PLAIGIARISM: using someone else’s material without their permission

This week I am participating in the open-to-the-public portions of a Writer’s Workshop being held at Brown University.   The theme is Writing Creative Non-Fiction.  That may seem like an oxymoron, if you understand that non-fiction is factual reporting.  Being creative might seem like a departure from the facts.

However, in last night’s panel the writers speaking made it clear that there are non-creative and creative ways of telling the story of an event.  One of the sources referred to constantly was David Shield’s book, Reality Hunger. It  has become a required reading for any number of courses being offered in the field of writing.

The book  is controversial.  Among other things, Shields identifies that the wall between fiction and non-fiction has become blurred, and that rules and expectations of each may be less clear than in the past.  He welcomes that blurring, and jumps at the chance to embrace an ideology which rejects much of the “rules” which have accompanied the definitions in the past.

For instance, when it comes to plagiarism Shields is permissive.  From his perspective, it seems, “story” is a free-floating concept without ownership which is available for borrowing.  At one point he says:

“Reality is a landscape that includes unreal features; being true to reality involves a certain amount of wavering between real and unreal. Likewise originality, if there can ever be any such thing, will inevitably entail a quantity of borrowing, conscious and otherwise. The paradoxes pile up as thick as the debris of history — unsurprisingly, since that debris is our reality.” (David Shields, Reality Hunger)

I’m not sure where I come down on that.  I need time to read it thoroughly and digest it before agreeing or disagreeing. I do know that at one point something I had published was blatantly plagiarized and it felt like a personal violation.  Intellectual property law is so inconsistent from state to state that it was useless to pursue it legally.  I think I’m still damaged by that incident, and it colors my understanding of this issue.

The source of fiction varies from writer to writer and from story to story.  One source which intrigues me is that of a roman a clef (pronounced roh-mahn’ ah clay) which is a piece of fiction that originates from a true story or incident.  The example which best demonstrates this phenomenon is author Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a novel written about an actual  murder in the midwest.  The blurring between fiction and non-fiction is masterfully captured by Capote.

Why is this important?  In this age when the use of social media has  contributed to that blurring of truth and fiction, it is more  important than ever to be able to identify and distinguish the differences.  As I have said before, the claim to have “read it on the Internet” is a shallow credential.  It may be that the retaining of some distance between fiction and non-fiction in the field of literature is more important than just for intellectual reasons.

Photo Credit:  ashford.com

Tagged as: Brown University, David Shields, fiction, non-fiction, plaigiarism, roman a clef, Truman Capote