Part of a series: Cassie Edwards 1: The First Post | Cassie Edwards 2: Savage Longings | Cassie Edwards Part 3: Running Fox | Cassie Edwards Part 4: Savage Moon | Cassie Edwards Part 5: Savage Beloved | Follow-up: Penguin (Part 1?) | Official Statement from Signet | AP Article Contains Response from Edwards | RWA Responds to Allegations | A centralized document for the Cassie Edwards situation | Updated Statement from Signet | The NY Times Art Section Story | Cassie Edwards: Remarkable Similarities to Laughing Boy
Update! Thanks to Raj and Gemma, I now have included more complete quotes from Laughing Boy. The table below has been updated accordingly. All Hail Amazon.com Previews!
When Amy, one of our readers, contacted us and volunteered to check some Cassie Edwards novels for us, I said “Sure!” and expected more examples that have been typical to the pattern: passages lifted from old ethnographies or Native American memoirs, with scattered instances of wildlife articles from conservation organizations or encyclopedias. Several other readers have volunteered to look at various Cassie Edwards novels, and I was going to compile these instances into the PDF I’d created to document everything, and update the PDF without creating any new posts, because really, we’ve made our point: the instances are widespread and egregious, and people who aren’t interested in tracking this closely don’t need to have their faces rubbed with blow-by-blow updates.
What I didn’t expect in my inbox last night was a comparison from Amy detailing the similarities between passages in Savage Dream and Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge.
Laughing Boy, unlike the other works, is not an ethnography, academic book or memoir. Laughing Boy is not only still under copyright, it is a fictional novel published in 1929, winning the Pulitzer in 1930.
This, in my opinion, drives the sheer wrongness of what happened to new heights. Using passages, word-for-word, of research material still isn’t a good thing by a long shot, but I can understand somebody being confused about the protocols of how much to acknowledge in a work of fiction. Using descriptive passages from another work of fiction, however, changes the tenor entirely. I talked to Sarah about posting this—I was very leery of driving the point into the ground when it’s been made with ample clarity—and we both agreed it was a different thing than the multitudes of other instances we’ve found, and that this deserved its own post.
Below is the table Amy compiled, comparing Savage Dream with Laughing Boy. I’m not bothering to include the reference works used in Savage Dream; I’ll be updating the PDF in a few hours and you can just look at that. I want to focus on the fact that this particular instances involves a work of fiction, and how it changes the tenor of the situation in a fundamental way.
| Savage Dream (2003, ISBN 0-7862-5881-0, Thorndike Press [Large print edition]. First published 1990, Dorchester) | Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (2004, ISBN 0618446729, Houghton Mifflin) |
| At first light the desert is intimate, and somehow Shadow felt the presence of others as an intrusion this morning. …the blinding light of full day had not yet supplanted the soft greys of dawn, the uncertain forms and shapes of the cliffs had not yet become harsh with daylight, and the canyons were still soft with wells of coolness. The world was a secret place to each man… p. 59 …and then rode into a canyon, its cliffs harsh by daylight, yet looming soft with coolness. |
At the first light, before dawn, the desert is intimate, and each man feels the presence of others as an intrusion. Blinding colour has not supplanted soft greys, uncertain forms; cliffs harsh by daylight, and thunderous-walled cañons loom soft with wells of coolness. The east is white—mother-of-pearl—the world is secret to each one’s self. p. 42 |
| Little and compact, he was like an arrow notched to a taut bowstring. A movement of the hand would send him flying swiftly to a mark. p. 61 |
Little, compact, all black save for the tiny white spot on her forehead, she had the ugly Roman nose of character. She was like an arrow notched to a taut bowstring—a movement of the hand would release level flight swiftly to a mark. p. 4 |
| Shadow gazed with admiration at Racer, at his sleek, gleaming haunches, the bunched muscles at the juncture of his shoulder and chest, the ripple of light and shadow on his withers, his arched neck and smooth head, and the character and intelligence of his eyes. p. 60-61 |
