Schneiderman, D. (2006). Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Lawsuit: William S. Burroughs, DJ Danger Mouse, and the Politics of “Grey Tuesday”. Plagiary: Cross‐Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrica‐ tion, and Falsification, 191‐206.
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Lawsuit: William S. Burroughs, DJ Danger Mouse, and the Politics of “Grey Tuesday”
Davis Schneiderman
E‐mail: [email protected]
Abstract persona is replaced by a collaborative ethic that On February 24, 2004, approximately 170 Web makes the audience complicit in the success of the sites hosted a controversial download of DJ Danger “illegal” endeavor. Mouse’s The Grey Album, a “mash” record com- posed of The Beatles’s The White Album and Jay-Z’s The Black Album. Many of the participating Web sites received “cease and desist” letters from EMI Mash-Ups: A Project for Disastrous Success (The Beatles’s record company), yet the so-called “Grey Tuesday” protest resulted in over 100,000 If the 2005 Grammy Awards broadcast was the downloads of the record. While mash tunes are a moment that cacophonous pop‐music “mash‐ relatively recent phenomenon, the issues of owner- ups” were first introduced to grandma in Peoria, ship and aesthetic production raised by “Grey Tues- day” are as old as the notion of the literary “author” the strategy’s commercial(ized) pinnacle may as an autonomous entity, and are complicated by have been the November 2004 CD/DVD release deliberate literary plagiarisms and copyright in- by rapper Jay‐Z and rockers Linkin Park, titled, fringements. This paper examines the idea of delib- appropriately, Collision Course. This record capi‐ erate pastiche as it appears in William S. talized on the latest iteration of a long‐standing Burroughs’s work, particularly in the collaborative tradition of mixing, sampling, and collage prac‐ manifesto The Third Mind (1964/5)—a work that ticed by DJs, producers, and musicians for the merges discussion of plagiarist production with pla- last decades, called, in a current form: “mash‐ giarist manifestations. Burroughs’s infamous “cut- up” method, writes Gérard-Georges Lemaire in the ups.” There are numerous sampling antecedents same text, “disconnects the concept of reality that for the mash‐up practice, which often combines a has been imposed upon us and then … eventually cappella vocals from one song with the instru‐ escapes from the control of its manipulator” (17). mentals track from a second—in everything from Burroughs theorized copyright infringement as more the “break‐in” practices of “The Flying Saucer” than mere entertainment or artistic one-upsmanship; single (1956, Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman) he considered cut-ups as creative production that to the micro‐sampling (“pluderphonics”) of John would force the dominant system to address funda- Oswald’s Plexure (1993) to the social commentary mental issues of inequity by breaking the intention of the work from its popular effect. It is no surprise that of audio‐collectives such as Negativland and The Burroughs’s similarly produced audio experiments Tape‐Beatles. The current barrage of mash‐up have been cited as precedents to the current cut- tracks (inaugurated in this a capella/instrument and-mix sound culture. The are many cogent con- track form, supposedly, by the Evolution Control nections between Burroughs’s work and the DJ Dan- Committee’s mid‐1990s Public Enemy/Herb Al‐ ger Mouse-inspired “Grey Tuesday”: 1) In the delib- bert mash: “Rebel without a Pause [Whipped erate infringement of previously copyrighted works, Cream mix”]), began its current ascent to popu‐ each artist actualizes an assault on ownership stan- larity around 2000 as “bootleg” and/or “Bastard/ dards, 2) these works accordingly assume new po- litical meanings beyond the control of their bastard‐pop” in London’s West End (Howard‐ 1 “originators,” and 3) this elision of the “authorial” Spink). Four years later, signaling the inevitable
191 Plagiary 2006 commodification of an underground practice, the and we can add, the major record companies— Collision Course EP debuted at #1, selling more “there simply is no such thing as fair use….It’s… than 368,000 copies in its first week; the music suicide to ask those type of multinationals for press offered such banal insights as, “[i]n true permission” (qtd. in Orlans 143). As Fair Use al‐ mash‐up spirit, the union of the artists’ styles is lows for the limited use of protected works via a greater than the sum of their musical set four factors that, when applied favorably, parts” (“Review: Jay‐Z/Linkin Park’s…’). provide exceptions to copyright law, it is no sur‐ prise that its interpretation remains subject to One wonders if Collision Course would have significant debate. Corporate interests repeatedly been possible without Jay‐Z’s earlier passive press ownership claims in order to restrict Fair foray into a sub‐genre of mash‐ups—the merger Use by sampling artists, claiming with increasing of vocal tracks from his chart‐topping The Black frequency that intellectual property violations Album with non‐contiguous musical samples occur whenever a cultural property is used in an from The Beatles’s 1968 record, The Beatles, better artwork, regardless of the often non‐derivative, known as eTh White Album. The resulting mix‐ or transformative context (which can in part favor ture, the DJ Danger Mouse‐assembled The Grey a claim of Fair Use).2 Unfortunately, corporate Album, gained its fame during the appropriately interests have been so successful in defending titled “Grey Tuesday” protest organized by the “cultural property,” that most people remain non‐profit music activist website Downhillbat‐ unaware of the exact laws regarding copyright— tle.org on February 24, 2004. Over 170 other web‐ assuming too often that all cultural products are sites offered the twelve tracks for download, and “naturally” owned by private interests. The ram‐ many others turned grey in solidarity. A widely pant expansion of “Authorship” to cover new circulated “cease and desist” letter from Capital/ categories of intellectual property has no doubt EMI sought to elevate the purported “copyright contributed to this assumption (see Coombe 52‐ infringement” of The Beatles music catalog to a 55), and an investigation of the case of The Grey matter of universal concern: “Distribution of The Album followed by a discussion of William Grey Album constitutes a serious violation of Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s cut‐up text The Capitol’s rights in