BUSTED! Plagiarists, Fakers & Literary Hoaxes

[eclair]

That plagerized ferret research is hilarious! I mean, totally morally wrong and all, and I'm glad the author got caught, but the juxtoposition of the research paper and the bad Native American romance has had me giggling all day. I sent the link to a cousin who is involved with trying to save the black foot ferrets. I haven't heard back from him; probably several dozen people sent him the story. Still, I want to know if knows the author of the research article. Sounds like this woman is a hack anyway, I wonder if she still has a book contract. I kinda hope she stole from "Dyanetics" and the scienos find out.

[shriekingeel]

I feel the same way about Mikhail Sholokhov. No matter how much he's exonerated from the plagiarism charges, the dropoff in quality after And Quiet Flows the Don is the most striking thing, and I can't get beyond it.

[kanding]

Nothing to add here, just that I love this thread!

[roobarb]

smilla said:

I know she was pretty much cleared, but I wonder if we've seen the last of this scandal (or others) for J.K. Rowling.

Personally, I've always had questions about what I see as a huge drop off in quality, loss of depth, and strange change in plot direction occurring in the Potter series after the first two books. It's not proof of plagiarism, (or anything) but it's suspicious to me.

Heh. And yet I would say that book three is where the Harry Potter series started to get really good - Prisoner Of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire are in a different league to the first two, for me. I'm curious as to what you mean by a strange change in plot direction after the first two books. (Sorry if I seem nosy but, well, I'm nosy and I like to talk about Harry Potter.)

And this woman only claims she stole a couple of names (Larry Potter, muggles), which to me is not the same as lifting story ideas or dialogue, although obviously still pretty crappy. Or are you talking about another case?

See? Nosy.

[Mutagen]

For me the Harry Potter drop-off starts after book four. I don't chalk that up to plagiarism but probably up to JKR's editors being reluctant to step in, afraid to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

[aibohphobia]

mutagen said:

For me the Harry Potter drop-off starts after book four. I don't chalk that up to plagiarism but probably up to JKR's editors being reluctant to step in, afraid to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

OT: That's where they started to drop off for me too. I know she set up some kind of ultimatum to her publishers with OotP where she didn't want them to step in and give her deadlines or to edit as she worked on it because she finally had enough power to do so. However, I think the books really suffered in quality when she did that because they were too long, they probably could have helped her clarify things more so she wouldn't have to rely on her website and interviews as a crutch whenever she made a mistake or when things seemed to contradict her earlier writing, and there were a lot of simple errors that should have been caught. I still enjoyed parts of them, but I always felt like they could have been so much better if she only allowed an editor to step in more.

(Although I seem to be in the small minority that actually likes the first two the best. I know they're more child like, but I prefer that to the never-ending fifth-seventh books where she really needed a good editor and to lighten up. Yeah, I know there were some serious issues going on, but to me they didn't have or barely had the whimsy that I liked about the books in the first place. Plus, the first book opened up with a double murder, so it's not like there weren't a lot of dark issues in that one or the first one either.)

[kanding]

Gather round children as I go waaaay back to '81 (/shakes cane, adjusts shawl) and tell the tale of a series of Pulitzer-winning articles that were all lies. Janet Cooke not only lied through her teeth but eventually walked off with quite the payload from selling the rights to her story.

If that weren't enough, then-mayor Marion Barry claimed to know of the child in the articles and that he was receiving treatment for addiction. Just like Barry to claim that his city was on top of the situation. Too bad the kid didn't exist.

[tabby]

That plagerized ferret research is hilarious! I mean, totally morally wrong and all, and I'm glad the author got caught, but the juxtoposition of the research paper and the bad Native American romance has had me giggling all day.

Oh, me, too! It's such a break from the Britney and Tom Cruise batshit-craziness.

Also, there's a kind of happy ending - people (romance-novel readers, specifically) are donating money to prairie-conservation and black-footed-ferret conservation organizations. There's also a nice letter from the Newsweek-article author to SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com apologizing for being dismissive of the romance genre. He sounds like a funny guy.

[Deleted]

According to the latest Uncle John's Bathroom Reader, To Kill A Mockingbird was really written by Truman Capote. Apparently, an editor, Pearl Bell, who worked on the book claimed that Harper Lee didn't write it, her buddy Truman did. It would explain how someone who never wrote a word came up with such a polished masterpiece, and why she's never written anything since.

[BinkyBetsy]

kanding said:

Gather round children as I go waaaay back to '81 (/shakes cane, adjusts shawl) and tell the tale of a series of Pulitzer-winning articles that were all lies. Janet Cooke not only lied through her teeth but eventually walked off with quite the payload from selling the rights to her story.

If that weren't enough, then-mayor Marion Barry claimed to know of the child in the articles and that he was receiving treatment for addiction. Just like Barry to claim that his city was on top of the situation. Too bad the kid didn't exist.

Yeah, I remember Mike Royko of the Chicago Sun-Times (I think he hadn't left for the Tribune yet) lambasting the editor of the WaPo (who I believe was Bob Woodward) for publishing what Royko saw as an incomplete story. "I want the name of the kid, the name of the boyfriend, the address where they live, we're gonna send cops and child services over there, arrest this scumbag and get the kid into a safe home. After that, THEN we have a story." And if Cooke hadn't complied, she should have been fired. IOW, it shouldn't have been a matter of her getting busted after the Pulitzer, or even after publication. The "story" should not have seen the light of day.