The chestnut stallion was coming into its strength, gleaming, round quarters, bunched muscles at the juncture of the throat and chest, a ripple of highlight and shadow on the withers, arched neck, pricked small Arab ears, bony head, eyes and nostrils of character and intelligence. p. 157 |
| As the insides of Shadow’s calves touched his horse’s barrel, he felt a current run through them and felt at peace with himself…at home. He was a skilled horseman, having spent half of his waking hours on a horse’s back. Not even the longest day of riding had ever destroyed his pleasure in the mile-eating lope of his stallion. p. 61-62 |
Her man was a Navajo and a horseman; when he settled in the saddle, as the sides of his calves touched his pony’s barrel, and he felt the one current run through them, there was always that little look of uplift. Probably half of his waking life had been spent on a horse’s back, but not the longest day could destroy in him a certain pleasure in even the workaday jog or mechanical, mile-eating lope of a good pony. p. 93 |
| …Shadow swung himself into his high-cantled Navaho saddle with its seat of stamped leather held together with silver nails and draped with a dyed goatskin. p. 61 |
The high-cantled navajo saddle he had made for her, with its seat of slung leather over which a dyed goatskin was thrown… p. 93 |
| Beyond were red-brown cliffs, dull orange bald rock, and yellow sand, leading away to blend into a kind of purplish brown with hazy blue mountains for background. p. 63 |
Beyond its level were red-brown cliffs, dull orange bald-rock, yellow sand, leading away to blend into a kind of purplish brown with blue clouds of mountains for background. p. 115 |
| Looking up, he saw magnificent dark firs growing along the ledges. Up there, the ruddy rock, touched by sunlight, became dull orange and buff with flecks of gold and a golden line where the earth met a cloudless sky. p. 63 |
Looking up, one saw magnificent, dark firs growing along the ledges and hanging valleys. Up there, the ruddy rock, touched by the sunlight, became dull orange and buff, with flecks of gold, and a golden line where it met a …” (free Google preview ended here) p. 96 Amazon.com Previews has the following text listed on Page 96: |
| It was now late afternoon and sandy dust was rising from the trail in clouds. p. 87 |
Midday was warm, sandy dust rose from the trail in clouds. p. 157 |
| He had brought her to a high place after a fatiguing, scrambling climb, alleviated by the increasing growth of jack pine and spruce. They were following a winding path under firs; warm golden cliffs, painted with red and purplish brown and luminous shadows, loomed straight ahead. p. 89 |
Now they were come among warm, golden cliffs, painted with red and purplish brown and luminous shadows, a broken country that changed with the changing sun, narrow canons, great mesas, yellow sands, and distant, blue mountains. p. 95 [also, the “fatiguing, scrambling climb” “jack pine and spruce” and “wandering path under firs” bits get a Google hit with Laughing Boy p. 96, but it is unavailable for view.] Amazon.com Previews has the following text listed on Page 96: |
| Below, the world was red in late afternoon sunlight where fierce, narrow canyons were ribboned with shadow and the lesser hills were streaked with opaque purple shadows like deep holes in the world. p. 89 |
Amazon.com Previews has the following text listed on Page 96: It was red in the late sunlight, fierce, narrow canons with ribbons of shadow, broad valleys and lesser hills streaked with purple opaque shadows like deep holes in the world, cast by the upthrust mesas. (Linking not possible, but go to this link and search for “purple opaque shadows” to confirm this finding.) |
| There was shade and peace and coolness with a sweet smell of dampness. p. 89 |
Here was all shade and peace, soft, grey stone, dark, shadowed green, coolness, and the sweet smell of dampness. p. 19 |
| Along the cliff was a long ledge, with the rock above it rising in a concave shell of light reflected under shadow. p. 89 |
Along the north cliff was a long ledge, with the rock above it rising in a concave shell of light reflected under shadow. p. 101 |
