THE ECSTASY of INFLUENCE a Plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem
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C R T C S M THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE A plagiarism By Jonathan Lethem All mankind is of one author, and is adopt Lichberg's tale consciously? Or Still: did Nabokov consciously borrow one volume; when one man dies, one did the earlier tale exist for Nabokov as and quote? chapter is not torn out of the book, but a hidden, unacknowledged memory? "When you live outside the law, you translated into a better language; and The history of literature is not without have to eliminate dishonesty." The every chapter must be so translated.... examples of this phenomenon, called line comes from Don Siegel's 1958 film -John Donne cryptomnesia. Another hypothesis is noir, The Lineup, written by Stirling Silliphant. The film still LOVE AND THEFT haunts revival houses, likely thanks to Eli Wallach's blaz- Consider this tale: a cul- ing portrayal of a sociopath- tivated man of middle age ic hit man and to Siegel's looks back on the story of long, sturdy auteurist career. an amour [ou, one beginning Yet what were those words when, traveling abroad, he worth-to Siegel, or Sil- takes a room as a lodger. The liphant, or their audience- moment he sees the daugh- in 1958? And again: what ter of the house, he is lost. was the line worth when Bob She is a preteen, whose Dylan heard it (presumably charms instantly enslave in some Greenwich Village him. Heedless of her age, he repertory cinema), cleaned becomes intimate with her. it up a little, and inserted it In the end she dies, and the into "Absolutely Sweet narrator-marked by her Marie"? What are they worth forever-remains alone. The now, to the culture at large? name of the girl supplies the Appropriation has always title of the story: Lolita. played a key role in Dylan's The author of the story music. The songwriter has I've described, Heinz von grabbed not only from a Lichberg, published his tale panoply of vintage Holly- of Lolita in 1916, forty years wood films but from Shake- before Vladimir Nabokov's novel. Lich- that Nabokov, knowing Lichberg's tale speare and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ju- berg later became a prominent jour- perfectly well, had set himself to that art nichi Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza. nalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful of quotation that Thomas Mann, him- He also nabbed the title of Eric Lott's works faded from view. Did Nabokov, self a master of it, called "higher crib- study of minstrelsy for his 2001 album who remained in Berlin until 1937, . bing." Literature has always been a cru- Love and Theft. One imagines Dylan cible in which familiar themes are liked the general resonance of the title, continually recast. Little of what we in which emotional misdemeanors stalk Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven nov- els, including Motherless Brooklyn and admire in Nabokov's Lolita is to be the sweetness of love, as they do so of- You Don't Love Me Yet, which will be found in its predecessor; the former is ten in Dylan's songs. Lott's title is, of published in March. in no way deducible from the latter. course, itself a riff on Leslie Fiedler's "Nijinskv Series: Queen," a Polaroid montage by John O'Reilly. Courtesy Julie Saul Gallery, New York City CRITICISM 59 Love and Death in the American Novel, mous thing Donne ever wrote, con- ed singing." Then Lomax, who knew which famously identifies the literary taining as it does the line "never send of the Robert Johnson recording motif of the interdependence of a white to know for whom the bell tolls; it called "Walkin' Blues," asked Waters man and a dark man, like Huck and tolls for thee." My search had led me if there were any other songs that Jim or Ishmael and Queequeg-a se- from a movie to a book to a play to a used the same tune. "There's been ries of nested references to Dylan's own website and back to a book. Then some blues played like that," Waters appropriating, minstrel-boy self. Dy- again, those words may be as famous replied. "This song comes from the lan's art offers a paradox: while it fa- as they are only because Hemingway cotton field and a boy once put a mously urges us not to look back, it lifted them for his book title. record out-Robert Johnson. He put alsoencodes a knowledgeof past sources Literature has been in a plundered, it out as named 'Walkin' Blues.' I that might otherwise have little home fragmentary state for a long time. heard the tune before I heard it on in contemporary culture, like