with ('Plagiarist', 'Pedophile' and 'Pro-Bush') you may have picked the worst of them. Uncalled for, in this instance, I think.

On the other hand, the name 'Phred Phinklestone' adds two more unpleasant 'P' words to the lexicon.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

CR, in private communique whose contents are so deadly secret I'm going to reveal them here, in public: In reference to the whole Kaavya Viswanathan thing, someone said of her advance that it made them throw up a little in their mouth, which is precisely what I said to Adam the other day. Furthermore, he noted that he charged me of plagiarism in a post about plagiarism on the same day that I got a beatdown from Fish about fish. "Did they change something in the Matrix?" he asked. Indeed!

Belle, not a bad idea! Also, I read the Gladwell when it came out, and am actually teaching some of his essays next week (I think).

Matt, I'm not at all surprised he's only got four or five posts up there in the month he's been doing it. I'm not kidding about its "intuitive" navigation system.

Kevin, I actually found that out after I started working with him. I just kind of stood there, jaw-dropped, at which point he informed me that he's close friends with "Tom Frank." At which I fainted, was revived, and promptly fainted again. (Funny how my OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG! moments only happen about self-styled public intellectuals. I really don't know why that is.)

[N. Pepperell]

So you're writing about plagiarism, and I'm dealing with a case of it... Do other people find these cases as fundamentally *depressing* as I do? I've got a student plagiarising things from comments on internet forums - I was about to fail the piece for poor writing, when I realised it wasn't even this person's *own* poor writing... :-(

(I realise this has nothing to do with your main point, which is something that worries me, as well: that simple socialisation into a world of writing establishes... conceptual grooves into which thoughts more easily flow, making all writing a form of unconscious homage. I often wince when I see large, public plagiarism controversies, wondering how many three-word fragments from my own writing might have cropped up somewhere else, in something I've read years ago, if someone really cared to look...)

[Ray Davis]

I Google almost every joke I make before posting it. I've had to throw away some nice 'uns, too. (I cut myself some slack if I delivered the punchline better, though. Condensare, internet wits, condensare!)

[Rebecca]

Ah. When I read your post, I thought it seemed familiar--the New Yorker piece was read on NPR (or at least referenced) sometime in the last couple of years, and my dad really liked it, so I looked it up for him. Not through the New Yorker, though. It's reprinted somewhere else, I believe.

[Timothy J Scriven]

"Wells: You'll answer the questions I ask with a simple "Yes" or "No.""

- Objection your honour, leading question.

[Timothy J Scriven]

Sorry, little bit of a legal faux there, this being cross examination the prosecution lawyer was within his rights.

[Andrew Brown]

Erm, "gruntled" and "kempt" have been staples in the conversation of my uncle Christopher (born ca 1925) for the last forty years at least. Oxonian medical student humour. Does he get to sue the New Yorker?

[david tiley]

As an Australian, I have known about that conceit for many, many years. I think it classifies as a kind of linguistic game, which can be extended by inventing opposites to other words as well.

Knowing that you didn't read the article is no longer a defence. It is hard to demonstrate that you didn't read it on another website, posted by someone who stole it, probably with full attribution.