| The world was full of the roar of hooves. The saddles and bridles were heavy with silver and brass as the Navaho leaned forward over their steeds’ necks, shrieking “E-e-e-e!” … p. 108 The world became full of a roar of hooves and noise rushing together, the boys leaning forward over their horses’ necks, their mouths wide as they shouted, “E-e-e-e”! |
The world was full of a roar of hooves and two walls of noise rushing together, the men leaning forward over their horses’ necks, mouths wide. “Eeeee!” p. 3 |
| Charging Falcon staked his horse out where uncropped spears of grass stood singly, each inches from the next, in brown sand. A beaten track toward an oak tree and a break in the rock caught his eye. He followed it. Behind the oak, currant bushes grew in a niche of red rock, like a fold in a giant curtain. At the back was a full grown, lofty fir tree. Behind the tree a cleft opened at shoulder height into dark shadow. The footholds were worn to velvety roundness. p. 201 |
Laughing Boy took the horses down to the windmill for water, and staked them out in a corner where uncropped spears of grass stood singly, each inches from the next, in brown sand. A beaten track toward an oak tree and a break in the rock caught his eye. A spring, perhaps. He followed it. Behind the oak, currant bushes grew hi a niche of red rock like the fold of a giant curtain. At the back was a full-grown, lofty fir. A spring, surely. Behind the fir a cleft opened at shoulder height into transparent shadow. The footholds were worn to velvety roundness in the sandstone… p. 18 |
| They met in a great swirl of plunging, dodging horses and swept on, all together, whooping for dear life, with some holding lances, others grasping shields. p. 229 |
They met in a great swirl of plunging, dodging horses, and swept on all together, whooping for dear life, with the staff in front of them, almost onto the …[preview ended here] p. 3 |
| Silver and stones with soft highlights and deep shadows hung around her neck, glowing against her buckskin dress. Oval plaques of silver surrounded her waist; ceremonial jewels were sewn in the fringes of a sash that was draped across one shoulder. She wore moccasins with silver buttons shining at their sides. p. 472 |
She was well dressed to show off what she wore; silver and stones with soft highlights and deep shadows glowed against the night-blue velveteen of her blouse; oval plaques of silver were at her waist, and ceremonial jewels in the fringe of her sash. Her blue skirt swung with her short, calculated steps, ankle-length, above the dull red leggings and moccasins with silver buttons. p. 6 |
| Maria blushed when two small naked boys brought ears of roasted corn on a wooden platter … Several women came and placed broiled goats’ ribs and corn bread before them. p. 474 |
Where they went, they reclined on sheepskins, while two small naked boys brought ears of corn as they were roasted, and calm women set broiled goats’ ribs and corn bread before them. p. 12 |
Yeah, I know, I’m probably splitting hairs, here. But writing fiction should never be confused with—or become synonymous with—lying.
I remember a wonderful Christopher Anvil short story (can’t remember the name, but it was awesome) about the aliens that invaded Earth and how since they didn’t understand what fiction was, we had all these pop culture references to use as a secret code and we confoosled the heck out of them till they gave up. Likewise Captain Taggart explaining why episodes of Galaxy Quest were not “historical documents.”
There’s a difference between the lies storytellers spin as fiction that we readers are complicit in, the lies we accept (because fiction is not real—realistic it may be, but a made up story is a lie) and being LIED TO outside of the story by a writer saying it is an original composition. I don’t think that’s too confusing a difference, is it?
Writers do to words what stage magicians do to a deck of cards: manipulate it in an entertaining fashion. Or to put it more earthily, writers aren’t just liars, they are bullsh!tters. Illusionists. Exaggerators. And that is why it’s entertaining. So long as the lie is contained in the story and not in the act of telling it.
Hey Teddy Pig,
TurnItIn did not do well at all. Sarah Frantz was kind enough to run the data through for me. We ran two tests and it failed to catch anything on either one.
It didn’t even catch the ferret article, if you can believe it.
My belief is that TurnItIn doesn’t check GoogleBooks and, therefore, wouldn’t catch these things. Why it didn’t catch the ferret article, I don’t know.
