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Home , Jonathan Lethem, Life of Pi (soundtrack), Lolita, Steve Erickson

C R T C S M

THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE A By

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 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 supplies the Appropriation has always title of the story: . 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 's . 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. "I was fixin' a the common denominator in that posted it on his homepage. The lines puncture on a car. I had been mis- list, might be called the art form of I sought were from Meditation 17 in treated by a girl. I just felt blue, and the twentieth century, never mind Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, the song fell into my mind and it the twenty-first. But forget, for the which happens to be the most fa- come to me just like that and I start- moment, chronologies, schools, or

60 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007 even centuries. As examples accu- lusion, and sublimated collaboration Roger Meyers Jr. "You take away our mulate-Igor Stravinsky's music and consist of a kind of sine qua non of right to steal ideas, where are they Daniel Johnston's, Francis Bacon's the creative act, cutting across all going to come from?" If nostalgic car- paintings and Henry Darger's, the forms and genres in the realm of cul- toonists had never borrowed from of the Oulipo group and of tural production. Fritz the Cat, there would be no Hannah Crafts (the author who pil- In a courtroom scene from The Ren & Stimpy Show; without the laged Dickens's Bleak House to write Simpsons that has since entered into Rankin/Bass and Charlie Brown The Bondwoman's Narrative), as well the television canon, an argument Christmas specials, there would be as cherished texts that become trou- over the ownership of the animated no South Park; and without The Flint- bling to their admirers after the dis- characters Itchy and Scratchy rapidly stones-more or less The Honeymoon- covery of their "plagiarized" ele- escalates into an existential debate ers in cartoon loincloths-The Simp- ments, like Richard Condon's novels on the very nature of cartoons. "Ani- sons would cease to exist. If those or Martin Luther King Jr.'s ser- mation is built on plagiarism!" de- don't strike you as essential losses, mons-it becomes apparent that ap- clares the show's hot-tempered then consider the remarkable series propriation, mimicry, quotation, al- cartoon -producer -within-a -cartoon, of "" that links Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe" with Shake- speare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, or Shakespeare's description of Cleopa- tra, copied nearly verbatim from Plutarch's life of Mark Antony and also later nicked by T. S. Eliot for The Waste Land. If these are exam- ples of plagiarism, then we want more plagiarism. Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself. Finding one's voice isn't just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of oth- ers but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discours- es. Inspiration could be called inhal- ing the memory of an act never expe- rienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Any artist knows these truths, no matter how deeply he or she sub- merges that knowing. What happens when an goes unrecognized? A closer look at The Waste Land may help make this point. The body of Eliot's poem is a vertiginous melange of quotation, al- lusion, and "original" writing. When Eliot alludes to Edmund Spenser's "Prothalamion" with the line "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song," what of readers to whom the poem, never one of Spenser's most popular, is unfamiliar? (Indeed, the Spenser is now known largely be- cause of Eliot's use of it.) Two re- sponses are possible: grant the line to Eliot, or. later discover the source and understand the line as plagia- rism. Eliot evidenced no small anxi-

The Mouse's Tale, by Jess © The Jess Collins Trust, Berkeley, Calif. and San Francisco Museum of Modem Art, Calif. Gift of Frederic P. Snowden CRITICISM 61 ety about these matters; the notes he This tendency encourages us to see changed the course of that art: courts so carefully added to The Waste Land the objects in our world only in were asked whether the photographer, can be read as a symptom of mod- terms of how they can serve us or be amateur or professional, required per- ernism's contamination anxiety. used by us. The task he identified was mission before he could capture and Taken from this angle, what exactly to find ways to resituate ourselves vis- print an image. Was the photograph- is postmodernism, except a-vis these "objects," so that we may er stealing from the person or building without the anxiety? see them as "things" pulled into relief whose photograph he shot, pirating against the ground of their function- something of private and certifiable ality. Heidegger believed that art had value? Those early decisions went in fa- SURROUNDED BY SIGNS the great potential to reveal the vor of the pirates. Just as Walt Disney The surrealists believed that ob- "thingness" of objects. could take inspiration from Buster jects in the world possess a certain The surrealists understood that Keaton's Steamboat Bill, lr.. the Broth- but unspecitiable intensity that had photography and cinema could carry ers Grimm, or the existence of real been dulled by everyday use and out this reanimating process auto- mice, the photographer should be free utility. They meant to reanimate matically; the process of framing ob- to capture an image without compen- this dormant intensity, to bring jects in a lens was often enough to sating the source. The world that meets our eye through the lens of a camera was judged to be, with minor exceptions, a sort of pub- lic commons, where a cat may look at a king. Novelists may glance at the stuff of the world too, but we sometimes get called to task for it. For those whose ganglia were formed pre-TV, the mimetic deployment of pop-culture icons seems at best an annoying tic and at worst a dangerous va- pidity that compromises fic- tion's seriousness by dating it out of the Platonic Always, where it ought to reside. In a graduate workshop I briefly passed through, a certain gray eminence tried to convince us that a literary story should al- ways eschew "any feature which serves to date it" because "seri- ous fiction must be Timeless." When we protested that, in his own well-known work, char- acters moved about electrical- ly lit rooms, drove cars, and their minds once again into close create the charge they sought. De- spoke not Anglo-Saxon but postwar with the matter that made scribing the effect, Walter Benjamin English-and further, that fiction he'd up their world. Andre Breton's max- drew a comparison between the pho- himself ratified as great, such as Dick- im "Beautiful as the chance en- tographic apparatus and Freud's psy- ens, was liberally strewn with innately counter of a sewing machine and an choanalytic methods. Just as Freud's topical, commercial, and time bound umbrella on an operating table" is theories "isolated and made analyz- references-he impatiently amended an expression of the belief that sim- able things which had heretofore his proscription to those explicit refer- ply placing objects in an unexpected floated along unnoticed in the broad ences that would date a story in the context reinvigorates their mysteri- stream of perception," the photo- "frivolous Now." When pressed, he said ous qualities. graphic apparatus focuses on "hidden of course he meant the "trendy mass- This "crisis" the surrealists identi- details of familiar objects," revealing popular-media" reference. Here, trans- fied was being simultaneously diag- "entirely new structural formations generational discourse broke down. nosed by others. Martin Heidegger of the subject." I was born in 1964; I grew up watch- held that the essence of modernity It's worth noting, then, that early ing Captain Kangaroo, moon landings, was found in a certain technological in the history of photography a series of zillions of TV ads, the Banana Splits, orientation he called "enframing." judicial decisions could well have M*A*S*H, and The Tyler Moore

