Phrasing similarities, phrasing similarities

Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard sophomore with a (reported) $500,000 contract with Little, Brown, offers an explanation of the similarities between passages in her novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life and passages in Megan McCafferty's novels Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings:

While the central stories of my book and hers are completely different, I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words. I am a huge fan of her work and can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious. My publisher and I plan to revise my novel for future printings to eliminate any inappropriate similarities.

The Boston Globe and the Harvard Crimson have collected passages for comparison. The Crimson offers several that are said to be "among the clearest," which would seem to imply that there are more. Sample:

From page 68 of McCafferty’s second novel: "'Omigod!' shrieked Sara, taking a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny out of her shopping bag."

From page 51 of Viswanathan’s novel: "...I was sick of listening to her hum along to Alicia Keys, and worn out from resisting her efforts to buy me a pink tube top emblazoned with a glittery Playboy bunny."

That looks like plagiarism, and of the saddest, strangest sort.

In my experience, students who plagiarize usually fall at one or the other end of the academic spectrum. And those at the upper end are never willing to acknowledge what they've done. Their explanations range from unintentional duplication ("glancing" at SparkNotes and somehow unwittingly reproducing phrases and sentences with slight variation) to "I wouldn't do such a thing," even when the evidence is right before them. Viswanathan's situation is a more complicated one, as she worked with a book packager, 17th Street Productions, to make her writing marketable. One begins to wonder just who was doing the cutting and pasting here.

      » "Student's Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy"
      Article from the Harvard Crimson

      » "Young Author Admits Borrowing Passages"
      AP article, with misleading headline

      » "She may have, but she also had help"
      On the "packaging" of the book, from Mediabistro

      » "'Opal Mehta' vs. 'Sloppy Firsts'"
      Passages for comparison, from the Boston Globe

      » "Similar Passages ..."
      Passages for comparison, from the Harvard Crimson

Kill your television

An invitation:

[W]hen television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss sheet or rating book to distract you -- and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials -- many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.

Newton N. Minow, "Television and the Public Interest" (speech given to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961)

Forty-five years later, there are fewer cowboys, and the "totally unbelievable families" are more likely to be found on so-called "reality" shows. But the song remains pretty much the same, with more colorful lyrics.

TV-Turnoff Week 2006 begins this coming Monday, April 24.

» tvturnoff.org

» Transcript of Newton N. Minow's "vast wasteland" speech

Bath, bed, home

From an essay by Andy Crouch on shaving and much else:

Last summer I began reading the Odyssey to my eight-year-old son. . . . To his delight, Timothy quickly recognized a distinctive feature of Homer's poetry, the stock phrases, epithets, and even whole passages that recur again and again. Somewhere around book eight, he observed, "Dad, these guys take a lot of baths."

Indeed they do. Homer's heroes bathe because they feast: no scene of feasting in the great halls of an Achaean king is complete without the visit to the bathchamber before the meal. The Iliad, the book of war on the shores of Troy, has almost no such scenes. Its men are at war, and too busy to bathe. But the Odyssey, though not without its adventures and battles, is a book that celebrates the man at home -- the pleasure of the bath, the board, and the bed.

A wonderful observation. There is, if I'm remembering correctly, only one scene of bathing in the Iliad, in book 10, after Diomedes and Odysseus undertake a night raid. In book 22, Hector is killed as his wife Andromache prepares his bath, heightening the pathos of his death. In the Odyssey, Telemachus bathes in books 3 and 4; Odysseus, in book 6. More baths follow, in the story of Odysseus' wanderings, in Ithaca too.

Thanks to Sean Payne for pointing me to this essay.

      » The Best a Man Can Get: In Search of the Perfect Shave

Fats Waller's "Yes!"

Fats Waller's small-group recordings with "His Rhythm," as the band was known, sometimes end with Waller speaking, usually for no more than a split-second -- a quiet "Yes, yes" or an exuberant "Yes!" Sometimes he talks for a few seconds. I like to imagine Waller fans back in the 1930s, listening to a brand-new 78-rpm record and wondering what they are going to hear at the end of each side.