the Capitol Recordings—as Third Mind will dramatize this point toward a well as the valuable intellectual property rights potentially contrarian praxis based upon user of other artists, music publishers, and/or record interaction with protected works. companies—and will subject you to serious legal remedies for willful violation of the In the case of the “Grey Tuesday” protest, laws” (Rantings and Ravings 3.0). This rhetoric Downhill Battle’s defense is to claim that Fair suggests that even Danger Mouse appreciates the Use must be exercised, even under legal threat, in gravity of his copyright violation (“I just sent out order to maintain and hopefully expand the stat‐ a few tracks [and] now online stores are selling it ute’s unsettled interpretations. Despite the im‐ and people are downloading it all over the portance of this strategy, a telling problem with place” [qtd. in Ranting and Ravings 3.0]). EMI’s claims seems toe hav become obscured in the rhetorical uproar of the cease and desist let‐ Neither the tone nor demands of the letter ter. The Electronic Freedom Foundation, a nexus should surprise in a climate where the “Fair Use” for intellectual property revision, notes that there doctrine, codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, is is “no federal copyright protection for sound re‐ regularly underutilized, where copyright protec‐ cordings made before 1972,” making the claim tion functions too often as a defense of corporate that EMI “owns” the 1968 Beatles’s recordings property, and where, as one critic notes, “[t]o the (“Capitol’s rights in the Capitol Recordings”) — Disney Corporation and major film studios”— at worst—a lie in the form of a threat, and—at
192 Something to Hide—Schneiderman best—a reference to the possibility that pre‐1972 of history, [quotations] could be brought back state laws might offer protection to the 1968 re‐ from the past and rearranged, without aexplan‐ cordings. Given the fact that EMI did not pursue tion, …so that their hidden correspondences legal action, we might conclude that the cease‐ would be revealed.” It is easy to imagine a simi‐ and‐desist letter was, in fact, a threat meant to larly‐produced “history” of copyright: None of curtail resistance to the perception of universal those words will be mine; they will be lifted from corporate ownership.3 a series of previously‐published articles, and at‐ tributed only at the end of the resulting text—in Even with Jay‐Z’s tacit approval, the apparent ille‐ imitation of a nineteenth‐century “cento” or gality of the event coupled with its publicity as or‐ “patchwork” poem (Saint‐Amour 40), which bor‐ ganized political action produced enough rows lines and even couplets from diverse but downloads for the record to achieve “gold” status “metrically identical source poems” (41).6 The (100,000 copies, although none were actually pur‐ Victorian version of these works, according to chased). The peer‐to‐peer distributed Grey Album Paul K. Saint‐Amour in his book The Copywrights: offered a potent combination: using the Internet to Intellectual Property and the Literary Imagination illegally download an apparently illegally produced (2003), are meant to serve as “the sum of its product, implicating the listener into an increasingly maker’s readerly acts or consumption, just as the common practice that conflates notions of aesthetic maker’s identity is at once constituted and pastiche with the ability to capture information.4 eclipsed by thoses act of reading” (42). This bundling of “crimes” is significant, as copyright law (particularly in prosecutions for downloading In the Danger Mouse case, unlike the cento, the media content) equates “theft” by an “author” to maker is neither anonymous (as was generally the “theft” by a “consumer.” In this case, the user, practice) nor does the object, as Saint‐Amour through downloading, becomes complicit in Danger claims regarding a particular cento, decline “a Mouse’s “crime” of assemblage by choosing to inter‐ discreet identity of its own” (42). The cento act with his project, and it is precisely in the digital emerges in a neoclassical context that still vali‐ realm where such a confluence of production and dates and respects the “canon” of texts used as consumption assumes its most disruptive potential. borrowing points. Yet, these centos—strange The implications of the medium may be well ahead concatenations of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of the “intentionality” of either side.5 The result is a Congreve and Milton, Spenser and Chatterton (a radical “third” praxis—a merger and mingling of literary forger)—today seem to possess as much user and creator—reflected in the collaborative cut‐ “discrete identity” in their content as The Grey up exercises of William S. Burroughs, and poised in Album, which is to say, they fail in the effort to the coming decades to fundamentally alter the com‐ drown their assumed claims to independence in plex interweave of creativity, copyright, and capital a sea of previous influence. While the cento may in the digital sphere. be a literary footnote, under contemporary scru‐ tiny, it is far from a neutral sampling of the liter‐ ary past. If I Hold a Conch Shell to My Ear, Do I Owe a Royalty to Neptune? If many nineteenth‐century cento writers feel obliged to remove their names in an attempt at First, let us consider Walter Benjamin’s desire distilling the “mark” of originality, this urge is to form a book composed entirely of quotations. less present for today’s samplers. Contemporary This project, as Delia Falconer notes, possesses “a “creators” have no problem applying their special kind of metaphorical force. Freed from Duchampian mustache, with signature, to the their context, and left to crystallise in the depths palimpsests of the past, and calling themselves
193 Plagiary 2006
