Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!

A HYMN TO PLAGIARISM?

I have just read an article by Jonathan Lethem that I found referenced on another blog. It is so bloody good. But I warn you, it is a bit of a read and will need an open mind. I once thought writers had that... and maybe the 'big' ones do... but there are a lot of 'little' writers with a fragile intellectual understanding of the subject and they may find this article a challenge.

Here is a snippet that I like and gives you a taster of the thrust of the article. I dedicate this to all those who are in search of the true path in their writing:

'And we too often, as hucksters and bean counters in the tiny enterprises of our selves, act to spite the gift portion of our privileged roles. People live differently who treat a portion of their wealth as a gift. If we devalue and obscure the gift-economy function of our art practices, we turn our works into nothing more than advertisements for themselves.'

The message: be generous with your work and your words and your visions and your ideas; that is how art grows - besides, as a writer you already owe such a debt to everything you have ever read or seen or heard... as you gift to the world so has the world already gifted to you.

Here is the URL details: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387

(I am adding this comment. I added the substance of it to a blog discussion of Lethem's article and it seems pertinent to add it here:

If nothing else this article, by an articulate and intelligent writer, says one thing of real importance (I actually think it says more than one thing of importance) and that is that the subject of creative borrowing is more complex than many bloggers would have you believe.

You are, of course, allowed to disagree with Lethem. I have been discussing this subject on my own blog for several months and strangely enough have arrived at precisely the same conclusions as Lethem (and some of the same examples of creative borrowing). It is also the argument of Malcolm Gladwell (writer of 'The Tipping Point' and 'Blink') in an essay on the subject. When other intelligent thinkers and writers are arriving at the same or similar conclusions, it goes to show that (emotions aside) the matter of creative use of another's ideas is at least something that should be more carefully and less emotionally debated.

I have always said you can have my visions and ideas and characters... just don't use my actual words. Easy for me to say, perhaps, when I don't make my living by my writing. I don't mind if someone does with my idea something much better. As a political animal I am squarely in the camp that was once called socialist (where have those idealistic parties gone now?) and maybe that is the tenet of my artistic ideals.

I recognise that a free-for-all has its threat in the marketplace. I haven't an answer to that. But when so many artists (including those who speak against it) admit to influence and to borrowing then it can't be wrong. If the 'trick' is to hide the thing they call theft, not make the theft so visible, then that only seems to be an encouragement to an artistic dishonesty.

Nik Perring makes this point : "Good writers (or any other creative bods) are good because they make stuff up" and in doing so he completely misses the point that Lethem is making. We do not completely make things up. We are as much programmed as a computer is. Even our language is part of it and we are gifted that by the culture and society we are brought up with or exposed to. How can we possibly say that a story belongs to an individual when it grows out of such common ground? Plant a rose in a common field and the rose does not belong to you... it feeds on nutrients in the soil that belong to everyone and responds to the common sun and drinks in the common rainwater. Surely that rose belongs now to everyone. Put writing in the public domain and it is something the same.

When a writer is protective of his/her own ideas, this protectiveness stems from a misconception that the ideas are uniquely his/hers. As soon as we let go of that concept then any lingering possessiveness is to do with that writer's own hopes for personal gain from the idea and the threat that is posed by somebody else doing it better. Put like that, it seems to me as socialist and artist (shouldn't the two be together, the same thing?) rather petty and selfish.)