"Double Mona Lisa (Peanut Butter + Jelly)," by Vik Muniz, from Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer © 2005 Aperture. Artwork courtesy Aperture, . Licensed by VAGA, 62 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007 New York City. Muniz's work will be on view through May 7 at P.5.t, in New York City Show. I was born with words in my Whatever charge of tastelessness , for one, consid- mouth-s-t'Band-Aid," "Q-tip," -x-. or trademark violation may be at- ered copyright a necessary evil: he rox"--object-names as fixed and eter- tached to the artistic appropriation favored providing just enough incen- nal in my logosphere as "taxicab" and of the media environment in which tive to create, nothing more, and "toothbrush." The world is a home lit- we swim, the alternative-to flinch, thereafter allowing ideas to flow tered with pop-culture products and or tiptoe away into some ivory tower freely, as nature intended. His con- their emblems. I also came of age of irrelevance-is far worse. We're ception of copyright was enshrined swamped by that stood for surrounded by signs; our imperative in the Constitution, which gives originals yet mysteriousto me-I knew is to ignore none of them. Congress the authority to "promote Monkees before Beatles, Belmondo the Progress of Science and useful before Bogart, and "remember" the Arts, by securing for limited Times movie Summer of '42 from a Mad USEMONOPOLY to Authors and Inventors the exclu- magazine satire, though I've still nev- The idea that culture can be prop- sive Right to their respective Writ- er seen the film itself. I'm not alone in erty-intellectual property-is used to ings and Discoveries." This was a having been born backward into an justify everything from attempts to balancing act between creators and incoherent realm of texts, products, force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties society as a whole; second comers and images, the commercial and cul- for singing songs around campfires to might do a much better job than the tural environment with which we've the infringement suit brought by the originator with the original idea. both supplemented and blotted out estate of Margaret Mitchell against But Jefferson's vision has not fared our natural world. I can no more claim the publishers of Alice Randall's The well, has in fact been steadily eroded it as "mine" than the sidewalks and Wind Done Gone. Corporations like by those who view the culture as a forests of the world, yet I do dwell in Celera Genomics have filed for market in which everything of value it, and for me to stand a chance as ei- patents for human genes, while the should be owned by someone or oth- ther artist or citizen, I'd probably bet- Recording Industry Association of er. The distinctive feature of modern ter be permitted to name it. America has sued music downloaders American copyright law is its almost Consider Walker Percy's The for copyright infringement, reaching limitless bloating-its expansion in Moviegoer: out-of-court settlements for thou- both scope and duration. With no sands of dollars with defendants as registration requirement, every cre- Other people, so I have read, treasure young as twelve. ASCAP bleeds fees ative act in a tangible medium is memorable moments in their lives: from shop owners who play back- now subject to copyright protection: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise,the summernight one met ground music in their stores; stu- your email to your child or your a lonely girl in Central Park and dents and scholars are shamed from child's finger painting, both are auto- achievedwith her a sweetand natural placing texts facedown on photo- matically protected. The first Con- relationship, as they say in books. I copy machines. At the same time, gress to grant copyright gave authors too once met a girl in Central Park, copyright is revered by most estab- an initial term of fourteen years, but it is not much to remember.What lished writers and artists as a which could be renewed for another I remember is the time birthright and bulwark, the source of fourteen if the author still lived. The killed three men with a carbine as he nurture for their infinitely fragile current term is the life of the author wasfallingto the dustystreet in Stage- practices in a rapacious world. Pla- plus seventy years. It's only a slight coach, and the time the kitten found giarism and piracy, after all, are the exaggeration to say that each time Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man. monsters we working artists are Mickey Mouse is about to fall into taught to dread, as they roam the the public domain, the mouse's Today, when we can eat Tex-Mex woods surrounding our tiny preserves copyright term is extended. with chopsticks while listening to of regard and remuneration. Even as the law becomes more re- reggae and watching a YouTube re- A time is marked not so much by strictive, technology is exposing broadcast of the Berlin Wall's fall- ideas that are argued about as by those restrictions as bizarre and arbi- i.e., when damn near everything pre- ideas that are taken for granted. The trary. When old laws fixed on repro- sents itself as familiar-it's not a character of an era hangs upon what duction as the compensable (or ac- surprise that some of today's most needs no defense. In this regard, few tionable) unit, it wasn't because ambitious art is going about trying to of us question the contemporary there was anything fundamentally make the familiar strange. In so doing, construction of copyright. It is taken invasive of an author's rights in the in reimagining what human life as a law, both in the sense of a uni- making of a copy. Rather it was be- might truly be like over there across versally recognizable moral absolute, cause copies were once easy to find the chasms of illusion, mediation, de- like the law against murder, and as and count, so they made a useful mographics, marketing, imago, and naturally inherent in our world, like benchmark for deciding when an appearance, artists are paradoxically the law of gravity. In fact, it is nei- owner's rights had been invaded. In trying to restore what's taken for ther. Rather, copyright is an ongoing the contemporary world, though, the "real" to three whole dimensions, to social negotiation, tenuously forged, act of "copying" is in no meaningful reconstruct a univocally round world endlessly revised, and imperfect in sense equivalent to an infringe- out of disparate streams of flat sights. its every incarnation. ment-we make a copy every time

CRITICISM 63 we accept an emailed text, or send or ative results. So let's try calling it day wraps fish or builds an archive. forward one-and is impossible any- that-not a right but a monopoly on Most books fall out of print after more to regulate or even describe. use, a "usemonopoly"-and then one year, yet even within that period At the movies, my entertainment consider how the rapacious expan- they can be sold in used bookstores is sometimes lately preceded by a sion of monopoly rights has always and stored in libraries, quoted in re- dire trailer, produced by the lobbying been counter to the public interest, views, parodied in magazines, de- group called the Motion Picture As- no matter if it is Andrew Carnegie scribed in conversations, and plun- sociation of America, in which the controlling the price of steel or Walt dered for costumes for kids to wear purchasing of a bootleg copy of a Disney managing the fate of his on Halloween. The demarcation be- Hollywood film is compared to the mouse. Whether the monopolizing tween various possible uses is beauti- theft of a car or a handbag-and, as beneficiary is a living artist or some fully graded and hard to define, the the bullying supertitles remind us, artist's heirs or some corporation's more so as artifacts distill into and "You wouldn't steal a handbag!" shareholders, the loser is the com- repercuss through the realm of cul- This conflation forms an incitement munity, including living artists who ture into which they've been en- to quit thinking. If I were to tell you might make splendid use of a healthy tered, the more so as they engage the that pirating DVDs or downloading public domain. receptive minds for whom they were music is in no way different from presumably intended. loaning a friend a book, my own ar- Active reading is an impertinent guments would be as ethically bank- THE BEAUTY OF SECOND USE raid on the literary