“Authors” and “Artists” (with capital letters).7 Andy Warhol’s silkscreens), “plagiarizing” writ‐ The shift from the professed anonymity of the ers tended—in the pre‐electronic era—to engage cento to ego/name‐centered sampling culture is in appropriation by retyping source material. In reflected in the development of copyright legisla‐ the electronic age, it becomes easier and more tion that has extended the proprietary rights of common for the writers to cut‐and‐paste, and the Author—even when art is produced might be thus borrow content as well as the “physical/ considered in the “counter‐mold” of that Victo‐ electronic” substance of a quotation. The chang‐ rian poetic practice. ing methods of transfer over the past decades, if not centuries, influences definitions of authentic‐ The idea of what constitutes an Author has ity.8 proven particularly malleable to business inter‐ ests in the last century, so that copyright often Also relevant to this inquiry is the status of has as little to do with protecting the rights of the “collaborative” art. Although The Grey Album is person who “writes” or “creates” as pre‐ and composed of the work of three musical acts early‐ copyright laws made shift to protect the (Danger Mouse, Jay‐Z, and The Beatles), it is not same. In the period prior to the Statute of Anne surprising to hear Danger Mouse promote his (1710), the power of the copy fell to the Sta‐ record within the traditional bounds of an anxiety tioner’s Company, a London bookseller guild, of influence: “I’m just worried whether Jay‐Z will which attempted to fend off pirated editions of like it, or whether Paul and Ringo will like it. If their books. Assaults upon the rights of the Sta‐ they say that they hate it, and that I messed up tioners to protect their investments during the their music, I think I’ll put my tail between my rise of commercial printing, signaled, as Mark legs and go” (qtd. in Greenman). This statement Rose demonstrates in Authors and Owners: The positions Danger Mouse as a “mixing machine” Invention of Copyright (1993), how copyright is fitting together already‐extant works of individual “produced by printing technology, marketplace genius. Regardless of whether he actually in‐ economics….[a]nd it is an institution whose tech‐ tends to eliminate his Authorship claim, the final nological foundation has recently turned, like an product can be fitted into a strong tradition of organ grown cancerous, into an enemy” (142). individual production that David Greetham calls Three centuries later, the 1998 Sony Bono Copy‐ the “Wordsworthian formula” (141). In this Ro‐ right Term Extension Act ensures that Mickey mantic formulation, collaboration, can still be Mouse will be kept in fresh steamboats for sev‐ considered, as it was in the 1842 British Copy‐ eral decades (a twenty year extension of the pre‐ right act, as another form of organic genius: vious monopoly period). The Digital Millennium “synthesis can operate at a secondary or meta‐ Copyright Act, also from 1998, focuses on the level of composition and loses neither its intui‐ protection of digital property in a way that has tive and organicist credentials nor its protectabil‐ been used to stultify market competition, em‐ ity as a result of the cumulative effort” (142). broiling computer printer makers in lawsuits Thus, the “genius” of Danger Mouse becomes with companies that produce after‐market car‐ not his ability to interweave previous work, per tridges (see McLeod, FOE, 4‐5). se, or to sink himself into the glorious sonic past, but his ability to sample, mix, and sign with his Unsurprisingly, the economic stakes at work in nom de plume in the present. The copyright re‐ maintaining outmoded definitions of gime finds Danger Mouse acknowledging the “authenticity,” “originality,” and “genius,” are “genius” of his precursors as a way of assuming intertwined with technological developments. the mantle of “single” creator within his Whereas collage‐oriented visual artists often use “multiple” production methods. a direct reproduction of the source work (think
194 Something to Hide—Schneiderman
Even so, Danger Mouse’s position as a singular Technical Deposition of the Virus Power Author threatens not so much the authority of The Beatles or Jay‐Z, but the economic positions The practice of encouraging the “solitary gen‐ of those corporations who hold the related copy‐ ius” at the expense of collaboration (or, redefining rights—and who demand featly to their owner‐ collaboration as singular, per the “Wordsworthian ship claims. His unwillingness to clear his sam‐ formula”) affects not only the corporate sphere of ples, coupled with his facility for navigating the the United States, but also the non‐protected or dangers of this “illegal” position, speaks to a cri‐ under‐protected products of indigenous cultures, sis of the economic engine that has no intention oral cultures, and collaborative‐based societies. In of giving up its construction of business‐oriented the so‐called “third world” the pressures of the “originality” without the (at least) threat of a hegemonic intellectual property regime drama‐ lawsuit. tizes not the universal “naturalness” of the Au‐ thor, but the complex manner in which these One direction for dissent from the equally Western notions of Authorship have expanded— problematic notions of Authorial and corporate as in the 1993 General Agreement on Tariffs and “ownership,” as practiced by the “Creative Com‐ Trade’s (GATT)’s Agreement on Trade‐Related mons” approach, offers possibilities for revised Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs)—further legal doctrine—working from the inside. Yet, a exploiting a growing roster of protected intellec‐ necessary alternative to such legal strategizing tual properties (computer programs, databases, remains a fundamental rejection of the legislative etc.) to the detriment of countries with alternative system through material practice, through col‐ production models. If a country embroiled in in‐ laborative art that refuses to accept the current ternational trade does not recognize the Author/ corporate‐driven state of copyright law as any‐ Owner in the Western corporate sense (and the thing more than an economically driven defini‐ attendant implications of this recognition for pat‐ tion of property, far removed from its original ents and trademarks), its legal structures often intent as a compromise measure between crea‐ lack the ability to protect cultural elements that do tors and users. A defense of historical not fit Western definitions of property, ownership, “originality” thus becomes as misplaced as cur‐ and their paternal metanarrative of Authorship. rent Authorship manifestations—having little to do with how art is actually produced. Steve Intellectual property scholars including Tomasula, aping painter Diego Velázquez in his McLeod, Rosemary Coombe, and Shujen Wang, novel The Book of Portraiture, and so echoing the have effectively demonstrated this exploitation of work of countless writers and scholars antagonis‐ the non‐Westernized “Other” in terms of bio‐ tic to these legal fictions, notes: “Truly, the imagi‐ pharmaceutical cultural mining, the theft of oral nation, which may seem to bear much individual tradition, and the unreciprocated power relations fruit, is root’d in a compost of forgotten of Western documentarians. As intellectual prop‐ books” (71). Unfortunately, merely reifying the erty battles are increasingly fought in so‐called non‐corporate Author‐as‐person (due all the rights “developing” or non‐“first world” countries, par‐ to her creative output), will do not more than ticularly Brazil and India, the multinational stakes reify the flawed, Romantic notions of Authorship become clearer. A Silva government official’s sup‐ and creativity. Rather, through a method of rede‐ port of Open Source as an anti‐colonial measure fining the production and consumption of art notes that: “Every license for Office plus Windows toward its own collaborative model, the myth of in Brazil—a country in which 22 million people “original genius” makes ready to wilt on the pos‐ are starving—means we have to export 60 sacks of sibilities of its electronic vine. soybeans” (Dibell 193).9