The scary thing, from an academic standpoint, is that it seems like if you go to the trouble of actually
going to the library and copying from a book, you’re fine. The program will only catch the lazy plagiarists.
I could be wrong, though.
Anyone out there with more knowledge of the program, please correct me if I’m wrong.
But, to sum up, TurnItIn isn’t any help in this particular instance. Looks like we’ll just have to keep slogging through CE’s backlist the good old fashioned way. Damn it.
Same with My Drop Box then I was able to find some of the items you pulled but only if they were provided by other sources than Google Book Search.
Y’all! This is getting wilder all the time. I have an idea! If I self-publish a book that is made up of ALL plagiarized sentences (arranged in an order that it makes sense, for some value of “sense,” I mean) and then offer a Valuable Prize to any reader who can identify every steal and where it came from, I could sell millions of copies. Only trouble is, I don’t have any good prizes. But just think, I might get a real book contract out of it—or a real big lawsuit. Will think on these things.
Meanwhile, has anyone checked _The Education of Little Tree_? That one turned out to be a fraud (not written by someone who lived through it, as purported, but by a reg’lar guy, if I remember correctly), and it would be SUCH a hoot if there were material in her books from that one. Or from that Dustin Hoffman movie that I loved as a kid—_Little Big Man_. “Made in 1970 but based on a 1964 novel by Thomas Berger, it is a picaresque comedy and drama about a Caucasian boy raised by the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century.” I semi-stole that ENTIRE line from the IMDB—see, I’m already practicing! I still mixed it up a bit, but definitely didn’t put that into my own words. And it was wayyy easier than making it up myself. No wonder plaggyizing is so popular. . . . *wink*
It boggles my mind that people are so angry that we’re studyin’ on this. I would be so flattered if anyone wanted to read through my work, especially closely enough to find similarities to other books. For some reason I am reminded of the student who turned in, as his final term paper in sophomore English, a 12-page paper that had a brilliant introduction and conclusion (about parallels and similar themes in Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost) but in which only the first two pages and last two pages had any content. The middle of the paper consisted of him writing out the Constitution. (This was so long ago that people still wrote papers by hand!! 1977.) Our teacher flunked him, but all her classes got a good laugh out of it. See, he figured she’d only read the first couple of pages, the last couple of pages, and check to see if he had a bibliography. Some teachers back then resorted to that. But ours didn’t. Um, I guess that wasn’t exactly plagiarism. But it was funny. . . .
I can only boggle at the new chapters in l’affaire Edwards at this point. But it is satisfying to know that it was NOT JUST ME who went “buh” at The Ladies of Missalonghi!
Uh. Hmm. Test!
OK. The PDF has been updated; it’s now at Rev. B. The Change Log will have details, but just as a quick summary, it now covers:
– 12 novels
– 28 sources, of which one is a full-length work of fiction and 2 are short story collections
– Several of these sources are still under copyright—The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes was published in 1986, I believe, and Treasury of Pacific Northwest Writing was published in 1969.
The document is now 48 pages long. And I still am waiting to hear from two or three people about three or four more books. Holy Jebus.
And now: bedtime for me!
Thank you again, Candy, SBSarah, and general bitchery for doing this.
Keep that Plage-Away away from my new all-plagiarized manuscript! It keeps making all the text disappear like neglected footnotes. BTW, I am collecting good sentences from the classics for my new project over on my LJ. Come on over and contribute!
Several years ago, my friend Dennis Havens wrote a book titled _Regards, B. T._ with the premise that a publishing house “invents” a new best-selling author whose books are made up of passages from other books, and when a reviewer starts to squawk about what he’s found, he gets silenced because of the money involved (and the propaganda that’s going out in those novels, all of which is beneficial to the State) . . . his book was meant as a satire. Dennis is very prescient. One of the problems in the world of his novel is that no one has the time to track down all the passages that are in question, and the “spin” that comes out from the author’s supporters confuses the issue. Without the tools we now have on the ‘net, we might be in the same situation. Yay, Internet. Hooray for all those who have put reference materials online and have done so much work to make things possible for us.
