In defence of plagiarism: 7 ways to excuse ‘taking inspiration’ from others

We all love a good plagiarism scandal. So claims that Rachel Reeves’s new book, The Women who Made Modern Economics, was perhaps not entirely made by the Shadow Chancellor, have gone down a storm in the Westminster rumour mill.

Reeves hosted a packed launch last night for the book which seeks to give due credit to women whose work has been co-oped by others, but according to the Financial Times, she may stand guilty of similar – by borrowing whole chunks from Wikipedia.

Analysis by the newspaper identified over 20 examples of sentences and paragraphs that appear to be lifted from other sources, chiefly from the free, collaborative research platform, without acknowledgement. 

Admittedly, we’ve all been there, but the neglect to even sub in a few synonyms has landed the Labour MP in hot water. 

However, as we all know, the line between inspiration and theft is a vanishingly fine one. Today, we take a look at the defence. 

1. I never said it was original

In response to allegations of plagiarism, Reeves’s publisher made a perhaps atypical defence that the book was never meant to be seen as a novel piece of work. “At no point did Rachel seek to present these facts as original research,” Basic Books, whose website boasts the tagline ‘tomorrow’s ideas – today’, said. 

Nonetheless, the publisher acknowledged there were instances where sentences should have been “rewritten and properly referenced” (i.e. not ctr c + ctr v) and a spokesperson for Reeves said the “inadvertent mistakes” would be “rectified in future reprints”.

2. The ‘experimental method’

When accused of plagiarism French author/enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq violently justified his cribbing by calling it a high-brow literary technique.

This is part of my method, the enfant terrible of French literature explained after segments of his novel The Map and the Territory were found to have been taken from Wikipedia (notably a paragraph about flies having sex). Michel Houellebecq hit back saying the approach was a valid, if not noble, literary approach.

Plagiarism can be a form of “beauty”, Houellebecq said.

“This approach, muddling real documents and fiction, has been used by many authors. I have been influenced especially by [Georges] Perec and [Jorge Luis] Borges… I hope that this contributes to the beauty of my books, using this kind of material.”

3. I did it better though

Australian author John Hughes compared himself to the literary “greats” when it was put to him that he had included significant passages from classics such as The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Having a penchant for other peoples’ words, Hughes responded to allegations with a quote from T.S. Eliot: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” Allegations of humility we can discount.

Hughes went on: “I don’t think I am a plagiarist more than any other writer who has been influenced by the greats who have come before them.”

When the Guardian Australia asked a cohort of academics to comment on Hughes’s actions, one professor – Tom Doig of the University of Queensland – pointed out that sure, Eliot had also included passages from other writers but, unlike Hughes, the notable modernist had also included footnotes. 

4. Oops I forgot

Rudyard Kipling confessed to co-opting ideas from others in the making of The Jungle Book. In a letter that only surfaced in 2013 – though it was written in 1895 – Kipling wrote: “it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen.” 

Maybe it wouldn’t stand up in court but hey, it’s proved infallible as nobody appears to have contested it.

5. Soz, my bad (with a dose of sycophancy)

In a review of Jacob Epstein’s debut novel published in The Observer, Martin Amis wrote that he had found some 50 notable similarities between the book and his own – very well received – novel The Rachel Papers.

“The boundary between influence and plagiarism will always be vague, Reading Wild Oats, it soon became clear to me that the boundary, however hazy, had been decisively breached,” Amis wrote, graciously.

In his response, Epstein apologised saying the fraudulence was just a mistake: “I did not realise until June 1979,” he wrote.

“When I returned to New York for the publication of Wild Oats and one evening got down from a closet a carton of old papers and notebooks, that certain phrases and images in my novel, which I had through were original, or had been adapted from other sources into my own language, come verbatim, or nearly verbatim from The Rachel Papers,” he said.

“I do not know any good way to apologise for this, nor the way to explain to you how my respect for your writing became something so lacking in respect.”

“The psychology of plagiarism is fascinatingly perverse,” Amis wrote. “It risks, or invites, a deep shame and there must be something of the death wish in it.”

Despite his novel making it to Times’s “best books of 1979” Epstein would never write another – though it appears that he is now a successful television writer.

6. Duh.

UK MP Kate Osamor claimed her lift “needed no introduction” after she used a segment from a Barack Obama speech, replacing the former president’s “America” with her slightly-less-glorious-sounding constituency Edmonton.

To justify the rip-off, Osamor delivered a dimly disguised insult to her constituents when she implied the audience should have instantly recognised that some of her quotes originated in a 2010 speech made in Chicago by the oratorically-gifted then-President.

“If there is anyone out there who doubts that Edmonton is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of hope is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy?” she recited. “Tonight is your answer.”

Osamar claimed she “deliberately invoked a victory speech so famous that she thought it needed no introduction” – that might be true, but she could at least have name dropped her muse.

7. Silence is golden

Bob Dylan kept schtum after being accused of plagiarising the Sparknotes version of Moby Dick in his Nobel Prize for Literature speech. Sometimes, when anything you say will only serve to complicate matters, cover yourself further in smut or worse, it’s best to just say nothing at all.

The verdict

So while Rachel Reeves thought she was simply writing a book about economics, she was really just contributing to the long-standing, much revered literary tradition of nicking other people’s work and claiming it as your own.

In the words of someone we won’t give credit to “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness”.