195 Plagiary 2006
Rhetoric or fact, this statement recognizes a Millions of People Reading the Same Words crucial link between semantics and material prac‐ tice. Copyright, in its extended monopoly period, The cut‐up and anti‐narrative work of William becomes a regime equally defined by socio‐ S. Burroughs attempts to materially counter writ‐ political circumstances and a particular language of ing’s traditionally metaphoric work. Burroughs expression (“expressions,” not “ideas,” are pro‐ did more than write about the omnipresent post‐ tected under the statute). John Locke’s 1690 Two WWII control system impinging on notions of Treatises of Government is an oft‐cited precursor to individual freedom, but sought to expose the development of this protection as a “natural “Control” through a complex of interrelated right” for the Author and his legislative descen‐ writing methods harkening to the counter‐ dants, but here we dovetail with critical legal discourses of Marcel Duchamp’s divided square studies, which maintains that the law does not constructions, Tristan Tzara’s automatic poems,10 enact a regime that pre‐supposes or exists sepa‐ and John Dos Passos’s “Camera Eye” segments rately from ,it but one that it simultaneously cre‐ in the USA novels. Burroughs’s collaborations ates and enforces through a process of articula‐ with musicians, visual artists, and writers were tion. This articulation, of course, often sounds often (but not exclusively) attempts to escape like the oratory of the West, embodied by the from the stigma of Authorial constraint, to allow well‐known RCA trademark, “His Master’s chance to shape prose production, towards, Voice.” “making the words talk on their own.” (Burroughs, “Preface” 17).e Mor signifi‐ Despite the extraordinary inequities imposed cantly, Burroughs was a literary “plagiarist” who by exploitative and colonialist practices, resis‐ often violated copyright protection in the works tances yma be discovered in the Western canon he utilized, particularly with his “cut‐up” using the same method deployed by Saint‐ method.11 Amour—to find that “the protective, prohibitive, and policing functions of the copyright/ His uses of modern literature have included censorship nexus” leaves “its imprimatur on the what we might label outright theft in even non‐ works themselves” (161). This is a key point. The cut‐up contexts: A comparison between legislative façade of the “solitary genius” begins Burroughs’s The Place of Dead Roads (1983) and the crack under the weight of textual study. This Jack Black’s You Can’t Win (1926) demonstrates practice need not only center on current works points of extreme similarity (Miles 226). Else‐ such as The Grey Album. Saint‐Amour focuses on where, lifts were also made directly from Con‐ the textual intersection of literary modernity and rad’s Lord Jim, and Burroughs even notes the op‐ copyright legislation, and since the exploitative portunities for plunder in the famous text: aspects of the multinational intellectual property “Conrad did some superb descriptive passages system are predicated on the primary notion of on jungles, water, weather; why not use them singular Authorship, I propose to unearth an ad‐ verbatim as background in a novel set in the ditionally effective investigation primarily fo‐ tropics?” (Adding Machine 20) Of these different cused on the material conditions—how a text is types of plagiarisms and infringements, the for‐ produced, and in case of Burroughs, the collabo‐ mal innovations derived from Burroughs’s col‐ rative methods of how it is also reproduced. laborative production techniques and cut‐up re‐ lated works provide tantalizing intersection points due to the aberrance of these methods from “mainstream” writing.
196 Something to Hide—Schneiderman
DJ Danger Mouse juxtaposed Jay‐Z and The a visual work, and as Saint‐Amour ably con‐ Beatles without their knowing participation, and tends, such critiques can still perform “deep my comparative text is an assembled cut‐up/fold‐ skepticism about copyright’s notion that ideas in manifesto by William S. Burroughs and Brion and facts are anterior to their particular expres‐ Gysin (composed in 1965) called The Third Mind, sions” (189). Saint‐Amour’s reading pushes toward a first published in English in 1978. An ex‐ reassessment of the “facts before expression” vector, but Surrealist visual artist, writer, and co‐inventor of it must rely upon the usual methods of textual scholar‐ the “Dreammachine,” Gysin comments on the ship to stake such a claim. The Third Mind offers a differ‐ text’s dedication, “[t]o and for all our collabora‐ ent possibility.13 tors/at all times third minds everywhere,” as re‐ lated to the inability of certain languages to ex‐ The Burroughs/Gysin cut‐up method materially press certain ideas” (Wilson and Gysin 206). flips this ideas‐before‐expression vector, main‐ taining that ideas might very well be posterior to Not only does this quotation indicate that our their expression: cut‐ups articulate (expression), understanding of artistic production remains tied yet their meanings (ideas) emerge only after their to the language of articulation, but we might also arrangement on the page. As Oliver Harris notes, take his comment as a revelation of the hidden cut‐ups subscribe to a material skepticism by in‐ multidimensionality of the collaborative page. troducing a prospective, or future‐oriented func‐ For instance, any aesthetic frame produces, mate‐ tion (“Cutting Up Politics,” 177) requiring the rially, a certain set of at‐times predictable inter‐ participation, and perhaps belief, of the audience. pretations. When Picasso