Stolen Lines

Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident. (If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.) - Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke in 1676

It is a relatively common phenomenon to demand originality from writers. A charge of plagiarism is a damning one, whether it be in academia, fiction, newspapers, or histories, with the additional consideration, as we have seen not too long ago¹, of fiction within memoirs.

The call for sources goes beyond just plagiarism; a dispute in the feminist blogosphere was interpreted by some as about plagiarism, but those asking for change didn't claim their words had been stolen, just that there should be some recognition of the work put in by minority authors. Here was a call for acknowledgments of the giants who supplied the shoulders (shoulders, it should be noted, from a group that has frequently carried burdens with no recognition).

These demands are a relatively new occurrence². The literary Western canon³ is rife with examples of "borrowing." Ancient playwrights regularly drew from common stories. Shakespeare, that epitome of dead, white, male writers, at the very least drew heavily on other sources and at most outright stole. Denouncements of plagiarism are recent, and come generally from a modern understand of what property is (see a good general overview of the history of plagiarism).

Nowadays, you see these borrowings almost exclusively in adaptations from one for to another. This pattern exists chiefly in film adaptations (who hasn't heard a complaint about the lack of "original" stories for movies?). Beyond the obvious examples (Troy), we see it in modernizations of older themes (e.g., West Side Story, 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless). Imagining one of these latter adaptations as being exclusively in a written form is difficult. The transformation between media seems to lend these borrowings a cachet that doesn't exist elsewhere.

These considerations are further complicated by recent⁴ debates over copyright and intellectual property. What constitutes fair use? What license should something be released under (Creative Commons, GPL, etc.)? The Internet has made these questions far more pressing.

I will not try to claim that I have never downloaded something of questionable (at best) legality, but nor will I dismiss the idea that such piracy is stealing (I think the label is apt). I have a desire to support artists/creators, but little desire to support those who view the bottom line as the highest goal to aspire to. These are thorny problems, unlikely to be solved fully here.

All my favorite singers / Have stolen all of my best lines. - The Alkaline Trio, in the song Blue Carolina.

So what does all of this pontificating mean for this site? This site is a personal one and, as such, is likely to cover a broad range of topics (violating one of the top rules for generating traffic). I will try to follow modern conventions (citations, hat tips, etc.) on acknowledging sources (a task made miles easier by the format of the web). But it's important to keep in mind that acknowledging the underlying sources of everything is a task as impossible as tracing back every cause leading from the Big Bang to the present moment - there is simply too much of my thought based on others' to track it all.

Recognizing that there's nothing new under the sun, this site (I) will not try to present an alternate reality (one of shiny, brand new things). Each post should take as its starting point a quote/idea/sound/whatever from somewhere else and use it to build a line of thought. The quote from the Alkaline Trio is an attempt to show that one of the things I appreciate in those I listen to is the ability to express something I didn't even know I wanted to say. This should be an outlet for me to build on and improve those thoughts.

I take seriously the question Milan Kundera raised in The Art of the Novel (one that has only become more pertinent with the rise of the Internet): with the thousands of voices out there, what value is added by raising your own?⁵ I also share the concerns of Shelley Powers about the lack of longer, more developed thought on the interwebs. It is such concerns that have kept me from blogging or even commented much, despite my avid reading.

I have started this site as an experiment, both with my own writing and with website design/coding (which is why this is not hosted at Wordpress or the like). It is my hope that this site will force me to write, which will help it to grow. As a teacher of writing, I know that the best way to be a good writer is to write. A lot. It is also useful to have an audience, which is where you, the reader, come in. My hope is that any audience I gain will be mutually supportive in our task to find meaning amongst the modern world.

We may not all be giants, but I believe we can still help each other to see farther.