A "literary scandals" collection?

Helium wrote:
Jon Meyers wrote:
The recent stories about Kaavya Viswanathan's partially plagiarized
.... got me to wondering about the possibilities for a collection
based on books that erupted into literary scandals over plagiarism
and/or authenticity.

What else would you include?

What about books that offended the moral and religious sensibilities
of established elites e.g. books by Darwin, Copernicus, etc. as well
as novels banned by the church e.g. Joyce's Ulysses, Cleland's Fannie
Hill, etc. (the lists are endless), and so on. There seems to be many
criteria for creating an interesting collection of books that caused
scandals. regards, He2


I thought about those types of books, too, but I was really thinking
specifically about controversies of authorship or authority (plagiarism,
falsification, misrepresentation) rather than books whose content
offended on grounds of morality, religion, etc.


--Jon Meyers

Kris Baker wrote:
"Jon Meyers" wrote...


What else would you include?


Clifford Irving's Howard Hughes biography.


The difficulty there is that he never did get it published as a book; I
think excerpts may have appeared in one or more magazines, but I could
be misremembering. You'd have to get your hands on one of the copies of
the manuscript, if any still exist, that Irving sent out to publishers.


--Jon Meyers

fvndoc wrote:
"Charles Edwards" wrote...

One author not mentioned is Marvin Kitman, who has written extensively
on
George Washington. His books have been described as literary frauds, a
fair
statement considering their total lack of scholarship. In one of the
books, "The
Making of the President 1789," Kitman actually misspelled the word
"President"
in the title of the book! In another book, covering Washington's
expense accounts
for the Revolutionary War, Kitman attempts to prove that Washington was
a thief
who overcharged the public for his services; the truth is the exact
opposite of what
Kitman wrote.

Mr Kitman, the former (or perhaps current although I doubt it) TV columnist
for NY Newsday, is a humorist.


Um, yup. And that "miffpelling" was intentional and readily
decipherable by anyone with a paffing familiarity with pre-19th-Century
documents, or juft a little knowledge of typographical hiftory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
http://tinyurl.com/lxs7z


--Jon Meyers

Jon Meyers wrote:

I was really thinking specifically about controversies of authorship
or authority (plagiarism, falsification, misrepresentation) rather
than books whose content offended on grounds of morality, religion,
etc.

OK. There are quite a few in my area of specialism (17th century
religious literature), but the one that really stands out is
_Contemplations of the State of Man_ (1684 and four later editions),
claimed by the editor, one Robert Harris, to be an original work by the
Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor. In fact, it is an abridgement of Vivian
Molyneux’s Catholic translation of a work by the Spanish Jesuit Juan
Eusebio Nieremberg.

Nieremberg's original work is entitled _De la Diferencia entre lo
Temporal, y Eterno_ (Madrid, 1640). Molyneux's translation (_A Treatise
of the Difference bbtwixt [sic] the Temporal and Eternal_) was published
in London in 1672. Taylor, sometimes called "the Shakespeare of divines"
for his pure prose style, had died five years previously, in 1667.

The imposture (for which the editor, Robert Harris has to take the
blame) was not exposed until 1848, when Edward Churton wrote _A letter
to Joshua Watson...giving an account of a singular literary fraud
practised on the memory of Bishop Jeremy Taylor_. However, the work is
still routinely miscatalogued, as the COPAC entries show
(http://tinyurl.com/zfeqy).

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

The recent stories about Kaavya Viswanathan's partially plagiarized, and
possibly ghost-written, novel, _How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and
Got a Life_ , coming so closely after the controversy surrounding James
Frey's _A Million Little Pieces_ , got me to wondering about the
possibilities for a collection based on books that erupted into literary
scandals over plagiarism and/or authenticity.

Other relatively recent examples would be Stephen Ambrose's _The Wild
Blue_ , Doris Kearns Goodwin's _The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys_ , and
Joe McGinniss's _The Last Brother_ (which, ironically, borrows heavily
from Goodwin's book). And looking much further back, you'd have to
include Thomas Chatterton's Rowley poems.

What else would you include?

- The Hitler Diaries
- the poems of Ern Malley
- D.M. Thomas's "The White Hotel"
- Jane Campion's "The Piano" (film and book both plagiarized
from Jane Mander's "The Story of a New Zealand River"
- I *think* Dava Sobel's "Longitude" is derivative from an earlier
book but can't remember which
- the writings of "Grey Owl"
- the archaeological field reports on Piltdown
- T.E. Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

"Jon Meyers" wrote in message
...


What else would you include?

Plagiarists: Ward Churchill, who has the added cachet of being a fake
indian; and Molly Ivins, although she has no cachet at all.

On Thu, 04 May 2006 22:13:30 -0500, Jon Meyers
wrote:

Helium wrote:
Jon Meyers wrote:
The recent stories about Kaavya Viswanathan's partially plagiarized
.... got me to wondering about the possibilities for a collection
based on books that erupted into literary scandals over plagiarism
and/or authenticity.

What else would you include?

