Comments on: Harvard Author’s Novel Pulled

By: Scott H

Scott H — Tue, 02 May 2006 15:50:47 +0000

I’m going to retract my comment above. Apparently there were 40+ passages in the book that were close or identical to the previously published work. I could see it happening once or twice (again, it happened to me) but 40+ strains credibility.

By: Buffy

Buffy — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:10:11 +0000

This is why I read works completely unlike any style of mine. I don’t want to fall asleep on a good line and wake up thinking its mine.

(But to be honest….those were some pretty exact lines. I’m kinda up in the air about it.)

By: TL

TL — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 08:42:20 +0000

Characters being identical is very different than specific phrasing being identical.

I’d imagine it would be impossible for you to casually read a book then years later write a story that contianed 40 passages that were almost verbatum the same including arbitrary details like “170 specialty shops”

By: Scott H

Scott H — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:55:29 +0000

For what it’s worth, I completely, absolutely and unreservedly believe that it’s possible the lady in question didn’t consciously plagiarize.

I had a similar thing happen to me once.

When I was in college I borrowed a book called _Death of the Fifth Sun_, read it, returned it to the person I borrowed it from, and forgot about it. Ten years later I came across a copy in a used book store, recognized it, bought it, and reread it.

You have only my word for this–and we all know that people on the internet never lie–but I did not consciously plagiarize the other author’s book in any way. Nonetheless, I was more than slightly surprised to discover that many of the characters in the published novel were identical to those in a novel I was then writing.

It was just luck that I noticed this before anyone else did. It could quite easily have gone the other way.