preserve. Readers rupt as the MPAA's. The truth lies A few years ago someone brought are like nomads, poaching their way somewhere in the vast gray area be- me a strange gift, purchased at across fields they do not own-artists tween these two overstated posi- MoMA's downtown design store: a are no more able to control the tions. For a car or a handbag, once copy of my own first novel, Gun, imaginations of their audiences than stolen, no longer is available to its With Occasional Music, expertly cut the culture industry is able to control owner, while the appropriation of an into the contours of a pistol. The ob- second uses of its artifacts. In the article of "intellectual property" ject was the work of Robert The, an children's classic The Velveteen Rab- leaves the original untouched. As artist whose specialty is the reincar- bit, the old Skin Horse offers the Jefferson wrote, "He who receives an nation of everyday materials. I regard Rabbit a lecture on the practice of idea from me, receives instruction my first book as an old friend, one textual poaching. The value of a himself without lessening mine; as who never fails to remind me of the new toy lies not it its material quali- he who lights his taper at mine, re- spirit with which I entered into this ties (not "having things that buzz in- ceives light without darkening me." game of art and commerce-that to side you and a stick-out handle"), Yet industries of cultural capital, be allowed to insert the materials of the Skin Horse explains, but rather who profit not from creating but my imagination onto the shelves of in how the toy is used. "Real isn't from distributing, see the sale of cul- bookstores and into the minds of how you are made .... It's a thing ture as a zero-sum game. The piano- readers (if only a handful) was a wild that happens to you. When a child roll publishers fear the record com- privilege. I was paid $6,000 for three loves you for a long, long time, not panies, who fear the cassette-tape years of writing, but at the time I'd just to play with, but REALLY loves manufacturers, who fear the online have happily published the results you, then you become Real." The vendors, who fear whoever else is for nothing. Now my old friend had Rabbit is fearful, recognizing that next in line to profit most quickly come home in a new form, one I was consumer goods don't become "real" from the intangible and infinitely re- unlikely to have imagined for it my- without being actively reworked: producible fruits of an artist's labor. self. The gun-book wasn't readable, "Does it hurt?" Reassuring him, the It has been the same in every indus- exactly, but I couldn't take offense at Skin Horse says: "It doesn't happen try and with every technological in- that. The fertile spirit of stray con- all at once You become. It takes novation. Jack Valenti, speaking for nection this appropriated object a long time Generally, by the the MPAA: "I say to you that the conveyed back to me-the strange time you are Real, most of your hair VCR is to the American film pro- beauty of its second use-was a re- has been loved off, and your eyes ducer and the American public as ward for being a published writer I drop out and you get loose in the the Strangler is to the could never have fathomed in ad- joints and very shabby." Seen from woman home alone." vance. And the world makes room the perspective of the toymaker, the Thinking clearly sometimes re- for both my novel and Robert The's Velveteen Rabbit's loose joints and quires unbraiding our language. The gun-book. There's no need to choose missing eyes represent vandalism, word "copyright" may eventually between the two. signs of misuse and rough treatment; seem as dubious in its embedded pur- In the first life of creative proper- for others, these are marks of its lov- poses as "family values," "globaliza- ty, if the creator is lucky, the con- ing use. tion," and, sure, "intellectual proper- tent is sold. After the commercial Artists and their surrogates who ty." Copyright is a "right" in no life has ended, our tradition supports fall into the trap of seeking recom- absolute sense; it is a government- a second life as well. A newspaper is pense for every possible second use granted monopoly on the use of ere- delivered to a doorstep, and the next end up attacking their own best au-

64 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007 dience members for the crime of ex- the work of others: Snow White and the of Third World or "primitive" art- alting and enshrining their work. Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dum- works and styles by more privileged The Recording Industry Association bo, Bambi, Song of the South, Cinderel- (and better-paid) artists. Think of Pi- of America prosecuting their own la, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, casso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, or record-buying public makes as little Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Mulan, some of the albums of Paul Simon or sense as the novelists who bristle at Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, : even without violating autographing used copies of their The Jungle Book, and, alas, Treasure copyright, those creators have some- times come in for a certain skepti- cism when the extent of their out- sourcing became evident. And, as when Led Zeppelin found them- selves sued for back royalties by the bluesman Willie Dixon, the act can occasionally be an expensive one. To live outside the law, you must be honest: perhaps it was this, in part, that spurred David Byrne and Brian Eno to recently launch a "remix" website, where anyone can down- load easily disassembled versions of two songs from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, an album reliant on vernacu- lar speech sampled from a host of sources. Perhaps it also explains why has never refused a re- quest for a sample. Kenneth Koch once said, "I'm a writer who likes to be influenced." It was a charming confession, and a rare one. For so many artists, the act of creativity is intended as a Napoleonic imposition of one's uniqueness upon the universe-i-cpres moi Ie deluge of copycats! And for every or Woody Guthrie or Martin Luther King [r., or Walt Disney, who gathered a constellation of voices in his work, there may seem to be some corporation or liter- ary estate eager to stopper the bottle: books for collectors. And artists, or Planet, a legacy of cultural sampling cultural debts flow in, but they don't their heirs, who fall into the trap of that Shakespeare, or De La , could flow out. We might call this tenden- attacking the collagists and satirists get behind. Yet Disney'sprotectorate of cy "source hypocrisy." Or we could and digital samplers of their work are lobbyistshas policed the resultingcache name it after the most pernicious attacking the next generation of cre- of cultural materials as vigilantly as if source hypocrites of all time: Disnial. ators for the crime of being influ- it were Fort Knox-threatening legal enced, for the crime of responding action, for instance, against the artist with the same mixture of intoxica- Dennis Oppenheim for the use of Dis- YOU CAN'T STEAL A GIFT tion, resentment, lust, and glee that ney characters in a sculpture, and pro- My reader may, understandably, be characterizes all artistic successors. hibiting the scholar Holly Crawford on the verge of crying, "Communist!" By doing so they make the world from usingany Disney-relatedimages- A large, diverse society cannot survive smaller, betraying what seems to me including artwork by Lichtenstein, without property; a large, diverse, and the primary motivation for partici- Warhol, Oldenburg, and others-in modern societycannot flourishwithout pating in the world of culture in the her monograph Attached to the Mouse: some form of intellectual property. But first place: to make the world larger. Disney and Contemporary Art. it takes little reflection to grasp that This peculiar and specific act-the there is ample value that the term enclosure of commonwealth culture "property" doesn't capture. And works SOURCE HYPOCRISY, OR, DISNIAL for the benefit of a sole or corporate of art exist simultaneously in two The Walt Disney Company has owner-is close kin to what could be economies, a market economy and a drawn an astonishing catalogue from called imperial plagiarism, the free use gift economy.

