May 13 2006
Writing My Own Words Like a Sucker

PIGS, despite the fact that she got a huge advance as a fucking teenager, I'd never heard of Kaavya Viswanathan before her recent plagiarism woes. I don't pay much attention to. . .well, anyone who is not named Jeff Somers, to be perfectly honest, but especially to what other writers are up to. Live and let live, I say. If you have the talent or connections or sheer dumb luck to land some huge publishing deal, good for you and go with Gary, I say. I'm happy to just keep pushing this boulder that is my own writing career up the hill. Besides, other writers are boring as hell, at least until they get caught making shit up for their 'memoirs', get caught being completely fake to begin with, or get caught lifting entire passages from another writer and passing it off as their own work. Lacking those credentials, writers are generally a whiny bunch who want to spend all your time a) impressing you with how smart they are, b) impressing you with all their huge publishing success and c) talking about writing as if it were the True Power or some such nonsense. And then, when they finally fuck up royally and get interesting, they don't want to talk anymore.

I don't remember much about my college years. . .I emerged liverish and frail from a diet of Jim Beam and Ramen Noodles, having learned nothing and accomplished less.

I've never consciously plagiarized in my life. I don't buy into the idea, trumpeted by Viswanathan, that you can somehow unconsciously transcribed entire sentences, word for word, into your prose, but I suppose in a loose sense concepts and even phrases can seep into your brain, stay there long enough to be forgotten, and then be remembered in a sudden flash that resembles your own genius. It's possible, let's say. But I doubt there would be a sudden spasm of ten or twelve of these moments in one fucking book. Which is not to say that I am a good or even original writer; I thieve ideas all the time, proudly. Like all writers, you should never describe your unwritten plot synopsis when I am in earshot. I will steal it, trust me, if it's any good. But there is a difference between theft of ideas and plagiarism—theft of ideas, if done well, is genius. Plagiarism is just being too lazy to write, and if you're too lazy to write, why are you bothering to pose as a writer? There must be better-paying fake careers, yes?

I have, however, been accused of plagiarism The incident occurred in college and remains one of my more satisfying moments in life. Want to relive it with me? Sure you do.

It was my sophomore year at that noted think-tank Rutgers University. I don't remember much about my college years; I skipped a lot of classes, majored in English because I'd read all the books already and could mail in my papers and essay questions without having to wake up, and came out of it with something like a C average and a diploma. I emerged liverish and frail from a diet of Jim Beam and Ramen Noodles, having learned nothing and accomplished less. I'd actually be surprised if Rutgers even has any record of me being there. I was pretty sloppy about paperwork and for all I know I forgot to sign up for classes and still haven't graduated, though I could swear I had a diploma at one point.

Anyway, in the midst of this foggy time, I took a 200-level English course on something or other, and at one point was assigned a paper on T.S. Eliot. I did what I usually did: I picked three books from the library at random, glanced through them, noted their information for use in the largely-mythical bibliography we were required to list at the end of the paper, and dashed off a few pages of modest criticism I estimated would net me a B or so. Satisfied, I handed it in and probably slept for a few days.

When we got the papers back, mine had a big fat D on it, along with a note demanding to see me. So after class I ambled up to the professor—a young, chubby guy with thin hair and thick glasses—to find out what was wrong. The prof informed me that it was clear the paper had been plagiarized, and that I was lucky he hadn't given me an F. The actual reason he hadn't given me an F was because he was too lazy to do the necessary work to prove his accusation, so the D grade was kind of a deal being offered: He would not outright fail me on the paper as long as I acknowledged that he'd caught me with his superior mental mojo, and we'd call it a day.

Except, of course, that I hadn't plagiarized it. Plagiarizing a five-page paper worth about five percent of your final grade in a 200-level English course would just be a stupid use of your time, for one thing. For another, while I can't claim to any penetrating genius or even above-average thoughts on any topic, I can whip up a five-pager on just about any topic without stooping to plagiarism. I got boiling mad for maybe one of four times in my life, and demanded to know why he thought the paper was lifted. His response was that it was written too well.

And people wonder why Rutgers gets no respect as an institute of higher learning.

When I did not crumble and slink away at this smug accusation, the prof was clearly a little nonplussed—I think he expected me to burst into tears or something. When I didn't, and instead hotly denied it and demanded that my grade be changed, he said that if I could show him samples of my writing that were of the same quality, he'd change the grade. I told him I'd be by the next day. I mean, let's get one thing straight: My five-page paper on T.S. Eliot was not anything great. It is, in fact, long destroyed in an orgy of paper-burning I went through shortly after graduation (which, in typical Somers fashion, went on a bit too long and too thoroughly, taking my driver's license, social security card, birth certificate, most other necessary papers, and some of my clothing—the pants suffered especially—before all was said and done). For this jackass to suggest that it was simply too good to be written by some hungover college sophomore was, in a word, ridiculous.

The next day I dropped a box filled with old papers, stories, and various other writings on the man's desk. He didn't even bother to read anything—the mere fact that I'd shown up ready to argue convinced him that he'd been wrong, and he changed my grade to a B. In other words, writing that was too good for me to have done on my own was, however, not worth an A. if I'd had any doubts that higher education is a farce, this pretty much dispelled them, and I spent the last half of my college years doing nothing, and enjoying it a great deal. About the only thing I learned from college was that nothing required any real effort. That, and how to impersonate a police officer while urinating in public, but that's the subject of another essay entirely.