Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "joyce"

Randy Kennedy’s article on the question of appropriation in the works of two contemporary writers, a teenage German novelist, Helene Hegemann, and an American former novelist turned essayist, David Shields, whose recent works are made (extensively in Hegemann’s case; almost entirely in Shields’s case) of quotations borrowed from other writers, is predictably confused.

Kennedy presents the two writers’ arguments, namely their claim that the entire history of literature is made of borrowed things (“There is no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” says Hegemann) with barely controlled annoyance. Instead of trying to discuss the intelligent distinction, especially coming from a teenager, between originality and authenticity, Kennedy simply informs us that the above statement is reminiscent of Sartre—college graduates out there will have also recognized the sartrian concept of “authenticity.” I guess in Kennedy’s mind, if one uses this word, that automatically must have something to do with Sartre. Quoting Shields’s remark that the other arts have been doing these kinds of appropriations for a long time, while literature has lagged behind, Kennedy wonders how borrowing can accomplish the same thing in literature as, say, the use of a can soup by Warhol. That’s really a great example because the answer is very simple: literature can accomplish exactly the same thing!

The reason why Kennedy thinks that such appropriation is “normal” in painting (and not in literature) is simply because he is used to it since it has already been done. He chastises Hegemann and Shields for trying to do away with the concept of originality, but fails to see that Warhol isn’t really any more original (although I guess we should give him points for coming up with the idea way before the others). Not to mention that it doesn’t even cross his mind that the concept of “originality” is relatively new (that is, it is a modern concept) and that in the old days, creations were appreciated because they reminded people of something they already were familiar with. Kennedy quotes Patrick Ross, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, who, also predictably, tells us that Hegemann doesn’t say “anything original, yet the passages she lifted from other books were original expressions in those books, even if the ideas were not new.” This idiotic dichotomy between “expression” and “idea” or form and content, on which Western thinking has been based for some time, is something lawyers might find useful (in law, indeed, there is a difference between form and content). But for a real writer or philosopher it has no meaning for the simple reason that an “idea” cannot exist without being expressed; it cannot exist “in itself,” it can only exist in words, that is, in a form.

The main problem with Kennedy’s article is that he thinks that the fight between, on one side, “a growing culture of borrowing and appropriation,” and “on the other, copyright advocates,” is the same thing as the fight between the culture of appropriation and the culture of individual creation based on the concept of originality. In reality, these are two very different fights. The lawyers who forced Shields to list the “sources” of his quotes and thus betray the essence of his book (it would have been much more interesting for the reader to guess where they came from) would have also forced James Joyce to do the same thing, had he lived today (that is, if any publisher would have accepted to publish him in the first place). These lawyers and the laws they represent do not “defend” creation or “originality,” quite the contrary. Because of these lawyers and of copyright laws there are many great works of literature that cannot be translated and made available to readers. This happens because the heirs to the writers have the power to stop any kind of publication if they so decide, and what a thrill to have such power when you are an idiot and you happen to be related to a great writer! (Incidentally, Joyce’s nephew is one of these difficult heirs). I know many brilliant translators who cannot publish their translations because the writer’s relatives who have the copyright have decided that they don’t want to approve it. Why? Simply because they have the power to do it. These are the “creation protection” laws lawyers defend: they have nothing to do with “originality;” all they have to do with is money and power.

And then, there is another problem. Kennedy and the mainstream publishing industry have discovered now that this “growing culture of borrowing” exists. In fact, writers have been using these kinds of techniques for years, though you wouldn’t know this if you read the reviews published in the American mainstream media. One of most respected and original contemporary European novelists, the Hungarian Peter Esterhazy, whose work is published by the biggest publishers in all European countries, often “burrows” entire pages from a Czech writer he very much admires. If Esterhazy lived in the States, he very likely wouldn’t be able to publish his work, except in truncated form. Why? Because of the laws that defend “originality.”

What Kennedy and the publishing industry cannot understand is that there is a huge difference between plagiarism and “appropriation.” The first thing that distinguishes them is that the plagiarist is afraid of being caught, while the “appropriator” has nothing to be afraid of (both writers discussed in Kennedy’s article, as well as Esterhazy, have publicly acknowledged their appropriations). But the main question is: how do you distinguish between the two? It is true that this distinction is easier in painting, where it is graphically obvious when an artist has appropriated someone else’s work (by the way, Kennedy doesn’t even mention the technique of the collage). It is much more difficult to do this in the case of literature (though, I for one, have done this in the past by using Italics). But the same is true of music: how can you tell when a modern musical piece quotes Beethoven or the Beatles? Well, there is only one way of telling: by being familiar with these pieces and with the history of music. It is exactly the same in literature.

Finally, there is another way of telling the difference: if you write like Dan Brown and, all of a sudden, you have a passage that sounds like Joyce, chances are you are a plagiarist. But the unfortunate reality is that most readers couldn’t tell the difference because… well, because… (one study done at Harvard with graduate students proved that almost none of them could tell the difference between a piece written by a famous writer, including classics, and some totally obscure and irrelevant pieces of writing). Well, here, there is only one way of really telling the difference: it takes one to know one. It takes a real writer to read another real writer.

Kennedy ends his article by quoting Louis Menand who very wisely notes that like any new technique, it all depends on how the appropriation is done. I can already predict that in the years to come this way of writing will become not only popular, but, as in painting, it will become the norm of the new avant-garde (or rather, post-garde; if for the French, everything cool is “avant,” that is, “before,” for the Americans, everything must be “post”). This is the problem with all new or “revolutionary” art: in the end, it is co-opted by the mainstream and it becomes just another cliché.

I will paste here on Goodreads under “Alta’s writings” a story I wrote years ago, “The Castellan,” made entirely of quotes from five works by five different authors (I won’t give you their names). No magazine wanted to publish it, so I guess this is as good a place as any. You will see that in spite of its “lack of originality” it seems written by the same person from the beginning to the end. I should mention in this context that Kennedy is very surprised that Shields’s book too “can sound at times eerily consistent” in spite of its numerous sources. There is a reason for this. He, Shields, is the one who made the selection, in the same way that any “original” piece of writing is based on a process of selection. And to select means to look at the world through a unique, individual perspective. That’s why even a collage can be, if it’s done by someone with a vision, an original work.

Post Scriptum: I will grant the defenders of “originality” this: no collage could trigger in me the same reaction as, say, the works of the great Flemish artists. But then, how many “original” contemporary writers do you know who are comparable with Dostoevsky or Turgenev or Emily Brontë?