This morning I read a highly interest piece from The New Yorker that was spearheaded by Rand Paul's recent plagiarism debauchery. Cartoonist and author of piece, Robert Mankoff, argued that perhaps we are all plagiarists. While we may not intend to sound or draw influence from anyone else, Mankoff argues that we now have abundant access [insert technology reference here, etc] to information that would lead us to confirm whether or not our words were plagiarized.
This got me thinking about the pieces I've written over the years. Be they silly poems in a journal, vignettes on the backs of napkins when I'm in New York and inspired, or essays, I begin to wonder how much of it really mine. I think it starts with thoughts. For the most part, the same thoughts have been thought and feelings have been felt by a large number of people, or even the entirety of the human race. There's bound to be some overlap. And of course, of course there is the common notion that our writing styles are ultimately a culmination of that of the writers' we read, before we find our own. This leaves me sometimes to ask: "Did I write this line, or did Fran Charles Didion Hemingway write it?"
Read the piece, people
No comments:
Post a Comment