1. Big congrats to Betsy at Fuse Number 8 for getting the attention of Forbes:
How does a 31-year-old librarian from Kalamazoo, Mich., draw such honors? Not even Dan Blank, director of content strategy at Reed Business Information (who oversees 300 bloggers, including Bird) understands what animates her quirky passion. "Betsy lives, eats and breathes children's literature. Her book reviews are thousands of words longer than the books she's reviewing," he says. "She channels her oddness into this niche blog, which then extends beyond its niche. Why was she born to do this? Who knows?"
When did writing about kids' books make a person "odd"? Ha! Way to go Betsy - this is really wonderful for you!
2. What happens when a conservative blogger takes an official White House tour and notes two books on socialism on the shelves of the official (and permanent) library? Just guess. Yes, it is all part of Michelle Obama's secret plot to convert the U.S. into a socialist society, except, well - it's not:
Port, who was in Washington to cover the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), said in an interview it is "never fair to judge a book by its cover" and that you can't conclude Obama is a socialist just by the books in his library. "But obviously there have been question about the Obama administration's politics. You see a few socialist books sitting in the library and, well, that fits in the narrative."
The only problem is the books Port photographed have been sitting in the library since 1963.
Head hits desk. When will the insanity stop? (And how did he get a camera in there anyway as they aren't allowed on tours?)
3. It's not plagiarism anymore, it's sampling and it's young and hip and no one should get called out for it. To wit, the conclusions of a 17 year old German wunderkid:
Hegemann, who mentions Airen in the acknowledgements of the second edition of the book but not in the first, has since apologized for "not having mentioned all the people right from the outset whose thoughts and texts have helped me." But she also defended her work by claiming that "true originality doesn't exist anyway, only authenticity" and insisted on her "right to copy and transform" other people's work, taking a stand against what she called the "copyright excesses" of the past decade.
I did find this bit particularly interesting though, as it stresses the ridiculous desire publishers (and the media) have for young writers:
Philipp Theisohn, a professor of literature at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Zurich and author of a book on the history of plagiarism, believes the case struck a chord because the literary world is eager to publish truly authentic voices of young people today. "What the literary industry wants is a child genius. A 17-year-old girl telling stories about sex and drug excesses is much more interesting than a 35-year-old male doing the same thing."
Except, of course, there are not a lot of 17 year olds who can write authentically about "sex and drug excesses" because they are too stoned to write! You have to age a decade or two past that insanity (as the actual author did) before you can write coherently about it!
Head hitting desk. Again.
4. Best comic I'm reading right now is the Black Widow mini-series, "Deadly Origin" - all sorts of Russian history goodness and an admirable amount of butt kicking plus BONUS - Daredevil, Wolverine, Nick Fury, Ironman and Winter Soldier guest spots. Just finished an excellent YA mystery: Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell. The Edgars nom there is much deserved. Ignore the cover and pass this one along to any teen who likes a creepy ghost story/mystery. And I just started Captivity by Deborah Noyes - a novel (for adults) partly based on the Fox sisters. So far, it is lovely.
[Shadowed Summer & Captivity were provided by the publishers. Black Widow: Deadly Origins I bought with my own money, thank you very much.]
February 18
2010
08:23 PM
# 1 Fuse8 is way cooler than Forbes. Just sayin'.
#2 That poor child. Blame the culture that wanted her as a commodity. The guy she plagiarized from is on record (I think'\; my German is forcrap) liking the attention his book is getting now. http://www.faz.net/s/RubD3A1C56FC2F14794AA21336F72054101/Doc%7EE88A9CA72ADE445F390437D064F10C598%7EATpl%7EEcommon%7EScontent.html
When creativity is a commodity, it happens.
To begin with, I don't endorse plagiarism, but some of my favorite authors have dabbled in it (Perec for example). The history of the novel, translation, and plagiarism are intertwined.
While I know in my gut that a person's creativity is a property of that person, the notion of intellectual property and the treatment of creativity as a commodity is a pretty mysterious development. So much of contemporary material culture is infused with repurposing, upcycling, and assemblage as a creative act. If I can respect such work by visual artists, I wonder why I balk at the use of language in a similar way.
I found this book very enlightening. (The author has a clarity I certainly don't.):
The Spread of Novels: Translation and Prose Fiction in the Eighteenth Century. Mary Helen McMurran. Princeton University Press. 2009
(You do know that I really respect and admire you? I do.)