affixes a piece of oil‐ He writes, “community was not projected on the cloth to the canvas in Still Life with Chair Caning basis of reception alone… but on recruitment to (1912), we become aware of the assemblage in its future acts of production—acts that in turn contoured visual dimensions rather than flat, promised to produce the future” (181). painterly ones. Picasso’s material experimenta‐ tion is evident on the canvas, but writing eschews In what the 1978 dust‐jacket calls a “series of such immediate markers of collage, and iss (a per dazzling and often dizzying collaborations,” The Gysin’s dedication) not usually able to express Third Mind presents relatively straightforward the manner of its own production. The written statements on method from both Burroughs and page, in its physical substance, does not gener‐ Gysin, interpolated commentary by Gérard‐ ally announce collaborative assembly. Thus, any Georges Lemaire, cut‐ups, fold‐ins, Gysin’s per‐ study of contemporary writing can only textually mutation poems, discussion of “grid” arrange‐ produce findings about copyright and intellec‐ ments, a fragment from the early Naked Lunch tual property, in possibilities opened up by the screenplay, and toward the end, examples of flatness of written language, without recourse to scrapbook montage and hieroglyphic exercises the work’s hidden multidimensionality.12 that would concern Burroughs in later texts such as The Job (1969, 1974), and Ah Pook is Here (1979). Saint‐Amour provocatively explores the possi‐ Also, The Third Mind contains just under 30 bilities of this self‐constraining textual trait in “images”: cut‐ups, scrapbook pages, word con‐ Ulysses’ “Oxen of the Sun” chapter, which, he structions, photo‐headline montages, arranged claims, depends for its history of the English lan‐ film stills, etc. guage on a set of available source texts limited through tensions between private property and And yet the most provocative portions do not the public domain. According sto thi argument, simply discuss or demonstrate method, but do Joyce critiques the literary property regime with‐ both together. Much of the book was published out the three‐dimensional markers that we find in elsewhere between 1960 and 1973, with signifi‐
197 Plagiary 2006 cant amounts drawn from the first published cut‐ two editions, published 18 years apart. In Min‐ up book, Minutes to Go (1960), a collaboration utes to Go, the compositions are often given titles, between Burroughs, Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, and whereas they are titled in The Third Mind only by Gregory Corso.14 Minutes to Go also compares to scanty source attribution. Secondly, author ini‐ The Third Mind in its engagement with the biblio‐ tials in The Thirdd Min replace the full names of graphic codes, or publishing markers, of the text. the “makers” in Minutes to Go.16 One likely possi‐ For instance, the scanty end citations to the cut‐ bility is that the position of those early cut‐ups, up poems in Minutes to Go, including notations which were (in 1960) “new” if not “unique,” had such as “Cut up Paris Herald Tribune arti‐ passed from being worthy of titling and authorial cles” (17), ear moved to the beginnings of the attribution into a lesser mode when re‐presented poems in The Third Mind section “First Cut‐Ups.” in 1978—subservient to the idea of composition as process.17 The section also called “First Cut‐Ups” in Min‐ utes to Go contains only five numbered pieces, all Even so, this physical transfer from Minutes to of which are replicated in The Third Mind, in or‐ Go to The Third Mind stops the texts from becom‐ der; yet, in The Third Mind, these “First Cut‐Ups” ing mere ego‐centered reproductions of their includes three additional pieces from later por‐ own institutional pasts, and rather re‐energizes tions of Minutes to Go. The 1960 title of this first their positions as texts capable of producing not extra piece, “MAO TZE: TA TA KAN only future Burroughsian texts (as per Harris’s KAN….KAN KAN TA TA…” (20), is replaced in argument), but future versions of themselves that The Third Mind by it formerly post‐script citation express differences from the originals, despite (although the sub‐ title remains), with a note that the wishes of the Authors. Most important to this the poem is a cut‐up of Beiles’s poem “Stalin.” argument is the apparently accidental annexation The second extra piece from Minutes to Go, of the line “Cut‐up articles on Juvenile Delin‐ “FROM SAN DIEGO UP TO MAINE” (21), is quency” into the poetic space. This slippage is reproduced in the same way in The Third Mind representative of a sea change in the type of col‐ (56‐57)—with a second important difference. The lected experiments in The Third Mind, compared final line of the poem in Minutes to Go appears to with Minutes to Go. Harris notes that the cut‐ups be “Unimaginable disaster…Royal Knights Teen in the earlier collection “gave priority to the ma‐ Age Future Time,” followed by two post‐script terial process of cutting up over its prod‐ lines: 1) “Cut up articles on Juvenile Delin‐ ucts” (“Cutting Up Politics,” 182) leaving the ex‐ quency” and 2) “Time and New York Herald Trib‐ plicitly manifesto‐like “call to arms” to more‐ une (European adition)” [sic]. However, the linear pieces by Gysin. Yet in the intermittent (double) spacing of these two lines seems to link years, the “content” of the cut‐ups changed, par‐ the first of these (“Cut up articles”) as single‐ tially because Burroughs came to focus increas‐ spaced against the end of the main piece. Signifi‐ ingly on small‐press publications (Miles, William cantly, in its republication in The Third Mind, the Burroughs 178‐179), deploying this minor literary final line of the poem changes in the transfer, be‐ form through magazines and journals with small coming, “Cut up articles on Juvenile Delin‐ distributions. The promise of t the cu ‐ups to quency” (instead of the “…Teen Age Future speak messages directly to the cutter, and the Time” line). This former post‐scripted line has reader, were dependant, of course, on getting the been appended to the main text of the poem, no message into the proper hands—and so the mes‐ doubt, in a less‐than‐careful re‐set of the work.15 sage of the cut‐ups began to appear explicitly in the space of the cut‐up texts—an economy The significance also transcends random typo‐ crafted to not lose a single reader. graphical error: consider other changes across the
198 Something to Hide—Schneiderman