Comedians always run the risk of not being taken seriously, but the jive in these closing quips should mislead no one -- Fats Waller was a brilliant pianist, a dexterous organist, a distinctive singer, an inspired songwriter ("Ain't Misbehavin'," "Black and Blue," "Honeysuckle Rose," among others). His solo-piano pieces are elegant multi-themed miniatures ("African Ripples" and "Smashing Thirds" are my favorites). His small groups, with Herman Autrey (trumpet), Gene Sedric (clarinet, tenor), Al Casey (guitar), and other musicians, cook like no one else's. His hilarious, snarky renditions of sentimental lyrics turn treacle into gold. Fats Waller's "Yes!" is, to my ears, an affirmation of the joys of music and laughter.

Here are my favorite last words from the recordings collected in Proper Records' 4-CD Fats Waller set:

"Do Me a Favor"
Yes, yes. Listen honey, have you got a dollar-ninety? 'Cause I got the dime. But you might as well go out and find a parson. Ha, ha.

"How Can You Face Me?" [spoken over the last chorus]
Ah, you're a dirty dog. Get out in the street. Get out, get out. How can you face me now? No, I didn't go there last night. No, you know I wasn't there neither. I went to the other place. Yes! Don't you talk back to me. Shut up. Well, all right. Take your dogs on out. Yes. Get outta this gutter. Keep goin', keep goin'. Yes!

"I'm a Hundred Percent for You"
Yes. Yes. Yes. Veddy!

"Lulu's Back in Town"
Oh, that woman's back in town. Oh, my, my. My, my.

"Christopher Columbus"
Well, looka there. Christy grabbed the Santa Maria and he's goin' back. Yeah. Uh huh. Looka there. Uh huh. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. What'd I say?

"Black Raspberry Jam"
Take your finger outta my jam.

"Smarty"
Oh, you tricky thing, you thought you tricked me. Hey, hey. Nix, nix.

"The Joint Is Jumpin'"
Don't give your right name, no, no, no.

"Your Feet's Too Big"
Your, err, your pedal extremities really are obnoxious. One never knows, do one?

You can learn more about Fats Waller by visiting "Fats Waller Forever," hosted by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. Yes!

      » Fats Waller Forever

Overheard

"Risotto is so filling -- both physically and emotionally."

      » More "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

Beyond categories

A student asked a smart question yesterday: if Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy" is a demonstration of the power of metaphor -- which turns the poet's father into a constricting shoe, a "bag full of God," a Nazi, and a devil; turns another man (Ted Hughes) into a vampire-replica of her father; and turns the poet herself into their victim and assassin -- how does it fit the idea of a confessional poem? In other words, is the poet confessing, or displaying the power of her own imagination?

For me, that question highlights the problems of applying categories and labels to works of art. Like Duke Ellington, I prefer to think of works of art as "beyond category." One problem with artistic categories is that they are often merely shorthand terms of critical convenience. It was a critic after all (M.L. Rosenthal, I believe) who first thought of calling Plath and other poets "confessional." Such terms can be useful for highlighting resemblances as they begin to appear in the work of individual artists. But such terms can just as readily serve as epithets of pigeon-holing and dismissal -- "Oh yes, he's a [sniff] New York School poet." Makers of art who themselves promulgate such identities in earnest sometimes find themselves in a prison of their own devising -- Allen Ginsberg is still a "Beat," not simply an American poet.

Category-think too often leads to reductive understandings of art. I'm reminded me of the story of a student who wanted to write an essay "proving" that The Sound and the Fury is a modernist novel because it displays "the seven characteristics of modernism." But there aren't seven characteristics, or five, or nineteen -- there is only the individual work, with all of its complications, and with a broad range of similarities to and differences from other works of fiction. And calling Faulkner's novel "modernist" does nothing to tell you what those are.