What about books that offended the moral and religious sensibilities
of established elites e.g. books by Darwin, Copernicus, etc. as well
as novels banned by the church e.g. Joyce's Ulysses, Cleland's Fannie
Hill, etc. (the lists are endless), and so on. There seems to be many
criteria for creating an interesting collection of books that caused
scandals. regards, He2


I thought about those types of books, too, but I was really thinking
specifically about controversies of authorship or authority (plagiarism,
falsification, misrepresentation) rather than books whose content
offended on grounds of morality, religion, etc.


--Jon Meyers

What about historical revisionists- David Irving and the Holocaust for
example? Would you include that as an example of literary scandal?

I realize this could easily devolve into Flat Earth, Lemurian
kookery, but kept at the upper levels of (what passes as) scholarly
research and away from Art Bell-ian mouth-breather hysteria
would you include this?.

Dave

Dave wrote:
On Thu, 04 May 2006 22:13:30 -0500, Jon Meyers
wrote:

Helium wrote:
Jon Meyers wrote:
The recent stories about Kaavya Viswanathan's partially plagiarized
.... got me to wondering about the possibilities for a collection
based on books that erupted into literary scandals over plagiarism
and/or authenticity.

What else would you include?

What about books that offended the moral and religious sensibilities
of established elites e.g. books by Darwin, Copernicus, etc. as well
as novels banned by the church e.g. Joyce's Ulysses, Cleland's Fannie
Hill, etc. (the lists are endless), and so on. There seems to be many
criteria for creating an interesting collection of books that caused
scandals. regards, He2

I thought about those types of books, too, but I was really thinking
specifically about controversies of authorship or authority (plagiarism,
falsification, misrepresentation) rather than books whose content
offended on grounds of morality, religion, etc.


What about historical revisionists- David Irving and the Holocaust for
example? Would you include that as an example of literary scandal?

I realize this could easily devolve into Flat Earth, Lemurian
kookery, but kept at the upper levels of (what passes as) scholarly
research and away from Art Bell-ian mouth-breather hysteria
would you include this?.


I think I wouldn't include these books, because, although they may elide
or misrepresent the known facts, and may be the work of total wackjobs,
they are, mostly, the work of *sincere* wackjobs. These writers really
believe their own nonsense, so there is, in their minds at least, no
intent to deceive, no manufacture of fraudulent material being passed
off as genuine. So, unless they stole their nutty idea, and the
particular expression of it, from some other nut and presented it as
their own, these authors, and their books, don't fit the category.


--Jon Meyers

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:

- The Hitler Diaries

Because they were fake.

- the poems of Ern Malley

Because it was a hoax, taking the mickey out of modern poetry.

- D.M. Thomas's "The White Hotel"

Because it is (partly) plagiarised.

- Jane Campion's "The Piano" (film and book both plagiarized
from Jane Mander's "The Story of a New Zealand River"
- I *think* Dava Sobel's "Longitude" is derivative from an earlier
book but can't remember which

Some similarities to Fergat's _Last Theorem_, perhaps, but nothing
"scandalous", surely? Not plagiarised or anything, I think?

- the writings of "Grey Owl"

Because the author was not who or what he purported to be.

- the archaeological field reports on Piltdown

Another hoax, but truly aimed at hoodwinking, rather than just taking
the mickey.

- T.E. Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

Not sure about this one; because the author didn't approve of it?

An interesting list, but one which shows that there is tremendous range
and diversity here. There seem to be three main categories:

1. Authors who plagiarise
2. Authors who write under a bogus identity
3. Authors who publish material that is false or intended to mislead

These in turn have subcategories or fuzzy edges.

1. Plagiarism

In some cultures, plagiarism is accepted, even seen as a kind of
compliment to the original author. I frequently read feature articles
here in Japan which do no more than trot out, without acknowledgement,
the words and ideas of other writers. And there can be unconscious
borrowing (I can't think of examples in literature offhand, but it's
generally accepted that George Harrison simply didn't notice that the
melody to "My Sweet Lord" was identical to that of "He's So Fine").

2. Identity

Identity can be very obvious to establish, but it can also be well-nigh
impossible. Was Dickens, in writing _Oliver Twist_, a radical reformer,
fearlessly promoting the interests of the underdog, or was he pandering
to the popular prejudices of the time? Almost all the poor characters
are bullies, thieves or cheats, Oliver is only of interest because he
has blue blood, the first person who shows him any kindness is the
gentleman whose handkerchief was stolen...and then there's Fagin, the
stereotype Jew. Will the real Charles Dickens please step forward?

3. Material

First, we'd have to make a difference between material which is intended
to deceive (such as faked archaeological evidence) and material whose
ultimate point lies in the exposure of the hoax (like the poems of Ern
Malley). We also have the difficulty of whether the proponents of
"whacky" ideas (nuclear fission, alien abductions) are intentionally
deceiving others.

The problem of authorial intent underlies all three categories to some
extent, especially with our post-structuralist "death of the author"
conceptions (the work is what the reader makes of it, not whatever its
author may have intended it to be).

BTW, as a further example of type 2, has anyone mentioned Rahila Khan?
There's a good article on that one he

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/.../dalrymple.htm

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson wrote:

BTW, as a further example of type 2, has anyone mentioned Rahila Khan?

Uh, I did--he

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.c...28d1935?hl=en&

William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com