The second section “original” to The Third sponse to the events of the John Calder‐ Mind, “First Recordings,” follows the blueprint of organized 1962 adjunct to the annual Edinburgh much of the three Cut‐Up novels, The Soft Ma‐ festival of the arts; by the end of the three‐day chine (1961, 1966, 1968), The Ticket that Exploded event Burroughs had moved from relative obscu‐ (1962, 1967), and Nova Express (1964), with expo‐ rity to become a “luminary” (Morgan 341). The sition on process followed by rearrangement and resulting mix (“Notes on These Pages” 97‐101) interpolation of this exposition. The first pages of includes texts Burroughs read at the conference, “First Recordings” details several cut‐up con‐ newspaper articles about the conference, and cepts applied to “real life”: someone singing work from many writers: “Shakespeare, Samuel about advertisements washed together in the Beckett, T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William rain and the playing of a tape called “The Golding, Alexander Trocchi, Norman Mailer, Drunken Newscaster,” followed by an explanation Colin MacInnes, Hugh MacDiarmid” (97). The of how to cut‐up the news; the next example ex‐ results include: “. . . in the tarnished mirror dead tends the process by further eliminating the Au‐ eyes of an old dream and dreamer gone at dawn thor’s words, calling into question the efficacy of shirt . . . take his way toward the sea breath of the any Authorial proclamations: “If fragments of trade winds on his face open shirt flapping . . . newspapers be the ‘poorest’ material for cut‐ups, cool path from ruined suburbs . . . stale memo‐ the treasures of world literature as rendered into ries . . . excrement mixed with flowers . . .” (100). English are, presumably, the ‘richest’” (89). Since a portion of this prose is composed of Accordingly, other critics are now intermin‐ Burroughs’s own conference statements, this gled into the cut: “As you cut and fold in the composite work opposes the idea of a single Au‐ texts of other writers, they become inextricably thor. If we are to believe the writerly initial mixed with yours. So, who owns words?” (91). “W.S.B.” that signs “Fold‐Ins,” this demonstra‐ One of Samuel Beckett’s translator, Patrick tion becomes a method of folding individual Au‐ Bowles (mimicking Beckett’s own complaint thorship—where the writer “creates” his own against cut‐ups: “‘That’s not writing,’ Beckett new work (inspired by his cultural consumption) snorted, ‘it’s plumbing’” [qtd. in Morgan 323]) only to find that work materially diluted by the accuses Burroughs of a type of word rustling to writing of others into composite results. As Shake‐ which the text replies: “I prefer not to use my speare, by today’s vague standards, is both a own words. I don’t like my own words because “genius” and a “plagiarist” will readers 400 years my own words are prerecorded on my bare hones‐ hence see Burroughs the same way (accepting the tie and being dead do stick and and stinke in repeti‐ difference in popularity)? tion . . . From The Unfortunate Traveler” (The Third Mind 91‐92). Burroughs refuses to finish with his We return to the question of the law. Shake‐ own words, since “his own” explanations, al‐ speare wrote before statutory copyright, and his lowed to play out across the standard Aristote‐ works (and those he borrowed from) remain in lian‐logical line, contradict the collaborative as‐ the public domain (with the exception of copy‐ sumptions of the process and thwart thei ant ‐ rights claimed on edited versions). Burroughs Authorial message of the project. produced in the twentieth century, and is thus covered by the Authored‐centered copyright re‐ This type of literary interruption permeates The gime. Significantly, the composite publication of Third Mind. In the section “Fold‐Ins” (a method Minutes to Go read “Copyright Jean Franchette, by which one text is placed over another), the 1960,” while The Third Mind reads “Copyright © text discusses the method of forming a William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, 1978.”18 “composite” of writers, living and dead, in re‐ Burroughs’s question (“So, who owns words?”)
199 Plagiary 2006 thus becomes even more prescient as he develops We might then propose that to actually read ambivalence toward an ego‐driven doctrine of any extensive cut‐up material—whether in the cut‐up: Who, if not Burroughs, owns these Burroughs or Gysin, or Ted Berrigan or Harold words that are copyrighted to him and his pub‐ Nourse or Kathy Acker or Carl Weissner— lisher? A better question might be: To whom will inculcates the reader into the project of plagiarism. the ownership of these words be assigned if we Morgan cites Paul Bowles’s negative judgment believe in the cut‐up project? We discover not on the cut‐ups: “You could read, it you could only the failure of the first cut‐ups to sit quietly force yourself to go from word to word, but you in their “original” form during transfer, but also came out at the other end no happier or the inability of Burroughs to eliminate his Au‐ wiser” (322). This is the sentiment of Bowles the thorship from the trade conventions of book pub‐ serious writer, far from a straight realist, but still lishing. Already (in)famous to some degree at the a writer whose dissatisfaction can be seen as 1962 Writer’s Conference, by 1978 (when The based on nmore tha mere fatigue. The key words Third Mind appears in English), Burroughs could are “happier” and “wiser;” Burroughs’s project no longer even pretend to anonymity. Thus, the shows little interest in either term, for one may problem of the cut‐ups is always the problem of be perfectly content after a lobotomy. the authority vested into the figure of the Au‐ thor. No matter what Burroughs’s random ex‐ periments “say” or “predict,” everything re‐ Who is the Third That Walks Beside You? motely freeing in his method becomes to some extent contraindicated by the “©” symbol. We are told, in these texts, that something be‐ yond the work of an autonomous writer is in op‐ Between the cut‐up articulation of collabora‐ eration, and yif we bu this premise, even for a tive authorship and the very real restrictions of moment, if we find ourselves stopping at ran‐ the legal copyright regime, a third possibility dom lines spread across two columns, then we arises (as with the “third mind”). Between these are perhaps willing victims to the way cut‐ups two poles, the cut‐ups model not the elimination manipulate the supposed profundity of tradi‐ of the Author sublimated to the text, but a pro‐ tional prose. A perfectly profound epiphany‐ grammatic expansion of the Author