Thursday, May 18, 2006
Plagiarism
Last week, in New York Magazine, David Edelstein wrote "Where Have I Read That Before?" It begins with "Is everything we read now swiped from somewhere else?" and ends with "In this world of Google and Nexis, in which you can pick and choose among so many words written on a given subject, you can’t be sure that anything you read is original. Even this."
True enough. In a matter of fact, these sentences are about the only ones which Edelstein did not plagiarize himself. He has now explained himself in a follow-up: "A Stunt Explained." Here is his opening paragraph:
I love stunts like this! Nevertheless, may I never give in to the temptation of plagiarism.
True enough. In a matter of fact, these sentences are about the only ones which Edelstein did not plagiarize himself. He has now explained himself in a follow-up: "A Stunt Explained." Here is his opening paragraph:
The response to my essay on plagiarism last week ("Where Have I Read That Before?") was swift, so here goes: Yes, it is plagiarized. Ninety- nine percent of it. The only original lines, in fact, are the first and the last two. After reading the endless stories about the Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism case, I thought, Wow, at this rate, someone’s going to write a piece about plagiarism that’s going to turn out to be plagiarized. Then I thought, Why don’t I write that? The idea was just to put it out there to see how long it took for people to notice—and whether anyone thought it was a genuine piece of plagiarism. Michael David Smith wrote to Jim Romenesko 25 minutes after the media blogger linked to the article.
I love stunts like this! Nevertheless, may I never give in to the temptation of plagiarism.
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