Literary Clusterfucks 2013

there should be a little meter on twitter that says when someone has been piled on exactly enough so everyone knows when to stop

xp strafkolonie omg

not sure why j. made that suicide quip above

it wasn't a quip, i'm saying, people kill themselves over things like this, you think the same thing that i said

goddamn plagiarists everywhere

when I was taking literature classes there was a guy whose project was going to poetry readings with a notebook and free writing while the poet read. He'd mix in his own lines with stuff he was hearing the poet read. This got iffy when he attended student readings and presented his partially-lifted poems in the workshop. People were bugged by it, but he was up front about what he was doing. He got a Stegner fellowship.

'Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.'

I saw someone doing this at a reading the other night, or maybe writing down phrases they liked. Seemed a little odd but also a thing that poetry students might do.

Back in Homer's day…

i agree that people shouldn't lift lines from other poets...

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 2, 2018

how do you feel about allusion?
what if the lift is in a character's voice?
do we need to re-evaluate jean rhys?

obv the case in question is a whole other thing but man, i'd hate to imagine a world where every artifact has to be sui generis

my biggest takeaway from this is lol poetry

From the beef or this thread?

from poetry

Xp rogermexico, that’s kind of what I was saying in my flurry of commentary upthread—the tweets about this issue seemed to display a pretty naive understanding of authorship and originality. What would they think of an artist like Sturtevant?

This is a very clear-cut case of plagiarism, though. As someone said above, it reads exactly like an undergrad with a thesaurus trying to get out of being detected. There is no recontextualisation or conversation here, just thievery.

Yes but treesh found some twitter rando saying biting someone’s style is literally murder so now that is what this case is about

That was not a rando, i think that was this plagiarist’s publisher

No, the publisher was talking about actual plagiarism

Oh thats right. The style person was some kind ofnpoetry student. Be that as it may

how do you feel about allusion?
what if the lift is in a character's voice?
do we need to re-evaluate jean rhys?

i liked this but better if it rhymed

The publisher was out of line too.

Eh the publisher said a true thing (“this is unacceptable”) in kinda ott language (“evil”), I’m p whatever about the idea that @GhostCityPress might take poetry too seriously

evil is a stupid term at best of times, when tweeted in reference to something someone did in poetry then the tweeter should be taken out to a main square and kicked to death on a stage

Evil is a good and useful term it means very bad fyi

100% rise in Twitter hyperbole-related public kicking deaths this year. Be safe out there.

thats progress is that

If they’re poets they should be careful with their language!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! xp

well that really goes for all writers but: they aren't

how do you feel about allusion?
what if the lift is in a character's voice?
do we need to re-evaluate jean rhys?

i liked this but better if it rhymed

― puppy bash (darraghmac), 4. december 2018 21:43 (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It kinda does with my Danish accent

This is a very clear-cut case of plagiarism, though.

― emil.y, Tuesday, December 4, 2018

no question. it wouldn't be worth discussion except for the Too Extreme For America conversation going on around it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BwWKXjVaI

The interesting thing about plagiarism in contemporary poetry is that there's loads of it (fella called If a Lightman writes about it a lot and does some detective work on it). Probably because so much poetry is published but so little read, plagiarism can easily hide.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/09/poetry-plagiarism-copying-maya-angelou-ira-lightman-will-storr

“oh gosh I was practicing this extremely advanced thing called intertextuality and forgot the appropriate attributions...”

hanging’s too good for these charlatans

young adult publishing is the cutting edge these days

https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/ya-twitter-forces-rising-star-author-to-self-cancel.html

Fun

Something similar happened in YA a while ago—a book got tagged as racist before it was released due to some cocnerns about appropriation or something. pvmic and all, but i find these rigid ideas of what people have the right to represent actually terrifying.

geez, treesh, won't you think of the children?

these ppl are so fucking stupid

god help us all

What’s maddening is that it grows from a legitimate form of critique. Some forms of representation do reproduce harmful ideas, even if on the surface it doesn’t look that way. Publishing has elevated certain stories over others, and correcting this imbalance is definitely a valid editorial objective.

But I just think when it comes to these flare ups, people are using this form of critique as a cover for vapid point-scoring. And they’re also taking too rigid a line—overlooking the distinction between what might be problematic, and worth discussing, and what is like, morally unacceptable speech that needs to be swiftly codemned.

The discourse is completely reactive and the pattern is always the same—one person is “called out” and dragged before a (metaphorical) firing squad. And then when they or others complain this an unbalanced response, they get accused of tone policing or comparing someone’s career being derailed to real injustice—which is of course usually isn’t what’s happened

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/02/zadie-smith-political-correctness-hay-cartagena

I love zadie smith. Didn’t read the article yet but probably otm

Didn’t read the article yet but probably otm

I love you Treeship, but new board description?

Good idea, yeah. Your quote’s been on there long enough.

Yeah, that was the partly the reason...

you're such a treeship, treeship

This is just... wow: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/11/a-suspense-novelists-trail-of-deceptions/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Seriously.

Though for all the horrifying, jaw-dropping lies, the point at which I had to take a break was the mention of the friend who wrote a story featuring a charming manipulator named Tom Rigbey.

Halfway through and wow... Will withhold judgement till I finish it but: it's amazing how much one person can get away with

xp haha

good read but not surprising I don’t think? I just assume the literary world is set up for guys like this

I adore highsmith but what a terrible and boring legacy at this point