On a serious note, I meant in my previous post to thank those who have gone through and identified these passages and typed them up, and furthermore have put themselves Out Here to take the heat for raising the questions. Thank you, all Smart Bitches! Don’t let the critics whine you down!
I just read through the revised PDF-file and…words fail. There are a couple of instances I wouldn’t have called plagiarism on if taken one by one, but all together? That’s a truckload of damning evidence.
And not just facts and infodumping, but mood-setting phrases as well.
Blatantly and utterly lazy I-don’t-give-a-fuck copying sentences that could easily have been altered and parsed over several chapters.
Fer chrissake, if the source say “dull orange-brown dust”, would it kill ya to come up with “dust of faded ocre” or similar?
You’ve all done amazing work here.
It seems that this woman has habitualy stolen, lied and cheated for a good third of her life, and making quite a pretty penny doing so too.
How is exposing that mean?
She should be ashamed of herself. She has all the reason in the world to be so, and no reason at all to cry for the whaaambulance.
And the age-card? Please!
If I were in her age group I’d be bloody furious at that bit of patronizing bull.
Reading Candy’s compilation, I found myself alternately cringeing and disbelieving the sheer baldfacedness of it. And yet, I’m pretty positive this is just the tip, what with 88 books to go.
“See, he figured
she’d only read the first couple of pages, the last couple of pages, and
check to see if he had a bibliography. “
I know someone who did this! He wrote a novel for a notoriously absent teacher (both in mind and body) and wrote the first chapter and the last chapter, and on random pages wrote in penI Feel Like Chicken Tonight. He got an A.
Someone break this down for me, please.
Prior to this, CE hadn’t broken any laws, right? It was an ethical debate. But now, since the book she copied from still has a valid copyright, it is illegal? Copyright infringement, correct?
The released statement “she’s done nothing wrong” is now wrong in itself.
So…what happens now?
Wow. I can’t see how even Cassie Edwards’ staunchest supporters can countenance this.
I just read the letter from Cassie Edwards, posted above… Made me laugh out loud, and groan, too.
Edwards, according to the book covers, lives in Mattoon, Illinois, which is not far from the University of Illinois where I teach.
Her ridiculous statement about honoring American Indians is EXACTLY like the bullshit that pro-mascot people here have been uttering for decades. Native students, staff, faculty, community members——I hate to say this, but REAL Native people——have been objecting to use of Native imagery as sports mascots for a long time. Decades. Literally.
But in central Illinois, and other places that have “Indian” mascots, their defenders can’t hear us, because we don’t “look like” the Indians of their imagination. My colleague here, LeAnne Howe (read her book MIKO KINGS) says we’re relatively safe on campus from the threats to Native people because we’re not recognizable by the yahoos because we don’t walk around in feathers and fringe.
It is important to know, that a lot of people who love American Indian imagery claim Native heritage. I teach here in American Indian Studies. I’m from a small pueblo in northern New Mexico. I was born at the Indian Hospital (govt health service), lived on the reservation, went to the reservation school… Dances, for us, are a form of worship, not entertainment. I dance, as does my daughter and other extended family members.
Native peoples of the US and Canada don’t need Cassie Edwards stereotyped books to honor us… We need respect for who we were, and who we ARE. America should stop its love-of-things-Indian and acknowledge that we are members of today’s society.
Debbie
Beyond the issue of CE claiming others’ work as her own; there are two other topics that bother me enough to comment on them.
First up, why are people angry that SBs are relating facts? I’ve been reading the blogs and comments; so far, I’ve only seen people talk about the copying and personal opinions about CE’s work in general.
I have not seen comments that could be considered mean per se. I haven’t seen anyone make fun of her dog, haircut, a stupid suit she wore to a party or anything not pertaining to the subject at hand.
Second thing,and this one pisses me off Big Time.
