Lethem Reading Assignment

“The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn’t mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole” (Lethem 222).

This passage is part of “The Commons” section of Lethem’s piece about influence and plagiarism, which, ironically, is built upon inspiration from others’ works. This passage in particular is derived from Michael Newton – in a review of someone else’s book. Its original function was to provide criticism for the book Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language by Daniel Heller-Roazen. The layers of authors being inspired or informed by other authors is seemingly never ending. In fact, as Lethem explains, said reviews are precisely the reason that he is so knowledgeable about books he never read. The changes he introduces include a comparison of art to language in that neither can truly be contained; they are molded by those who use it. This new comparison helps clarify the ownership (or lack thereof) of art; it “belongs between people,” similar to a language among a society (Lethem 222). The meaning of the passage is no longer solely about art itself, but rather it provides an entity similar to art that assists in Lethem’s argument. Art is as shared and manipulated as a language – who can claim ownership to spoken sounds? These transformations show that plagiarism is not always so black and white. When transformed and applied to a certain purpose, plagiarism does not embody the full negative connotation it so often retains. There is a fine line when it comes to using others’ work as support, inspiration, or even an example, but when used correctly said collaborative approaches are extremely beneficial to a piece of writing.