BUSTED! Plagiarists, Fakers & Literary Hoaxes

[petitesuite]

That is really interesting! I think Jojo Moyes is straight up horrible so I do a liiiiiiiittle bit wish that the other author's publisher had found actionable plagiarism, but you can't have everything. The excerpts/plot points in that Buzzfeed article do all sound frankly pretty generic to me.

[chonies]

Oct 8, 2019 11:02:17 GMT -4 petitesuite said:

That is really interesting! I think Jojo Moyes is straight up horrible so I do a liiiiiiiittle bit wish that the other author's publisher had found actionable plagiarism, but you can't have everything. The excerpts/plot points in that Buzzfeed article do all sound frankly pretty generic to me.

The generic aspect was sort of inadvertently the most interesting part of the story, especially when a few commenters pointed out that there were a lot of shared conventions in genre works. Like with Hallmark products. The first author’s use of the Blue Fugates was unique, but there are only so many ways you can describe handwriting (elegant, round, catastrophic...)

[seat6]

Afro-Latina’ Activist Admits She Is A White Jewish Woman Who Pretended To Be Black

I cannot believe that Rachel Dolezal has a copy cat.

[Deleted]

I feel like both of these women are desperate attention seekers.

[chonies]

This situation badly stressed one of my friends out. Friend is also in academia and has legitimate claims to Afro Latinx identity and heritage but is also white-passing, and has written about this dilemma a few times in the last few years. Now they’re worried about being called a fraud or hoaxster, too.

Some of the comments from The Faker’s former students are truly terrible, and it sounds like she would double down and get really confrontational.

[boxofrocks]

Per The New Yorker, Krug has resigned. Apparently she was about to be exposed and her confession was meant to get ahead of it.

[Ginger]

The brazenness and escalation of the lies seem like she wanted to get caught.

This scandal reminded me of a really good book I read recently: Conning Harvard: The True Story of the Con Artist Who Faked His Way Into the Ivy League. It's about a kid named Adam Wheeler who got into Harvard with a completely faked application and a plagiarized essay. He then became a star student in the English Department by plagiarizing all of his papers from the writings of Harvard's own English professors.

By the end, he was applying for the Rhodes Scholarship and making ridiculous claims like that he was an expert in a number of different languages like "Old Persian", that he guest lectured at Columbia University, that he co-authored 5 books with a Harvard professor, that he took 6 graduate classes per semester as an undergrad and got A's in all of them. He submitted a completely plagiarized 120-page academic paper for Harvard's top writing prize (which he won) and claimed he wrote it just for fun. All of this stuff was ridiculous and very easily disproven, but every step of the way, the powers that be at Harvard ate it up. He, too, seemed to have a pathological need to keep escalating the lies to increasingly preposterous levels.

Back to the New Yorker article...I think that article (and the coverage of Krug in general) is disingenuous about the role racial identity plays in academia's various ethnic studies disciplines. I am very skeptical about the author's claim that whiteness is both commonplace and advantageous in these fields. The whole issue of academics who feel the need to lay claim to a certain identity in order to gain clout, justify their participation in the field, get access to opportunities like book deals, get tenure at more prestigious institutions, lend authenticity to their research - it goes way beyond Krug. She isn't even the only professor at GWU to have been exposed for it. There is so much of interest to explore there, and I don't think anybody wants to go there in an honest way.

[Mutagen]

This is mostly "writer drama with a small side order of plagiarism" but Who is the Bad Art Friend? is a deliciously messy saga.

Both Dorland and Larson sound like insufferable people, with Larson coming out the worse IMO because a) she did copy, whether she's found legally liable for anything or not, b) she is an asshole for trying to hide behind social justice issues, c) she should have just owned her choices instead of acting like a snake in the grass.

[Ladybug]

I'm in the middle or reading this article. It's pretty long. But Dorland was irritating me from the beginning. If I knew her in real life I'd probably snap at her "Yes, we know you donated your kidney to a stranger, can you please shut up about it for five seconds?!?!" She sounded like a communal narcissist who needs constant recognition and validation for what a great, charitable person she is. Larson seemed to touch on that in her story. I'm still reading it, though and haven't formed a full opinion yet.

[Mutagen]

Oh absolutely. They both sound awful. Actually, in the "no such thing as bad publicity" category, I did become interested in the short story that kicked this whole mess off because I suspect Larson did accurately nail some unflattering aspects of Dorland's personality. But cribbing from her actual letter was just really distasteful to me all the same. It was cheap.