The age card. Poor old defenseless lady? WTF? What, like as soon as you turn seventy your brain leaks out your ears and you just sit in a corner shitting all over yourself??? Seriously, the age card is irrelevant. She’s not defenseless and we’re not showing up at her door with whiffle bats in the night.
Just my two cents y’all.
To finish an unfinished thought in my earlier post…
A lot of people who love Indian-things claim Native heritage in the form of a great great great grandmother. Note I said grandmother, not grandfather.
In Native circles, we hear this all the time. The grandmother who was an Indian princess. Rarely do people claim a Native grandFATHER. Speculation is that people don’t want a bloodthirsty savage as that ancestor, they want the wise grandmother, the royalty.
It is TRUE that a lot of people have ancestors that were Native. Due to many reasons, including racism, that ancestor hid that identity, left his/her tribe.
The ramification is that the present-day -claimant has no connection to that tribe. Many do not know the NAME of the tribe. BUT!!! In an America that wants to revere Native Americans, the claim can and IS used to authenticate writings, or bullshit ceremony that someone is selling. Some do this thing out of ignorance, others are fully aware of what they are doing.
Debbie
More and more the question is bugging me:
How did she get away with it for so long?
Oh my god—this is so depressing.
A lot of you are more shocked that CE stole from fiction (especially award-winning fiction like Laughing Boy), and see this as really crossing another line.
But I’m just guessing that when it comes to ‘research’, CE may not have differentiated much between fiction and non-fiction. In other words, for her, Laughing Boy was just as good as a Navajo ethnography from the 1920’s.
Stealing from an author is stealing from an author, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. I can assure you that many non-fiction (and even academic) authors take as much pride in crafting descriptive, gripping, and readable sentences as fiction authors do. It’s just that it may be a bit harder, being constrained by facts and all, and that fewer people read your work.
I concur, Sandy. It’s just as offensive to me either way, whether it’s content from nonfiction or fiction.
But Edwards’ presumed use of a novel leaves those who were attempting to excuse the earlier evidence of unattributed usage of academic text as “research” with stunningly little ground to stand on to continue that argument.
It’s just that it may be a bit harder, being constrained by facts and all, and that fewer people read your work.
Argh, I didn’t mean that to sound so insufferably condescending and whiny. I don’t actually think that it *is* harder to write non-fiction than it is to write fiction – I know I couldn’t come up with the characters and plots that my favorite fiction authors do.
I guess I just feel like even the best non-fiction is not appreciated for its writing style, and is often assumed to be a laundry list of facts. On the other hand, non-fiction readers don’t have the you-must-be-an-idiot-to-read-this assumption that romance readers suffer. Either way, original authors deserve a lot of credit.
Unoriginal authors who steal get what they deserve (I hope), even if they are sweet old partially Cheyenne ladies who just want to make people appreciate our country’s original inhabitants.
I agree with Sandy D. really. Although it has crossed my mind to wonder if CE was aware that Laughing Boy was a work of fiction? Maybe she thought it was another reference book. I don’t see *how*, but I wondered. Maybe because I’m more willing to blame ineptitude than intent. Heh
Sandy D. said
And most particularly if, as the evidence shows, this sweet old lady has been doing this for nigh 25 years.
Two and a half decades.
Hello, she was my age when she started—I wanna see the age card played for that!!!/sarcasm
Wow. Again my insides are twisted in a knot. I really did fear that there might be deeper stuff lurking and not yet found, but I honestly prayed it wasn’t so. Silly me.
I tend to think on simplistic levels when it comes to what I feel is right and what is wrong, so bear with me.
On another loop, I likened the possible thought process of stealing passages sometimes verbatim as “Seeing a chair sit on a neighbors porch for years, but hey, they haven’t used it in a long while, so they obviously wouldn’t mind if I took it.”
Now I’m looking at the issue of “this woman is a prominent, beloved author, we should keep this under the rug. If we don’t talk about it, we can keep it in-house.”
Going from that, the issue is again simplified for me.
