Anyone who’s been charged with plagiarism knows there are two ways to save face. Either own up and claim you were making a statement, or deny and employ the ‘Great Minds’ defence, like I did when accused of copying Tacitus in my A-Level history coursework.
The funny thing about Q.R. Markham, whose much-hyped spy thriller has been pulped after readers discovered it was a patchwork of other novels, is that he’s stayed silent. Naturally, this has prompted others to invent their own theories as to what the Brooklyn bookseller, real name Quentin Rowan, was up to.
Assassin of Secrets – composed almost entirely of passages by other writers – has been variously perceived as a bizarre situationist prank, a comment on declining standards in publishing, and a misguided attempt to make a fast buck. A New Yorker reader even tried to mould Rowan into some sort of Che Guevara figure:
‘If a destitute person liberates an apple from a fruit stand, many are willing to turn a blind eye to such a crime. If an emotionally or existentially poor man borrows some text so he can satisfy his need to have an identity, is that excusable, too? Changing ideas of authorship should be considered in terms of Occupy Wall Street. An author who refuses to be copied is the same as a totalitarian corporation who pays no taxes.’
Nice ideas, all of them, though I’d have thought Rowan was just an attention-seeking crank with far too much time on his hands. Despite this, and despite the fact he has cost his publishers a great deal of money and pride, I do think the man deserves to be celebrated. He has given a lot of eagle-eyed saddos immense satisfaction.
That would be a sneer if it weren’t for the fact I am one of those saddos. I don’t know the James Bond books off by heart – I’m not that sad – but I do understand the intense thrill of déjà-lu.
I have invented a terrible job for myself which involves reading an awful lot of book reviews. One of its few perks is the smug shiver of recognition when I read a sentence I’ve seen somewhere else. Every so often, a lazy reviewer will simply lift another newspaper’s review and change every third word with a thesaurus: compare, for instance, this Observer review, with this Telegraph review from a few weeks earlier. The Scotsman had a real swizz going on a couple of years ago where they would routinely steal reviews from the New York Times (exhibit 1), chop them around a bit, and change the byline to a suitably Scottish name (exhibit 2).
This is nothing, however, compared to the discovery I made the other day reading Diana Mosley’s memoirs. I was happily ensconced in the cosy surroundings of the Mitford nursery, all Hons and chickens and warm entitlement, when I came across a passage so startling I almost dropped the book. No, nothing about Nazis or anything like that. Lady Mosley was recalling the time her sister Jessica’s beloved soft animals, Nimmy and Shu-Shu, accidentally found their way onto a stall at a fête, where they were promptly bought by another child:
‘Poor Decca was in deep despair; next day we got new toys and went from cottage to cottage until we found the person who had bought them; luckily she was willing to exchange, their fur was almost rubbed off by Decca’s love, and their purchaser preferred the new ones.’
Ring any bells? If you’ve been a child or had a child over the past thirty-five years, this will be instantly familiar to you as the storyline of Dogger, Shirley Hughes’ illustrated masterpiece of 1977 – spookily enough, the same year Lady Mosley’s memoirs were published.
The speculation section of my brain went into overdrive. Had Diana Mosley stolen her childhood memories from a picturebook? Did Shirley Hughes borrow an idea from the Mitford family scrapbook? Might a younger Shirley have been the unwitting purchaser in question? Probably best leave this one for the scholars.
Anna Baddeley is editor of The Omnivore.
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