When Paradise Arrived, by Enrique Chagoya. Courtesy di Rosa Preserve, Napa, Calif. Phorograph by Srefan Kirkeby CRlTICISM65 The cardinal difference between never be commodified is generally generally produce blood supplies of gift and commodity exchange is that known as inalienability or unalienabili- lower safety, purity, and potency a gift establishes a feeling-bond be- ty-a concept most famouslyexpressed than volunteer systems. A gift econ- tween two people, whereas the sale by Thomas Jefferson in the phrase "en- omy may be superior when it comes of a commodity leaves no necessary dowed by their Creator with certain to maintaining a group's commit- connection. I go into a hardware unalienable Rights ... "A work of art ment to certain extra-market values. store, pay the man for a hacksaw seems to be a hardier breed; it can be blade, and walk out. I may never see sold in the market and still emerge a him again. The disconnectedness is, work of art. But if it is true that in the THE COMMONS in fact, a virtue of the commodity essential commerce of art a gift is car- Another way of understanding the mode. We don't want to be both- ried by the work from the artist to his presence of gift economies-which ered, and if the clerk always wants to audience, ifI am right to say that where dwell like ghosts in the commercial chat about the family, I'll shop else- there is no gift there is no art, then it machine-is in the sense of a public where. I just want a hacksaw blade. may be possible to destroy a work of art commons. A commons, of course, is But a gift makes a connection. There by converting it into a pure commod- anything like the streets over which are many examples, the candy or cig- ity. I don't maintain that art can't be we drive, the skies through which we arette offered to a stranger who bought and sold, but that por- pilot airplanes, or the public parks or shares a seat on the plane, the few tion of the work places a constraint beaches on which we dally. A com- words that indicate goodwill be- upon our merchandising. This is the mons belongs to everyone and no one, tween passengers on the late-night reason why even a really beautiful, in- and its use is controlled only by com- bus. These tokens establish the sim- genious, powerful ad (of which there mon consent. A commons describes plest bonds of social life, but the are a lot) can never be any kind of resources like the body of ancient mu- model they offer may be extended to real art: an ad has no status as gift; i.e., sic drawn on by composers and folk the most complicated of unions- it's never really for the person it's di- musicians alike, rather than the com- marriage, parenthood, mentorship. If rected at. modities, like "Happy Birthday to You," a value is placed on these (often es- The power of a gift economy re- for which ASCAP, 114 years after it sentially unequal) exchanges, they mains difficult for the empiricists of was written, continues to collect a fee. degenerate into something else. our market culture to understand. In Einstein's theory of relativity is a com- Yet one of the more difficult our times, the rhetoric of the market mons. Writings in the public domain things to comprehend is that the gift presumes that everything should be are a commons. Gossip about celebri- economies-like those that sustain and can be appropriately bought, ties is a commons. The silence in a open-source software-coexist so sold, and owned-a tide of alienation movie theater is a transitory commons, naturally with the market. It is pre- lapping daily at the dwindling re- impossibly ftagile, treasured by those cisely this doubleness in art practices doubt of the unalienable. In free- who crave it, and constructed as a mu- that we must identify, ratify, and en- market theory, an intervention to tual gift by those who compose it. shrine in our lives as participants in halt propertization is considered "pa- The world of art and culture is a culture, either as "producers" or ternalistic," because it inhibits the vast commons, one that is salted "consumers." Art that matters to free action of the citizen, now through with zones of utter com- us-which moves the heart, or re- reposited as a "potential entrepre- merce yet remains gloriously immune vives the soul, or delights the senses, neur." Of course, in the real world, to any overall commodification. The or offers courage for living, however we know that child-rearing, family closest resemblance is to the com- we choose to describe the experi- life, education, socialization, sexuali- mons of a language: altered by every ence-is received as a gift is re- ty, political life, and many other ba- contributor, expanded by even the ceived. Even if we've paid a fee at sic human activities require insula- most passive user. That a language is the door of the museum or concert tion from market forces. In fact, a commons doesn't mean that the hall, when we are touched by a work paying for many of these things can community owns it; rather it belongs of art something comes to us that ruin them. We may be willing to between people, possessed by no one, has nothing to do with the price. peek at Who Wants to Marry a Multi- not even by society as a whole. The daily commerce of our lives pro- millionaire or an eBay auction of the Nearly any commons, though, can ceeds at its own constant level, but a ova of fashion models, but only to re- be encroached upon, partitioned, en- gift conveys an uncomrnodifiable assure ourselves that some things are closed. The American commons in- surplus of inspiration. still beneath our standards of dignity. clude tangible assets such as public The waywe treat a thing can change What's remarkable about gift forests and minerals, intangible wealth its nature, though. Religions often pro- economies is that they can flourish such as copyrights and patents, critical hibit the sale of sacred objects, the im- in the most unlikely places-in run- infrastructures such as the Internet and plication being that their sanctity is down neighborhoods, on the Inter- government research, and cultural re- lost if they are bought and sold. We net, in scientific communities, and sources such as the broadcast airwaves consider it unacceptable to sell sex, among members of Alcoholics and public spaces. They include re- babies, body organs, legal rights, and Anonymous. A classic example is sources we've paid for as taxpayers and votes. The idea that something should commercial blood systems, which inherited from previous generations.