Say your beloved child goes into a store and swipes candy. As a parent, you either find out from the store, or find the incriminating evidence.
Now what do you do? 1) Rail at the store becuase this is such a minor offence and how dare they intimidate your child. 2) Take the child back to the store and MAKE them apologize while telling them they could, next time, go to jail for this behaviour. 3) Ground said child for a week while still letting them watch TV and play Nintendo, his/her favorite pursuit, while keeping it hush-hush. 4) Ground them from everything for a month and let them know in no uncertain terms that this behaviour will not be tolerated and the next time you aren’t going to bail them out.
Your decision on how to deal with this may have a huge effect on whether the issue of stealing is wrong has been driven home. If too light a treatment, your beloved child may not get the hint and move on to larger offences.
Now let’s take it one step further. Your child becomes involved with a friend who gets away with such things. They think this friend cool, hence he/she wants to be like this friend. After all, the friend can’t be that bad. Look at all the goodies he/she has, without having to do anything but a little bit of slight of hand. And if your child feels this way, imagine how many others do.
Maybe no one else understands my above analogy, but again, it’s my simplistic take on the matter. I don’t want any writer to come out of this thinking that the rewards of big bucks makes up for the act of what I consider theft, minor or not.
SB Sarah—
I tried that myself in college. Wrote a 56-page research paper in French. I wrote on the bottom of page 33 or so I wrote in French, Bet you don’t read this.
Unfortunately, the prof wrote on page 56, Bet I read every word.
It doesn’t always pay to be a smartass.
<
How did she get away with it for so long?>>
Oh, that’s easy. She only got caught (finally) because we live in a computer age…the age of the Internet, where tons of data is available to millions of people. Big Brother is certainly watching us all these days…only Big Brother is not a single person, but rather the masses. The world has become very, very small. Ten or 15 years ago, this would have probably never been discovered. If it had been, it would have been handled quietly, and I doubt it would have even been a blip on the radar. But because people the world over can share information so quickly via blogs, etc., it WAS discovered, and it was much more than a blip.
Should be a cautionary tale, I would think, for ANY writer these days.
the prof wrote on page 56, Bet I read every word.
I had a student who learned the hard way the importance of proofing his papers after he printed them out.
On the last page, below the text, his roommate had written, in all caps, “PLEASE FUCK ME NOW.”
I just circled it and wrote, ‘Please proofread more carefully next time.’ THe kid was *mortified* and I thought I’d die laughing.
My brother-in-law is 3/8 Cherokee and has no desire to play the American Indian race card. He doesn’t look Indian at all. I was surprised to find out how much Cherokee blood he actually had because he’s light skinned. The Scotch-Irish is much stronger, I guess.
rooruu—omg! i read “the ladies” first, 15 or so years ago at my aunt’s house, and only discovered the blue castle a few years ago. i immediately recognized the plot, but since i don’t often read stories like “the ladies” (and in fact, couldn’t remember the name until you mentioned it), i assumed it must be a common trope in that genre (is it romance or historical fiction, anyway?).
i think that’s part of the sadness i feel about All This. i don’t read that much in romance (though i’ve been increasing my knowledge base lately!), but i’m a true blue feminist so i feel protective of anything that gets dismissed as “women’s [insert noun here]”. i don’t want the mainstream understanding of romance to be “they condone and support plagiarism”.
i love anna’s metaphor of the road trip.
and arlene harris—yes, i keep thinking of todd goldman as this drama develops. i hope that this goes in a different direction. (not that i’m clear what eventually happened with todd. i got wrapped up in that drama for a week, until the lawyers shut the thread down…)
alia
two centing, ‘cause you know, the comments section just wasn’t long enough already…
I can’t help coming back to note that I’m reading this year’s Newbery award winner right now – Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, by Laura Amy Schlitz. It’s an 80 page piece of historical fiction for older grade-school aged kids (say 10 & up). And it has FOUR PAGES of references.