Doing a weekly jazz program at a college radio station some years ago helped solidify my skepticism about categories. Back in the day, every record (yes, LPs) had to be labeled for the benefit of less-astute djs. Duke Ellington would be labeled "swing." ("Creole Love Call": swing!) John Coltrane, "hard bop." ("A Love Supreme": hard bop!) There were even (I don't think I'm making it up) records labeled "soft bop." Those labels no doubt helped give some coherence to half-hour sets (before the iPod Shuffle made chance juxtapositions an organizing principle). But to think of an artist's accomplishment being reduced to -- literally -- a label, 3.5" x .75", saddens me.

Geoffrey Hill on difficulty

Carl Phillips: What comes up often in reviews of your work is the idea of an overly intellectual bent; in recent reviews of The Triumph of Love, often the word difficult comes up. People mention that it's worth going through or it isn't worth going through.

Geoffrey Hill: Like a Victorian wedding night, yes. Let's take difficulty first. We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most "intellectual" piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are?

From an interview with poet Geoffrey Hill
(Paris Review 154, Spring 2000)

Simon Pettet

Simon Pettet’s More Winnowed Fragments opens with a poem of profound modesty:

      My Methodology

      I accrue hordes

      and then

      winnow away,

      It is a thankless task,

      tho not without

      occult comfort.

The tongue-in-cheek title suggests the jargon of an "artist's statement" or thesis prospectus. But then comes the poem, and the title's confident authority now stands in contrast to the patient Sisyphean labor of the poet -- who not only makes a heap of all that he can find (to paraphrase David Jones paraphrasing Nennius) but undoes it in the search for what has been there, not yet recognized, all along. The work of winnowing away and condensing is indeed "a thankless task," but it's also a steady job ("No layoff / from this / condensery," as Lorine Niedecker says in "Poet’s Work"). And the work may reward both poet and reader with "occult comfort" (not "cold comfort"), as in the sudden music of the poem's final two lines, in which each word turns into its neighbors' close relation.

Simon Pettet is a wonderful poet. Above, an excerpt from a review I've written for Jacket of his 2005 book More Winnowed Fragments. You can read the review by clicking on the link.

» Mysterious connective tissue (Review of Simon Pettet's More Winnowed Fragments, from Jacket)

Five websites for student-writers

Or four websites and the mysterious Alt+F4.

1. The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing Michael Harvey's site is perhaps the most useful on-line resource for students who want to improve their writing. For Harvey, good writing is not reducible to zealous obedience to a handful of rules. Good writing is a matter of clarity, concision, and grace, key elements of what Harvey calls "the plain style." His sample passages and suggested revisions will benefit any writer who gives them careful attention. The book "version" of this site, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (Hackett), is the best book for student-writers I know, far more useful than Eats, Shoots & Leaves and similar titles.

2. A Demonstration of the Futility of Using Microsoft Word's Spelling and Grammar Check Sandeep Krishnamurthy's conclusion is that Word's spelling and grammar checker is "extraordinarily bad." See for yourself by downloading and checking one of the sample .doc files, and then resolve never to let Word do your editing and proofreading for you.

3. The Citation Machine The Landmark Project's Citation Machine creates APA- and MLA-style citations for print and on-line materials. You need to be careful of course in choosing the right kind of citation and in entering the relevant information in the right places.

4. Arts & Letters Daily Any writer needs good models, and they are not likely to be found in textbooks. Arts & Letters Daily, a service of The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers a handful of links a day to worthwhile articles, essays, and reviews.

5. Alt+F4 Just a reminder — when you're writing, eliminate distractions. Close your browser and IM, and give the task at hand your full attention.

Aeschylus and RFK

Speaking to a mostly African-American audience in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, Robert Kennedy broke the terrible news that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news for all of you -- could you lower those signs please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight.

Cries and screams and shocked silence follow. Kennedy goes on to quote -- imperfectly, from memory -- words of the chorus from Aeschylus' Agamemnon:

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

RFK turned to reading ancient authors after his brother's assassination; his interest in the Greeks was, I gather, deep and real.

» Video of RFK's speech

» The Kennedy Family and Classical Themes (BBC)