tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post175947834929615627..comments2024-01-12T04:42:02.432+01:00Comments on THE SUMP PLUG: Once upon a midnight cloudy and mistyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-81235766202952190572012-01-11T23:52:11.028+01:002012-01-11T23:52:11.028+01:00Yes, all good points. Probably I've just watc...Yes, all good points. Probably I've just watched too many old Perry Mason episodes, but I still can't shake the feeling that there's some key detail to this story that has yet to emerge...Undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16214242522330278662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-33946392633620087752012-01-11T20:26:25.246+01:002012-01-11T20:26:25.246+01:00Thing is, Undine, Janet Dailey was a tainted brand...Thing is, Undine, Janet Dailey was a tainted brand by the time she was dropped. Poyer isn't in the slightest. His power is the certainty his publisher has, after 30 books selling well, is that his next will make a profit. That's all that matters to them. <br /><br />Unlike Dailey and Hart, Poyer has done absolutely nothing wrong. He just happens to have had the misfortune to marry a plagiarist, and, as her partner (in both senses), he'll quite understandably want to see her be humiliated as little as possible. <br /><br />Poyer or his agent - a big player (he also represents David Mamet, George Pelecanos...) needn't even have made any overt threats to look for another publisher. St. Martin's must know that if they sever their ties with the no-sales wife, they'll probably lose the big-sales husband too. So if they can avoid pissing him off, they will.<br /><br />Meanwhile, however, their reputation slides steadily downwards, and surely there must come a point when they simply have to take a deep breath and cut her loose, whatever the consequences for their continuing relationship with one of their top authors.<br /><br />(I do have a hypothesis B that might be an alternative explanation for everything that has happened - or, rather, for everything that <i>hasn't</i> happened - but it's not something I'm quite ready to go public with it yet.)Archie_Vhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04582569974503175543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-75580050714138592012012-01-11T19:09:06.553+01:002012-01-11T19:09:06.553+01:00Kelly, I hadn't heard of that case. That make...Kelly, I hadn't heard of that case. That makes SMP's intransigence all the stranger. Dailey, as I recall, was a quite popular writer in her genre--someone who'd be a more "valuable property" to protect. But her books were still pulled.<br /><br />I agree that Poyer must be the key to all this, which just makes me wonder--who <i>is</i> the guy, really? Even if his books sell, can that alone give him that much power? Power that someone like Janet Dailey lacked?Undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16214242522330278662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-47541157154882103532012-01-11T18:27:38.021+01:002012-01-11T18:27:38.021+01:00Undine: I don't know about plagiarizing one bo...Undine: I don't know about plagiarizing one book, but romance writer Janet Dailey was busted for plagiarizing extensively and repeatedly from one writer (Nora Roberts.) The theft was first noticed by a fan. Dailey copped to it, blaming depression or somesuch. Her books were pulled from the shelves, which is, of course, the correct response.Kelly Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01752857506190488860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-64133619146217662012012-01-10T14:21:03.657+01:002012-01-10T14:21:03.657+01:00Pity she wasn't available to tutor Johann Hari...Pity she wasn't available to tutor Johann Hari when he went off to "journalism school." Those two would get on like Rogers and Astaire.Undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16214242522330278662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-58956424817232068442012-01-10T09:58:54.931+01:002012-01-10T09:58:54.931+01:00Young-adult fiction seems to be what she teaches. ...Young-adult fiction seems to be what she teaches. <i>The Raven's Bride</i> is only her second historical novel. She claims to have spent two and half years doing "much research" for it. Still, I suppose if you count scanning and digitising O'Neal's novel as research, then yes, it would have been quite time-consuming.Archie_Vhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04582569974503175543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-73909166379127630402012-01-09T23:21:07.217+01:002012-01-09T23:21:07.217+01:00I hope the Norman Mailer Center considers all of t...I hope the Norman Mailer Center considers all of this excellent work you've done in their assessment of Hart.<br /><br />What exactly does she teach at Wilkes: how to research and write historical novels?!mpbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08933485194939687227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-33946469196526486242012-01-09T14:19:09.687+01:002012-01-09T14:19:09.687+01:00Thanks to you, Undine. It was your pointing out th...Thanks to you, Undine. It was your pointing out that Poe had mentioned the price of the umbrella in a letter that sent me off down this particular avenue.<br /><br />On the unitasking feature of Hart's plagiarism, well, Jeremy found that she had dipped into May's novel as well. Her almost exclusive devotion to Cothburn O'Neal can perhaps be explained by his being the only other novelist to have written about her protagonist. <br /><br />What is amusing me at the moment is the "Chinese whispers" element to it all. The historical source - in this case Poe's letter - says one thing quite clearly, O'Neal glosses it ambiguously and Hart then paraphrases O'Neal to arrive somewhere that's got little or no relation to the original. I'm sure that explains how heavy rain morphed into drizzle and a station clock managed to leap forward a quarter of an hour. She can't have done it on purpose. If not, why not change the prices of the umbrella and boarding-house too? If O'Neal had been precise, she was precise too. But if he was woolly, rather than going back to the source she just guessed. Wrong.<br /><br />Another thing that struck me is that despite Hart's efforts throughout the book to keep her narrator's (Sissy's) voice as "in-period" as possible without it becoming tedious for the reader - her repeated use of "segars" springs to mind - she missed a couple of nice tricks in that scene. "I coughed none at all" would have sounded much more 1840s than "I didn't cough once", and Poe's "day & night & assistance" would have been so much more convincing than "room and board". But no. She stuck to her trusty O'Neal.Archie_Vhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04582569974503175543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5993082262710797745.post-46758224414732742202012-01-09T13:59:22.819+01:002012-01-09T13:59:22.819+01:00Oops indeed, and then some. Thanks for the post, ...Oops indeed, and then some. Thanks for the post, Archie. Is this officially the moment when the Lenore Hart Saga morphed "from tragedy into farce?" As I said before, I'd have real sympathy for the mixture of blind panic and rank stupidity she showed, if only she had behaved decently about it all.<br /><br />Incidentally, I'm wondering if Hart is a unique case in all the annals of plagiarism. In all the other examples I've seen, it's been a case of the guilty author filching some lines from Author A, some other lines from Author B, a passage or two from Author C, etc. Has there ever been a case where a writer did such wholesale lifting from <i>one book?</i>Undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16214242522330278662noreply@blogger.com