The reason many find it offensive to see people using fractions to identify themselves as Indian is… well it sounds like you are talking about animal breeding. Like… you’re a human being, but you’ve got 1/47 Chippewa. I’m 1/16 Cocker Spaniel, sort of thing.
It also has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO with who you actually are. So claiming a fraction just makes you a math enthusiast as well as a bigot, you know?
Case in point: I was born on a reservation. My grandmother is Indian. That makes Cherokee part of my lineage. My great grandmother was Creole. That makes Creole part of my lineage. My mother is Irish, born in Ireland.
But… I left the reservation while still an infant (two months later), and was only born there because my mother stayed with Granny while dad was changing locations with the military. And I have absolutely NO sense of the Creole culture. And while I have a Cherokee-inspired (for two aunts) middle name, I no longer use it, since it confuses people. My primary upbringing is Irish-saturated.
And I am hella-white. Like so white people make jokes about how pale my skin is. Pale green eyes. Only my hair, which is very dark, would even HINT at African or Indigenous ancestry.
So when people look at, and interact with me they get the impression of a white girl from New England. Know why? I’m a white girl from New England.
BTW I once took a HUGE AMOUNT OF CRAP from a fake Indian who accused me of being a fake Indian because I caught her… wait for it… stealing copyrighted material from Indians and using it as her own. She tried, because I once used my middle name, to accuse me of being a fake Indian, in spite of the fact that I don’t in any way dabble in that culture.
Blaming the victim is really, really easy and usually exactly what a dirtbag does.
(I won the lawsuit, btw.)
Well. Damn. She’s not only dumb, she expects others to be as dumb as she is.
That makes me mad.
“Why would the editors pick up on it? They are hired to spot a saleable romance novel and fix any remaining problems in that novel, not to be widely read in every type of non-fiction that their authors might use as reference material.”
Well… While acquisitions editors buy novels, copy editors are responsible for fixing them. I think even a reasonably good copy editor should have picked up the differences in style between the copied-and-slightly-altered changes and the rest of the text, just like the SBs did. But as others have mentioned, without the Internet it would have been nearly impossible to find the exact source and prove plagiarism. Also, the copy editor might have queried it (say, with a note that says something like “This dialogue is a little stilted; could it be loosened up a bit so the hero doesn’t sound like he’s reading from a textbook?”) and been ignored.
Debbie –
“The grandmother who was an Indian princess. Rarely do people claim a Native grandFATHER”. Well, if grannie was a full-blood Indian princess, then great-grandfather had to have been Indian too. Don’t these people pay attention in biology class?
In Native circles, we hear this all the time. The grandmother who was an Indian princess. Rarely do people claim a Native grandFATHER. Speculation is that people don’t want a bloodthirsty savage as that ancestor, they want the wise grandmother, the royalty.
Maybe, but it’s not unusual (in and out of First Nations) to trace heritage matrilineally (if the adverb exists).
One thing I’ve been wondering about this whole thing is what her educational background is. I see that her husband’s a teacher, but what about CE herself?
Just trying to get some perspective on how someone could have intentionally done this without realizing what a fine line they were walking.
snarkhunter: HA! That was the best laugh I’ve had all day.
From a reader’s review of “Wild Splendor” on amazon.com we have this: Lackluster romance, good history lesson, June 17, 2001 By “joiejo” – “While the romance was boring to me I found the book to be a great history lesson. As I began reading it I found it very similar to an article I read about Kit Carson and his involvement with the Navahos.”
Even her fan noticed it!
I read the comparison. Yes, there are similarities, but not what I consider plagerism.
As I said on another site, good friends warn their neighbors when a thief is on the prowl, in order to band together to protect their treasures. Unless we are vigilant, it will happen again and again.
So thank you. On behalf of the writing community, and those who read our work, I want to thank you for making us all aware of this latest theft. Without you, this would have gone unnoticed, and would have continued unabated.
You’re good friends. Good neighbors. You provided us with a most valuable service. It won’t be forgotten.
Ruth Ryan Langan