Literature scholars have taken the Australian author John Hughes for copying excerpts from some classic texts, such as The Great Gatsby, in parts of his new book, The Dogs.
On Thursday, Guardian Australia published a 1,700-word article by Hughes explaining why some excerpts from F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Erich Maria’s All Quiet on the Western Front Remarque had arrived at his novel. . Guardian Australia has crossed all the similarities between Hughes’ work and sections of those classic texts and found some cases where whole sentences were identical or where only one word had changed.
The revelation came just days after The Guardian revealed similarities between the Sydney writer’s book and a 2017 English translation of Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s non-fiction work The Unwomanly Face of War.
When asked about the similarities, Hughes wrote, “I don’t think I’m more of a plagiarist than any other writer who’s been influenced by the greats who preceded them.”
He noted TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, which he said “is in itself a kind of anthology of the great words of others. Does that make Eliot a plagiarist? Not at all, it seems. You take, that is, and do something else; you make it your own.
“I have always used the work of other writers on my own. He’s a weird writer who doesn’t … It’s a matter of degree. “
The Guardian approached a number of academics to inquire about Hughes’ claims, and while some expressed admiration for the author’s literary talent, others did not support his justifications.
“It’s not a cause for moral panic … but whether it’s conscious, unconscious, or subconscious, it’s certainly something I’m personally against,” said the University of Washington Monash, Dr. Ali Alizadeh.
Tom Doig, a professor of creative writing at the University of Queensland, said: “It looks like Mr Hughes was left with the cake last week and has decided to eat it this week.”
Last week, Hughes responded to initial complaints by saying the similarities were unnoticed and unfortunate. He publicly apologized to Alexievich and his translators.
John Hughes cited TS Eliot (pictured) in his defense. Photo: AFP / Getty Images
On Wednesday, The Guardian revealed that The Dogs also contained similar passages to sections of other famous works of fiction, such as The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, and All Quiet on the Western Front.
This time, Hughes claimed the similarities were intentional, arguing that artists had been recycling, reimagining, and rewriting stories from time immemorial. It’s not what you take, he argued, but what you do that counts.
Hughes quoted TS Eliot in his defense, saying that in the poet’s Sacred Wood he wrote: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets disfigure what they take, and good poets turn it into something better, or at least something different. “
Hughes argued, “This great central piece of modernism, The Wasteland, is in itself a kind of anthology of the great words of others. Does that make Eliot a plagiarism?
Well, no, says Doig, because Eliot included footnotes.
“I think what’s really weird about this situation is that when the story exploded last week, there was all this elaborate” oh, I did it by mistake, go … and now it’s completely turned around, now it says everything has a purpose, it is modernism “. it is part of the great canon.
“Can you accidentally try and intentionally try at the same time? I’m sure you can. Maybe he did. But I find it a pretty weird place to land.”
Dr. Alyson Miller, a senior professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University, told the Guardian that Elihu’s defense of Hughes was “a faltering argument” and his argument generally did not sound true.
“It’s not recognized that this is part of the writer’s creative process in any way,” he said.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean filling a book with footnotes or quotes, but there has been no contextual conversation about using other writers as a source in any of the discussions about the novel.”
Eliot d’Hughes’ defense “wasn’t good,” according to Alizadeh, but the writer’s apparent borrowing of excerpts from The Great Gatsby is just as troubling, if not more so.
“There’s a question of the uniqueness of a sentence when we talk about prose fiction,” he said. “Entire passages and paragraphs where they seem to be taken from existing works of fiction, then I think yes, it’s a problem.”
Professor Kimberlee Weatherall of the University of Sydney Law School said it was impossible to get into an author’s head to judge the level of consciousness when copying another’s work.
“I have no comment on whether this is a careless writing and record keeping practice or something,” he said.
“It simply came to our notice then. Artists often rely on what has come before. But there is a big difference between reworking classic stories or classic literature and copying passages word for word. Whether you’re talking about plagiarism or copyright, word-for-word copying, or close to it, would normally be considered beyond.
Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney, Dr Toby Fitch, who is also the publisher of Overland’s poetry, said Hughes’ “collage” and “palimpsest” statements could have been interesting if the he would have made a point of interest in his novel. .
“However, none of these literary techniques come to the fore,” he said.
“But let’s not get confused: the Hughes saga is not a hoax or a scandal. It’s just another annoying misrepresentation of the practice of writers — usually poets, rarely novelists — who use collage and other language-recycling techniques in more interesting ways to subvert the cult of the author and, by extension, subjectivities. individualists of capitalism ”.
No cheating, no scandal, but it looks like Miles Franklin’s administrators were enough to remove The Dogs from the long list of awards last Friday.
Doig said the controversy is unlikely to amount to a bunch of beans for the average reader anyway.
“I suspect that the kind of people who have enjoyed The Dogs, which is much more of a ‘literary’ endeavor, could be concerned with archaic themes of originality and transparency of intertextuality … but for many readers, this yes’ No matter how ‘original’ something is, no matter how good it is.
“Is it nice? Is it a good read? And that is a completely legitimate perspective. “
On Friday, Hughes editor Terri-ann White of Upswell Publishing said in a statement that the author had broken her trust.
Although her “impulse is always to stand by my author,” White said she was offended by a line she wrote in the piece justifying her work published by the Guardian: “I wanted the appropriate passages would be seen and recognized as in a collage. ”
“The events of the last fortnight in the media and amplified on social media have been personally distressing and worrying for my new publishing company,” he wrote.
In response to questions from the Guardian, Hughes said he deeply regretted putting White in a difficult situation.
“In my article on influences I never wanted to imply that I had passed on the words of other writers as my own,” Hughes said. “I just tried to clarify as much as possible how something like this could happen to a fiction writer.
“Terri-ann White has been a staunch advocate for many years and is a person of great integrity.
“I’m very anxious about the idea that their reputation may be tarnished in some way as a result of my actions. Small publishers are vital to our industry.”