Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - george w. bush and how not to plagiarize your autobiography

roachboy · 11-15-2010, 10:21 AM

i was thinking about this...when i taught university from time to time i'd get sucked into dealing with plagiarism. there had to be something that tipped it, though, a phrase or argument that you reading either recognized from somewhere or assumed could not possibly have come from the writer.

what mystifies me about this is that it seems the main sources cribbed from included woodward's book. so one of the most well-known journalistic accounts of the iraq war period bush white house.

a review from the front page of the ny review of books as a source?
collaged newspaper accounts that are accessible with rudimentary web searches?

if you are going to get away from plagiarism, you typically do not try to get caught.
this is like stealing from the textbook from the class you're taking.
(which has happened.)

you really have to wonder what's going on with this. it seems almost designed to implode, the memoir. like a conceptual action. the sort of thing that makes me wish i had been the person hired to ghost write. because i like to think i'd have done this. but of course if it's just the ghost writer, then that forecloses things a bit.
and there is the option, i suppose, should this get out of hand, of throwing the ghost writer under the bus.

or you might imagine that bush is staging himself as a kind of zelig character, someone utterly without qualities independent of the situation in which he finds himself, so a kind of pure function, someone who is, literally, just there. in which case, he should own up to the procedures.

and keep in mind that i have no problem with collage as a technique, no problem with tampering with the form of autobiography, no problem with mocking the conventions of literary "authenticity"---but this guy's not doing any of that.

what he is doing is the rounds of talk shows on each of which he brags about having written this himself.

it's very very strange.

11-15-2010, 10:21 AM	#3 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i was thinking about this...when i taught university from time to time i'd get sucked into dealing with plagiarism. there had to be something that tipped it, though, a phrase or argument that you reading either recognized from somewhere or assumed could not possibly have come from the writer. what mystifies me about this is that it seems the main sources cribbed from included woodward's book. so one of the most well-known journalistic accounts of the iraq war period bush white house. a review from the front page of the ny review of books as a source? collaged newspaper accounts that are accessible with rudimentary web searches? if you are going to get away from plagiarism, you typically do not try to get caught. this is like stealing from the textbook from the class you're taking. (which has happened.) you really have to wonder what's going on with this. it seems almost designed to implode, the memoir. like a conceptual action. the sort of thing that makes me wish i had been the person hired to ghost write. because i like to think i'd have done this. but of course if it's just the ghost writer, then that forecloses things a bit. and there is the option, i suppose, should this get out of hand, of throwing the ghost writer under the bus. or you might imagine that bush is staging himself as a kind of zelig character, someone utterly without qualities independent of the situation in which he finds himself, so a kind of pure function, someone who is, literally, just there. in which case, he should own up to the procedures. and keep in mind that i have no problem with collage as a technique, no problem with tampering with the form of autobiography, no problem with mocking the conventions of literary "authenticity"---but this guy's not doing any of that. what he is doing is the rounds of talk shows on each of which he brags about having written this himself. it's very very strange. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-15-2010 at 10:26 AM..