66 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007 They're not just an inventory o{mar- across specialties. Swanson himself ketable assets; they're social institu- did this in the case of Raynaud's syn- tions and cultural traditions that define drome, a disease that causes the fin- us as Americans and enliven us as hu- gers of young women to become man beings. Some invasions of the numb. His finding is especially strik- commons are sanctioned because we ing-perhaps even scandalous-be- can no longer muster a spirited com- cause it happened in the ever- mitment to the public sector. The abuse expanding biomedical sciences. goesunnoticed because the theft of the Undiscovered public knowledge Lovebirds Pendant commons is seen in glimpses, not in emboldens us to question the ex- This pendant by Odin Lonning of)uneau nests panorama. We may occasionally see a treme claims to originality made in the traditional Tlingit Lovebirds. Eagle and former wetland paved; we may hear press releases and publishers' notices: Raven. within a heart shape. Sterling Silver. about the breakthrough cancer drug Is an intellectual or creative offering No. N980 with 24" Sterling chain...:-$80.00 that tax dollars helped develop, the truly novel, or have we just forgotten rights to which pharmaceutical com- a worthy precursor? Does solving From our panies acquired for a song. The larger certain scientific problems really re- Northwest Coast Collection movement goes too much unremarked. quire massive additional funding, or The notion of a commons of cultural could a computerized search engine, materials goes more or less unnamed. creatively deployed, do the same job Honoring the commons is not a more quickly and cheaply? Lastly, matter of moral exhortation. It is a does our appetite for creative vitality practical necessity. We in so- require the violence and exaspera- ciety are going through a period of in- tion of another avant-garde, with its tensifying belief in private ownership, wearisome killing-the-father impera- Lovebirds Bracelet to the detriment of the public good. tives, or might we be better off rati- Another Northwest Coast design by Odin We have to remain constantly vigi- fying the ecstasy of influence-and Lonning symbolizing the joining of the Eagle lant to prevent raids by those who deepening our willingness to under- and Raven clans. Devolved length 73/4". would selfishly exploit our common stand the commonality and timeless- No. N763B Sterling Silver_$152.00 heritage for their private gain. Such ness of the methods and motifs avail- raids on our natural resources are not able to artists? examples of enterprise and initiative. From our They are attempts to take from all the Celtic collection GIVE ALL people just for the benefit of a few. Symbolizing two people A few years ago, the Film Society united in eternal love of Lincoln Center announced a ret- UNDISCOVERED PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE rospective of the works of Dariush Everlasting Artists and intellectuals despon- Mehrjui, then a fresh enthusiasm of Love dent over the prospects for originali- mine. Mehrjui is one of Iran's finest No. 3385 ty can take heart from a phenome- filmmakers, and the only one whose Earrings. fishhook. Sterling siIver $42.50 non identified about twenty years subject was personal relationships Necklet, Sterling with 18" chain ..33.50 ago by Don Swanson, a library scien- among the upper-middle-class intel- Earrings. fishhook. 14kt gold __ 520.00 tist at the University of Chicago. He ligentsia. Needless to say, opportu- Necklet, 14kt gold. without chain __ 250.00 No. 2310 18" 14kt gold wheat chain_200.00 called it "undiscovered public nities to view his films were-and knowledge." Swanson showed that remain-rare indeed. I headed up- Items shown full size. standing problems in medical re- town for one, an adaptation of]. D. Add $7.00 handling. Satisfaction guaranteed. search may be significantly ad- Salinger's Franny and Zooey, titled dressed, perhaps even solved, simply Pari, only to discover at the door of by systematically surveying the sci- the Walter Reade Theater that the Request a catalog or entific literature. Left to its own de- screening had been canceled: its an- visit our website for more ... vices, research tends to become more nouncement had brought threat of a specialized and abstracted from the lawsuit down on the Film Society. real-world problems that motivated True, these were Salinger's rights it and to which it remains relevant. under the law. Yet why would he This suggests that such a problem care that some obscure Iranian film- may be tackled effectively not by maker had paid him homage with a • Filson°Outdoor Clothing & Luggage commissioning more research but by meditation on his heroine? Would it • Akubra"Hats from Australia assuming that most or all of the solu- have damaged his book or robbed • Devold"Woolens from Norway tion can already be found in various him of some crucial remuneration • Bosca"Leather Wallets& Briefcases scientific journals, waiting to be as- had the screening been permitted? sembled by someone willing to read The fertile spirit of stray connec- ~ David Morgan 800- 324-4934 davidmorgan.com 11812N CreekPkwy N,Suite 103. BothellWA98011 CRITICISM 67 tion-one stretching across what is they worth? What would they be worth nourished in the first place, and presently seen as the direst of inter- if some future Dylan worked them whose existence as the ultimate national breaches-had in this case into a song?Should I care to make such repository of our offerings makes the been snuffed out. The cold, undead a thing impossible? work worth doing in the first place. hand of one of my childhood liter- Any text is woven entirely with ci- As a novelist, I'm a cork on the ary heroes had reached out from its tations, references, echoes, cultural ocean of story, a leaf on a windy day. New Hampshire redoubt to arrest languages, which cut across it through Pretty soon I'll be blown away. For my present-day curiosity. and through in a vast stereophony. the moment I'm grateful to be making A few assertions, then: The citations that go to make up a a living, and so must ask that for a Any text that has infiltrated the text are anonymous, untraceable, and limited time (in the Thomas Jeffer- common mind to the extent of Gone yet already read; they are quotations son sense) you please respect my small, With the Wind or Lolita or in- without inverted commas. The ker- treasured usemonopolies. Don't pirate exorably joins the language of cul- nel, the soul-let us go further and say my editions; do plunder my visions. ture. A map-turned-to-landscape, it the substance, the bulk, the actual and The name of the game is Give All. has moved to a place beyond enclo- valuable material of all human utter- You, reader, are welcome to my stories. sure or control. The authors and ances-is plagiarism. For substantial- They were never mine in the first their heirs should consider the subse- ly all ideas are secondhand, consciously place, but I gave them to you. If you quent parodies, refractions, quota- and