Sentence Outline of James Kincaid's New Yorker Article "Purloined Letters: Are We Too Quick to Denounce Plagiarism?"

 

I               Topic: Plagiarism occurs in the world of poetry   
Bowers is plagiarized by Sumner
Sumner's "Someone Forgotten"
Bowers' "Tenth-Year Elegy"
Sumner is a bad "editor" / clever plagiarist
 His emendations cause the poem to suffer
II             Topic: Plagiarism occurs in college
A student plagiarist of Dorothy Van Ghent paid for a copied essay
III            Topic: Journalistic plagiarism is common
 Ruth Shalit is accused of four infractions
Peter Stone's National Journal piece
Ruth Shalit's Times Magazine piece
Ruth Shalit is good "editor" but unfortunately a plagiarist
Her emendations improve the piece
IV            Topic: There is, however,  such a thing as "Non-felonious copying"
The AP Wire is a source of copying
Shawn Pogatchnik's 2nd parag on the Protestant march [AP Wire]
Kevin Cullen's 2nd parag on the Protestant march [Boston Globe]
Fred Barbash's 2nd parag on the Protestant march [Washington Post]
Louis J. Salome's 2nd parag on the Protestant march [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
Charles Dickens satirizes the literary magpie in Pickwick Papers
[Kincaid here deliberately "borrows" a Dickens sentence he's just quoted to show influence at work.]
There are problems with plagiarism as defined by Northwestern University
Can we all be as identity-challenged as Sumner apparently is?
He claimed to be resident in Japan
He claimed to be named David Sumner
He claimed to be his own brother
V             Topic: Plagiarism remains common despite popular denunciation
Joseph Biden plagiarized even his acknowledgment that he'd plagiarized
J.F.K.'s famous line "Ask not . . ." was lifted from Harding, who'd lifted it from Oliver Wendell Holmes
Kincaid's congressman uses a phrase from Hamlet which has become proverbial
Great writers have often been plagiarists
Shakespeare
Montaigne
Webster
Jonson
Sterne
Dryden
Lessing
Diderot
Coleridge
De Quincey
Reade
Plato
VI            Topic: The idea of plagiarism as we know it is quite recent
Aristotle noted that "All men delight in imitation"
Mark Rose Authors and Owners [1993] is about the birth of  our concept
In 1710 England formally recognized the rights of authors
Plagiarism, then, is not a "natural" or obvious concept
The modern concept sets up writing as the creation of a discrete product, subject to law
T.S. Eliot disagreed
Goethe disagreed
Roland Barthes disagreed
[According to structuralism, the mind does not own language; language owns the mind]
Helen Keller [almost wholly mind] disagreed
Frye, an anti-Romantic, argued poets [and the rest of us] are products of linguistic environments: "poems are made by piracy"
The law disagrees, but the Web will threaten the law
Literacy experts are rediscovering "the power of copying" as useful
Kincaid contrasts fifth-grader plagiarism of the encyclopedia
Kincaid contrasts his own use of reference sources [no need to cite] in something he's put his name to
Kincaid positions himself close to Sumner now, as one who hides his debt to other writers [tone is comic now: "I was not born last Thanksgiving"]

VII           Conclusion: Plagiarism and originality "are relative concepts"

Plagiarism-is-like-cooking simile: there is a full range from poisoning to home-made
The author returns to Bowers, who suggests on reflection that the Sumner episode may not be so weird after all
Bowers discovered he may have unconsciously plagiarized Mary Oliver
The "plagiarism proctor" is presented as a paranoid personality who feels his individuality threatened, wants to think of his sentences as entirely his own, when they never are
David Jones should be "locked up" but "as for the rest, who cares?"
Clincher:  Kincaid is, finally, willing to admit certain types of plagiarist, such as Shakespeare, into his private space.