to encompass producing phrase is one thing at the end of a all words. If copyright does not so much discour‐ story in Joyce’s Dubliners, but how are we to feel age collaborative production as encourage a cer‐ when the same effect is produced, apparently at tain idea of singular Authorship within an eco‐ random? Burroughs comments, repeatedly, on nomic matrix, then to simply produce collabora‐ how the texts were made, and we are thus never tively will never fundamentally alter a system in the position of the unsuspecting dupe. To read capable of accounting for the many under the these words, not Burroughs’s, but everyone’s— sign of the one. Rather, as many other copyright despite any contradictory statements of the text, scholars have argued, the idea of singular literary or the law behind the copyright notice—means property must be reconceived. By his oft‐stated that we are consuming adulterated text. Even goal of spreading ownership of words to every‐ reading the brief examples in this essay, we are one, and thus wielding final power over pre‐ perhaps thieves, if not full‐blown copyright in‐ cisely no words, Burroughs sketches a critique of fringers. copyright that hits the wall of his own literary personality. Any tentative success hinges on the This brings us back to the initial comparison reader’s willingness to become an “ally,” to pro‐ with The Grey Album. In the deliberate infringe‐ ceed through the difficult cut‐up text. ment of previously copyrighted works, Burroughs/Gysin and DJ Danger Mouse actualize
200 Something to Hide—Schneiderman a complex assault on ownership standards that source texts resonate beyond the position of mere moves beyond their own intentions. The “Grey raw material, becoming, with the audience, inte‐ Tuesday” protestors argue for a “Fair Use” de‐ gral and constitutive of the material processes of fense, with Downhill Battle co‐founders Nicholas transfer. If peer‐to‐peer protocols and electronic Reville and Holmes Wilson noting they have “a plagiarism continue to force the consumer into fair‐use right to post this music under current apparently untoward positions, it is possible that copyright law and the public has a fair‐use right entrenched notions of “intellectual property” to hear it” (qtd. in Nebulose.net). Downhill Battle may yet be revised in the wake of our ecstatic, argues that the “user,” by “using,” also exercises participatory contortions. “Fair Use”—becoming a collaborator in the proc‐ ess of production as she willfully ignores the quasi‐legal warnings.
REFERENCES Both The Third Mind and The Grey Album as‐ sume new political meanings beyond the control “Bastard pop”. (2006). Wikipedia. Retrieved 10 of their “originators.” We know that theft has July 2006 from
201 Plagiary 2006
Forsythe, T. (2006). Food chain Barbie and the fight Waxy.org. Retrieved 2 Mar. 2005 from
Greetham, D. (1997). Rights to copy. Text: Transac- Miles, B. (2002) William Burroughs: El Hombre In- tions of the Society for Textual Scholarship, 10, visible. London: Virgin. 135-44. Miller, P. [aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid] Harris, O. (2004). Cutting up politics. In D. Schnei- (2004). Rhythm Science. Cambridge, MA: Media- derman and P. Walsh (Eds.), Retaking the Uni- work/MIT Press. verse: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Global- ization (175-200). Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press. Morgan, T. (1990). Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs. New York: Avon Harris, O. (forthcoming). Cutting up the corpse. In Books. K. Kochhar-Lindgren, D. Schneiderman, and T. Denlinger (Eds.). The Exquisite Corpse: Creativity, Moss, C. (2004, March 11). Grey Album producer Collaboration, and the World’s Most Popular Par- Danger Mouse explains how he did it. MTV.com. lor Game. University of Nebraska Press. Retrieved 10 March 2005 from
202 Something to Hide—Schneiderman
Rantings and Ravings 3.0. (2004, February 23). Wang, S. (2003). Recontextualizing copyright: Pi- Retrieved 10 Mar. 2005 from
Rose, M. (1993). Authors and Owners: The Inven- 1 “The Flying Saucer” cuts samples from popular tion of Copyright. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- songs between a faux-pretentious newscast meant versity Press. to satirize Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds mock radio broadcast. Oswald’s Plexure is a complex Saint-Amour, P. K. (2003). The Copywrights: Intel- 20-minute audiocollage of, “1,001 electroquoted lectual Property and the Literary Imagination. contemporary pop stars” including “Percy Faith- Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ful,” “Joni Cocker,” “Superloaf,” and “Jon Bon Elton” (plunderphonics.com). The current “mash- Stay Free! Retrieved 7 July 2006 from
Steuer, E. (2004, November). The remix masters: 2 Litigation (and threats of) has become the de Hip hop pranksters. Pop culture giants. Digital rigeur response from corporate entities that find music pioneers. A conversation with the Beastie their “property” appearing, in any form, as an Boys. Wired, 185-187. element in a generally critical artwork. While this litigious strategy creates a chilling effect for small Stevens, M. (2004). The Road to Interzone: Reading producers without recourse to legal support, a William S. Burroughs Reading. Unpublished notable instance of this strategy’s failure is the manuscript [sent by Stevens to author]. case of artist Tom Forsythe’s “Food Chain Barbie” series. His photos introduced the impossibly pro- Strong, W. S. (1986). Notes from the carrot patch: portioned doll into the domestic situations associ- Copyright incentives and disincentives for intellec- ated with her homemaker image. Forstythe notes: tual innovation. Book Research Quarterly, 2 (2), “I use things like Barbie enchiladas, I have a fon- 33-42. due Barbie where I have the Barbie heads skew- ered on fondue forks inside the boiling fondue Tomasula, S. (2006). The Book of Portraiture. Nor- pot. I’ve got Barbies in blenders, stir-fry Barbie, mal/Tallahassee: FC2. and use your imagination from there” (Johnston). Sued in 1999 by Mattel for the series, Forsythe Verzola, R. (1998, March 15). Cyberlords: The ren- was fortunate enough to find pro bono legal rep- tier class of the information sector. Online posting resentation in the ACLU. The Supreme Court dis- by “Pit Schulz.” Retrieved 5 July 2006 from
203 Plagiary 2006