unconsciously drawn from a mil- have the inclination to pick them up, tions, and revisions an honor, or at lion outside sources, and daily used by take them with my blessing. least the price of a rare success. the gamerer with a pride and satisfac- A corporation that has imposed tion born of the superstition that he an inescapable notion-Mickey originated them; whereas there is not KEY: I IS ANOTHER Mouse, Band-Aid-on the cultural a rag of originality about them any- This key to the preceding essay language should pay a similar price. where except the little discoloration names the source of every line I The primaryobjective of copyright is they get from his mental and moral stole, warped, and cobbled together not to reward the labor of authors but caliber and his temperament, and as I "wrote" (except, alas, those "to promote the Progress of Science which is revealed in characteristics of sources I forgot along the way). First and usefulArts." To this end, copyright phrasing. Old and new make the warp uses of a given author or speaker are assures authors the right to their origi- and woofof every moment. There isno highlighted in red. Nearly every sen- nal expression,but encourages others to thread that is not a twist of these two tence I culled I also revised, at least build freely upon the ideas and infor- strands. By necessity, by proclivity, slightly-for necessities of space, in mation conveyed by a work. This result and by delight, we all quote. Neuro- order to produce a more consistent is neither unfair nor unfortunate. logical study has lately shown that tone, or simply because I felt like it. Contemporary copyright, trademark, memory, imagination, and conscious- and patent law is presently corrupted. ness itselfisstitched, quilted, pastiched. The case for perpetual copyright is a If we cut-and-paste our selves, might TITLE denial of the essential gift-aspect of we not forgive it of our artworks? The phrase "the ecstasyof influence," the creative act. Arguments in its fa- Artists and writers-and our ad- which embeds a rebuking play on vor are as uri-American as those for vocates, our guilds and agents-too Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence," the repeal of the estate tax. often subscribe to implicit claims of is lifted from spoken remarks by Pro- Art issourced. Apprentices graze in originality that do injury to these fessor Richard Dienst of Rutgers. the field of culture. truths. And we too often, as huck- Digital sampling is an art method sters and bean counters in the tiny like any other, neutral in itself. enterprises of our selves, act to spite LOVE AND THEFT Despite hand-wringing at each tech- the gift portion of our privileged "... a cultivated man of middle age nological tum-radio, the Intemet- roles. People live differently who ... " to "... hidden, unacknowledged the future will be much like the past. treat a portion of their wealth as a memory?" These lines, with some ad- Artists will sell some things but also gift. If we devalue and obscure the justments for tone, belong to the give some things away.Change may be gift-economy function of our art anonymous editor or assistant who troubling for those who crave less am- practices, we turn our works into wrote the dust-flap copy of Michael biguity, but the life of an artist has nothing more than advertisements Maar's The Two Lolitas. Of course, in never been filled with certainty. for themselves. We may console our- my own experience, dust-flap copy is The dream of a perfect systematic selves that our lust for subsidiary often a collaboration between author remuneration is nonsense. I pay rent rights in virtual perpetuity is some and editor. Perhaps this was also true with the price my words bring when heroic counter to rapacious corpo- for Maar. published in glossy magazines and at rate interests. But the truth is that "The history of literature ... " to the same moment offer them for al- with artists pulling on one side and "... borrow and quote?" comes from most nothing to impoverished literary corporations pulling on the other, Maar's book itself. quarterlies, or speak them for free into the loser is the collective public "Appropriation has always " to the air in a radio interview. So what are imagination from which we were "... Ishmael and Queequeg " This

68 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007 Speak a paragraph makes a hash of remarks Roadmap," and Townes Van Zandt's from an interview with Eric Lott "Heavenly Houseboat Blues."... In his Foreign Language? conducted by David McNair and extensively researched book, Country: Speak it Better. Jayson Whitehead, and incorporates The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll, Nick T osches documents that the both interviewers' and interviewee's melody these songs share is both "an- observations. (The text-interview cient and British." There were no form can be seen as a commonly ac- recorded lawsuitsstemming from these cepted form of multivocal writing. appropriations.... Most interviewers prime their sub- jects with remarks of their own- "... musicians have gained ... leading the witness, so to speak-and through allusion." Joanna Demers, gently refine their subjects' state- Steal This Music. ments in the final printed transcript.) "In Seventies Jamaica ... " to "... "I realized this ... " to «•.. for a long hours of music." Gibson. time." The anecdote is cribbed, with an "Visual, sound, and text collage ... " Champs-Eiysees, elision to avoid appropriating a dead to "... realm of cultural production." Schau ins Land, grandmother, from Jonathan Rosen's This plunders, rewrites, and amplifies The Talmud and the Internet. I've nev- paragraphs from McLeod's Owning Acquerello italiano, er seen 84, Charing Cross Road, nor Culture, except for the line about searched the Web for a Donne quote. collage being the art form of the Puerta del 501- For me it was through Rosen to Donne, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Unique audiomagazines from Hemingway, website, et al. which I heard filmmaker Craig Bald- Europe that are guaranteed to "When I was thirteen ... " to u ... win say, in defense of sampling, in reenergize your language study, no plagiarist at all." This is from the trailer for a forthcoming docu- or your money back! Produced by 's "God's Little mentary, Copyright Criminals. some of Europe's best broadcasters Toys," in Wired magazine. My own "In a courtroom scene ... " to "... and journalists, each program is first encounter with William Bur- would cease to exist." Dave Itzkoff, roughs, also at age thirteen, was less New York Times. like listening to public radio in epiphanic. Having grown up with a "... the remarkable series of 'pla- French, German, Italian, or painter father who, during family giarisms' ... " to "... we want more pla- Spanish. Abooklet contains a visits to galleries or museums, ap- giarism." Richard Posner, combined complete transcript, glossary,and provingly noted collage and appro- from The Becker-Posner Blog and extensive annotation. priation techniques in the visual arts The