the Civ- When I was thirteen I purchased an the record. I learned it from Son il War poetry of the Confederate bard anthology of Beat writing. Immedi- House." In nearly one breath, Wa- Henry Timrod, resuscitated in lyricson ately, and to my very great excite- ters offers five accounts: his own ac- Dylan's newest record, Modem Times. ment, I discovered one William S. tive authorship: he "made it" on a Dylan's originality and his appropria- Burroughs, author of something specific date. Then the "passive" ex- tions are as one. called Naked Lunch, excerpted there planation: "it come to me just like The same might be said of all art. in all its coruscating brilliance. Bur- that." After Lomax raises the ques- I realized this forcefully when one roughs was then as radical a literary tion of influence, Waters, without day I went looking for the John man as the world had to offer. Noth- shame, misgivings, or trepidation, Donne passage quoted above. I ing, in all my experience of literature says that he heard a version by John- know the lines, I confess, not from a since, has ever had as strong an effect son, but that his mentor, Son House, college course but from the movie on my sense of the sheer possibilities taught it to him. In the middle of version of 84, Charing Cross Road of writing. Later, attempting to un- that complex genealogy, Waters de- with Anthony Hopkins and Anne derstand this impact, I discovered clares that "this song comes from the Bancroft. I checked out 84, Charing that Burroughs had incorporated cotton field." Cross Road from the library in the snippets of other writers' texts into Blues and jazz musicians have long hope of finding the Donne passage, his work, an action I knew my teach- been enabled by a kind of "open source" but it wasn't in the book. It's allud- ers would have called plagiarism. culture, in which pre-existing melodic ed to in the play that was adapted Some of these borrowings had been fragments and larger musical frame- from the book, but it isn't reprinted. lifted from American science fiction works are freely reworked. Technology So I rented the movie again, and of the Forties and Fifties, adding a has only multiplied the possibilities; there was the passage, read in voice- secondary shock of recognition for musicians have gained the power to over by Anthony Hopkins but with- me. By then I knew that this "cut-up duplicate sounds literally rather than out attribution. Unfortunately, the method," as Burroughs called it, was simply approximate them through al- line was also abridged so that, when central to whatever he thought he lusion. In Seventies Jamaica, King I finally turned to the Web, I found was doing, and that he quite literally Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry de- myself searching for the line "all believed it to be akin to magic. constructed recorded music, using as- mankind is of one volume" instead When he wrote about his process, tonishingly primitive pre-digital hard- of "all mankind is of one author, the hairs on my neck stood up, so ware, creating what they called and is one volume." palpable was the excitement. Bur- "versions." The recombinant nature of My Internet search was initially no roughs was interrogating the universe their means of production quickly more successful than my library with scissors and a paste pot, and the spread to D]s in New Yorkand London. search. I had thought that summon- least imitative of authors was no pla- Today an endless, gloriously impure, ing books from the vasty deep was a giarist at all. and fundamentally social process gen- matter of a few keystrokes, but when erates countless hours of music. I visited the website of the Yale li- Visual, sound, and text collage- brary, I found that most of its books CONTAMINATION ANXIETY which for many centuries were rela- don't yet exist as computer text. As a In 1941, on his front porch, Mud- tively fugitive traditions (a cento last-ditch effort I searched the seem- dy Waters recorded a song for the here, a folk pastiche there)-became ingly more obscure phrase "every folklorist Alan Lomax. After singing explosively central to a series of chapter must be so translated." The the song, which he told Lomax was movements in the twentieth centu- passage I wanted finally came to me, entitled "Country Blues," Waters de- ry: futurism, cubism, Dada, musique as it turns out, not as part of a schol- scribed how he came to write it. "I concrete, situationism, pop art, and arly library collection but simply be- made it on about the eighth of Octo- appropriationism. In fact, collage, cause someone who loves Donne had ber '38," Waters said.