3 This does not mean that The Grey Album escapes work, wouldn’t sit too well in your stom- its brand as “Illegal Art,” for a number of other ach....?” [sic] (Waxy.org). Such posts demonstrate rights owners are involved, including SONY/ the pervasive hold that traditional notions of ATV—the Michael Jackson corporate partnership “originality” still impress upon the consumer, even that owns the publishing rights to The Beatles’s when their cyberspace actions increasingly tran- catalog; the entity attempted to shut down the Stay scend such limitations. Free organization’s Illegal Art web site for hosting the Grey Album tracks through an attack on their 6 The analogue is the matched “beats per second” Internet Service Provider (under a DMCA provi- of contemporary DJ culture—where the initial re- sion). The group switched to a new ISP, the cording paradigm of capturing performance in the Online Policy Group, committed to protecting free studio (toward attaining aesthetic “singularity”) speech. Details:
204 Something to Hide—Schneiderman
9 Globalization activist Roberto Verzola, in his article Burroughs, citing Kenneth Koch’s essay for LO- “Cyberlords: The Rentier Class of the Information CUS SOLUS II (1961) (to which Burroughs con- Sector,” makes a similar link, yoking demands for tributed), where texts were not only “made by a fully democratized intellectual property regime ‘two or more poets actually together while they (compulsory licensing of protected materials, non- wrote’ but also “composed by poets working with patenting of life forms, expansion of Fair Use, already existing texts” (Harris, “Cutting-Up the etc.) to “the demands of other change-oriented Corpse”). classes and groups in the ecology and industrial sectors, such as farmers, fisherfolk, workers, 13 In “Introductions,” from The Third Mind, the first women and indigenous peoples.” He hopes this text not apparently reprinted from a previous will lead to a “rethinking of property concepts source, the “officer” character addresses two that…will then reinforce demands for restructuring cadets: “No two minds ever come together with- the industrial and agriculture sectors as well.” out, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind” (25). 10 From Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto on Feeble This term is drawn from Think and Grow Rich Love and Bitter Love: “To make a dadaist poem. (1966) by Napoleon Hill, a proto- self-help book Take a newspaper. Take a pair of scissors. containing a secret that is repeated many times Choose an article as long as you are planning to but never stated directly. make your poem. Cut out the article. Then cut out each of the words that make up this article 14 Corso later broke off, appending an infamous and put them in a bag. Shake it gently” (qtd. in “post-script” to that text (“[p]oetry that can be Miles 196). destroyed should be destroyed, even if it means destroying one’s own poetry” [Minutes to Go, 11 It should be noted that plagiarism and copyright 63]). infringement are not necessarily the same. The “plagiarizer” generally presents the work of oth- 15 The significance of this difference cannot be un- ers (often uncited) as her own, and may, when derstated, particularly as the misspelling of using protected source materials, commit in- “adition” in Minutes to Go is “corrected” in The fringement. Conversely, the infringer might use Third Mind to “edition.” A definite editorial protected materials with full disclosure to the mechanism is in operation. reader, and so in no way commit plagiarism. Yet by calling Burroughs a “plagiarist” and a 16 In Minutes to Go, the two Burroughs/Corso col- “copyright infringer” we are forced to reckon laborative pieces, “Everywhere March Your with, as Morris Freedman notes, the fact that the Head”” and “Sons of Your In,” assume a differ- academic community has “never in practical ent mode: “Words by Rimbaud, arrangement by terms rigorously formulated the boundaries…of Burroughs & Corso” (“Everywhere”) and “Words either originality or its violations. This has al- Rimbaud, arrangement Corso & lowed them to make originality, plagiarism, and Burroughs” (“Sons”). Perhaps Corso’s dedication even fraud infinitely inelastic terms.” Also, while to traditional notions of Authorship influenced much of The Third Mind does provide some scant these arrangements, where the two names seem indication of source texts, Burroughs is non- to jockey for position, or represent a pre- specific in his attributions, and in many other cut- arrangement. up instances, does not attribute sources (making him, explicitly, a plagiarist). 17 The cut-ups initially assumed a sort of Benja- minian “aura” by virtue of their position as dis- 12 I am deliberately conflating two notions of col- covery: Gysin was often attributed as contempo- laboration: the first is between more than one rary “discoverer” by Burroughs, yet Gysin never author (Burroughs and Gysin, et al.), and the hesitated to position Burroughs at the fore: “I second is between at least one author and the realised right away that the cut-ups would never texts of other writers. Burroughs critic Oliver Har- serve or suit anyone quite like they fitted William ris note the importance of this conflation for and served him” (Wilson and Gysin 163). Both
205 Plagiary 2006
men, perhaps out of professional respect, pre- ferred to maintain the myth of single “mastery” Davis Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and au- even within their communal pronouncements. thor of Multifesto: A Henri d’Mescan Reader Harris’s note on the method’s legacy follows the (Spuyten Duyvil 2007), as well as co-author of the same Author-centered logic: “[E]veryone who novel Abecedarium (Chiasmus Press, forthcoming) took up the practice faded away—except and co-editor of the collections Retaking the Uni- Burroughs” (188). verse: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globaliza- tion (Pluto 2004) and The Exquisite Corpse: Creativ- ity, Collaboration, and the World’s Most Popular 18 Two different books, yes, but the latter contains a Parlor Game (Nebraska, forthcoming). Dr. Schnei- not-insignificant amount of material from the derman is Chair of American Studies and an Assis- former. We can imagine that Burroughs and tant Professor of English at Lake Forest College, a Gysin had no problem securing their own work board member for &NOW: A Festival of Innovative for republication, or, that they retained the copy- Writing and Art, and a contributor to NOW WHAT: right on the individual pieces while the publisher, a collective blog of alternative prose writers and Jean Franchette, held the compilation copyright publishers (http://nowwhatblog.blogspot.com/). He for Minutes to Go. can be found at davisschneiderman.com.
206