Atlantic Monthly. (Picasso, Claes Oldenburg, Stuart "Most artists are brought ... " to «... Thousands of international Davis), I was gratified, but not sur- by art itself." These words, and many professionals and passionate prised, to learn that literature could more to follow, come from Lewis Europhiles find them indispensable. encompass the same methods. Hyde's The Gift. Above any other book I've here plagiarized, I com- Subscribers can opt for Audio Flash mend The Gift to your attention. Cards" (on CD only) which give CONTAMINATION ANXIETY "Finding one's voice ... filiations, the correct pronundation and "In 1941, on his front porch ... " communities, and discourses." Se- translation of 100 words and to «••• 'this song comes from the cot- manticist George L. Dillon, quoted in phrases from each program. ton field.'" Siva Vaidhvanathan, Rebecca Moore Howard's "The New Copyrights and Copywrongs. Abolitionism Comes to Plagiarism." French subscribers can choose "... enabled by a kind ... freely "Inspiration could be ... act never Champs-Elysees Plus - includes the reworked." Kembrew McLeod, Free- experienced." Ned Rorem, found on basic Champs-Elysees audio dom of Expression. In Owning Cul- several "great quotations" sites on the program, the transcript and ture, McLeod notes that, as he was Internet. glossary, and a printed workbook writing, he "Invention, it must be humbly ad- with grammar exerdses. In mitted ... out of chaos." Mary Shelley, addition, you receive a cassette or happened to be listening to a lot of old from her introduction to Frankenstein. country music, and in my casual listen- CD with interactive audio exerdses "What happens ... " to "... conta- to help you with comprehension ing I noticed that six country songs mination anxiety." Kevin J .H. shared exacdy the same vocal melody, Dettmar, from "The Illusion of Mod- and vocabulary building. including Hank Thompson's "Wild ernist Allusion and the Politics of Side of Life," the Carter Family's "I'm Full money-back guarantee. Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes," Postmodern Plagiarism." Roy Acuff's "Great Speckled Bird," For details, call Kitty Wells's "It Wasn't God Who SURROUNDED BY SIGNS Made Honkv Tonk Angels," Reno & 1-800-824-0829 r Smiley's "I'm Using My Bible for a "The surrealists believed ... " to or visit our Web site at

CRITICISM 69 www.audiomagazine.com the Walter Benjamin quote. Christ- USEMONOPOLY I'd finished, his words were so utterly ian Keathley's Cinephilia and History, dissolved within my own that had I or the Wind in the Trees, a book that "... everything from attempts ... " been an ordinary cutting-and-pasting treats fannish fetishism as the secret to "defendants as young as twelve." journalist it never would have oc- at the heart of film scholarship. Robert Boynton, The New York curred to me to give Dahlen a citation. Keathley notes, for instance, Joseph Times Magazine, "The Tyranny The effort of preserving another's dis- Cornell's surrealist-influenced 1936 of Copyright?" tinctive phrases as I worked on this film Rose Hobart, which simply "A time is marked ... " to "... what essay was sometimes beyond my ca- records "the way in which Cornell needs no defense." Lessig, this time pacities; this form of plagiarism was himself watched the 1931 Hollywood from The Future of Ideas. oddly hard work. potboiler East of Borneo, fascinated "Thomas Jefferson, for one ... " to "Kenneth Koch ... " to "... deluge of and distracted as he was by its B- ''' ... respective Writings and Discov- copycats!" Emily Nussbaum, The New grade star"-the star, of course, being eries.''' Boynton. York Times Book Review. Rose Hobart herself. This, I suppose, "... second comers might do a much makes Cornell a sort of father to better job than the originator computer-enabled fan-creator re- ... " I found this phrase in Lessig, who YOU CAN'T STEAL A GIFT workings of Hollywood product, like is quoting Vaidhyanathan, who him- "You can't steal a gift." Dizzy the version of George Lucas's The self is characterizing a judgment writ- Gillespie, defending another player Phantom Menace from which the ten by Learned Hand. who'd been accused of poaching noxious Jar Jar Binks character was "But Jefferson's vision ... owned Charlie Parker's style: "You can't purged; both incorporate a viewer's by someone or other." Boynton. steal a gift. Bird gave the world his subjective preferences into a revision "The distinctive feature ... " to "... music, and if you can hear it you can of a filmmaker's work. term is extended." Lessig, again from have it." "... early in the history of photog- The Future of Ideas. "A large, diverse society ... intel- raphy" to "... without compensating "When old laws ... " to "... had lectual property." Lessig. the source." From Free Culture, by been invaded." Jessica Litman, Digi- "And works of art ... " to "... Lawrence Lessig, the greatest of pub- tal Copyright. marriage, parenthood, mentorship." lic advocates for copyright reform, and "'I say to you ... woman home Hyde. the best source if you want to get rad- alone.''' I found the Valenti quote in "Yet one ... so naturally with the icalized in a hurry. Mcl.eod. Now fill in the blank: Jack market." David Bollier, Silent Theft. "For those whose ganglia ... " to Valenti is to the public domain as "Art that matters ... " to "... bought "... discourse broke down." From David is to _ and sold." Hyde. Foster Wallace's essay "E Unibus Plu- "We consider it unacceptable ... " to ram," reprinted in A Supposedly Fun "' ... certain unalienable Rights .. .''' Thing I'll Never Do Again. I have no THE BEAUTY OF SECOND USE Bollier, paraphrasing Margaret Jane idea who' Wallace's "gray eminence" is "In the first ... " to "... builds an Radin's Contested Commodities. or was. I inserted the example of Dick- archive." Lessig. "A work of art .. ." to "... constraint ens into the paragraph; he strikes me "Most books ... one year " Lessig. upon our merchandising." Hyde. as overlooked in the lineage of authors "Active reading is ... " to " do not "This is the reason ... person it's di- of "brand-name" fiction. own ... " This is a mashup of Henry rected at." Wallace. "I was born ... Mary Tyler Moore Jenkins, from his Textual Poachers: "The power of a gift ... " to "... cer- Show." These are the reminiscences Television Fans and Participatory Cul- tain extra-market values." Bollier, and of Mark Hosler from Negativland, a ture, and Michel de Certeau, whom also the sociologist Warren O. collaging musical collective that was Jenkins quotes. Hagstrom, whom Bollier is para- sued by U2's record label for their "In the children's classic ... " to phrasing. appropriation of "I Still Haven't "... its loving use." Jenkins. (Inci- Found What I'm Looking For." Al- dentally, have the holders of the copy- though I had to adjust the birth right to The Velveteen Rabbit had a THE COMMONS date, Hosler's cultural menu fits me close look at Toy Story? There could "Einstein's theory ... " to "... public like a glove. be a lawsuit there.) domain are a commons." Lessig. "The world is a home ... pop- "That a language is a commons ... culture products ... " McLeod. society as a whole." Michael Newton, "Today, when we can eat ... " to SOURCE HYPOCRISY, OR, DISNIAL in the London Review of Books, re- "... flat sights." Wallace. "The Walt Disney Company ... alas, viewing a book called Echolalias: On the "We're surrounded by signs, ignore Treasure Planet ... " Lessig. Forgetting of Language by Daniel Heller- none of them." This phrase, which I "Imperial Plagiarism" is the title of Roazen. The paraphrases of book re- unfortunately rendered somewhat lead- an essay by Marilyn Randall. viewers are another covert form of col- en with the word "imperative," comes "... spurred David Byrne ... My Life laborative culture; as an avid reader from 's novel Our Ec- in the Bush of Ghosts ... " Chris Dahlen, of reviews, I know much about books static Days. Pitchfork-though in truth by the time I've never read. To quote Yann Mar-

70 HARPER'S MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2007 tel on how he came to be accused "The primary objective ... " to "... couldn't bring myself to retain Bel- of imperial plagiarism in his Booker- unfair nor unfortunate." Sandra Day low's "strength," which seemed pre- winning novel Life of Pi, O'Connor, 1991. sumptuous in my new context, though "... the future will be much like the it is surely the more elegant phrase. Ten or so years ago, I read a review by past" to "... give some things away." On the other hand, I was pleased to in- John Updike in Review of Books [sic]. It was of a novel Open-source film archivist Rick vite the suggestion that the gifts in by a Brazilian writer, Moacyr Scliar. I Prelinger, quoted in McLeod. question may actually be light and eas- forget the title, and John Updike did "Change may be troubling ... with ily lifted. worse: he clearly thought the book as certainty." McLeod. a whole was forgettable. His review- "... woven entirely .. ." to "... with- one of those that makes you suspicious out inverted commas." Roland Barthes. KEY TO THE KEY by being mostly descriptive ... oozed "The kernel, the soul ... " to "... The notion of a collage text is, of indifference. But one thing about characteristics of phrasing." Mark course, not original to me. Walter Ben- it struck me: the premise.... Oh, the Twain, from a consoling letter to jamin's incomplete Arcades Project wondrous things I could do with Helen Keller, who had suffered dis- seemingly would have featured exten- this premise. tressing accusations of plagiarism (!). sive interlaced quotations. Other Unfortunately, no one was ever able to In fact, her work included uncon- precedents include Graham Rawle's locate the Updike review in question. sciously memorized phrases; under novel Diary of an Amateur Photogra- "The American commons ... " to Keller's particular circumstances, her pher, its text harvested from photog- "... for a song." Bollier. writing could be understood as a raphy magazines, and Eduardo "Honoring the commons ... " to kind of of the "constructed" Paolozzi's collage-novel Kex, cobbled "... practical necessity." Bollier. nature of artistic perception. I found from crime novels and newspaper clip- "We in Western ... public good." the Twain quote in the aforemen- pings. Closer to home, my efforts owe John Sulston, Nobel Prize-winner and tioned Copyrights and Copywrongs, a great deal to the recent essays of co-mapper of the human genome. by Siva Vaidhyanathan. David Shields, in which diverse quotes "We have to remain ... " to "... ben- "Old and new ... " to "... we all are made to closely intertwine and re- efit 'of a few." Harry S Truman, at the quote." Ralph Waldo Emerson. These verberate, and to conversations with opening of the EvergladesNational Park. guys all sound alike! editor Sean Howe and archivist Although it may seem the height of pre- "People live differently ... wealth Pamela Jackson. Last year David Edel- sumption to rip off a president-I found as a gift." Hyde. stein, in New York magazine, satirized claiming Truman's stolid advocacy as «... I'm a cork .. ." to "... blown the Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism my own embarrassing in the extreme- away." This is adapted from The case by creating an almost complete- I didn't rewrite him at all. As the poet Beach Boys song "Til I Die," written ly plagiarized column denouncing her Marianne Moore said, "If a thing had by Brian Wilson. My own first ad- actions. Edelstein intended to demon- been said in the best way, how can you venture with song-lyric permissions strate, through ironic example, how say it better?" Moore confessed her pen- came when I tried to have a charac- bricolage such as his own was ipso chant for incorporating lines from oth- ter in my second novel quote the facto facile and unworthy. Although ers' work, explaining, "I have not yet lyrics "There's a world where I can Viswanathan's version of "creative been able to outgrow this hybrid method go and/Tell my secrets to/In my copying" was a pitiable one, I differ of composition." room/In my room." After learning with Edelstein's conclusions. the likely expense, at my editor's The phrase [e est un autre, with its suggestion I replaced those with deliberately awkward syntax, belongs UNDISCOVERED PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE "You take the high road/I'll take the to Arthur Rimbaud. It has been trans- "... intellectuals despondent ... " low road/I'll be in Scotland before lated both as "I is another" and "I is to u ••• quickly and cheaply?" Steve you," a lyric in the public domain. someone else," as in this excerpt from Fuller, The Intellectual. There's some- This capitulation always bugged me, Rimbaud's letters: thing of Borges in Fuller's insight and in the subsequent British publi- For I is someone else. If brass wakes here; the notion of a storehouse of cation of the same book I restored up a trumpet, it is not its fault. Tome knowledge waiting passively to be the Brian Wilson lyric, without per- this is obvious: I witness the unfolding assembled by future users is sugges- mission. Ocean of Story is the title of of my own thought: I watch it, I listen tive of both "The Library of Babel" a collection of Christina Stead's to it: I make a stroke of the bow: the and "Kafka and his Precursors." short fiction. . symphony begins to stir in the depths, , writing to a friend or springson to the stage. who'd taken offense at Bellow's fic- If the old fools had not discovered only the false significance of the Ego, GIVE ALL tional use of certain personal facts, we should not now be having to "... one of Iran's finest ..." to "... med- said: "The name of the game is Give sweep away those millions of skele- itation on his heroine?" Amy Taubin, All. You are welcome to all my facts. tons which, since time immemorial, Village Voice, although it was me who You know them, I give them to you. If have been piling up the fruits of their was disappointed at the door of the you have the strength to pick them one-eyed intellects, and claiming to Walter Reade Theater. up, take them with my blessing." I be, themselves, the authors! _

CRITICISM 71