Lethem Reading Assignment

From Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism, I chose to research the passage titled “Source Hypocrisy, or, Disnial” (220). Using the key at the end of the essay, I found that a rather large section of Lethem’s writing had been directly quoted from another source: “Kenneth Koch once said...le déluge of copycats” (220). This quote, by Emily Nussbaum,  is appropriated from a book review of The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch written for a section of The New York Times. Lethem seems to boldly paste this quote into his own paper, only changing the introduction of the quote to make the transition smoother. In Nussbaum’s article, she says this quote to emphasize how Kenneth Koch’s desire for curiosity and creativity manifests in his lyrical style of writing. In the context of Lethem’s essay, however, Koch is an example of a writer open to the idea that their works are heavily influenced and essentially not entirely original. David Byrne, Brian Eno, and Bob Dylan may also be examples of this as Lethem explains. Another quote that Lethem uses, “imperial plagiarism” (220), is from the title of a research paper written by Marilyn Randall. Randall uses this term to analyze the complexities of plagiarism; Lethem adds to this by giving an example of imperial plagiarism: the Walt Disney Company, coining the term “disnial” to describe this.

Lethem himself appears open to other writers influencing in his work. From his including of John Donne’s quote in the beginning, Lethem seems to have happily resigned himself to the fact that essentially nothing is original, and that everything is appropriated. His examples show how he “stole, warped, and cobbled together” (Johnson 225) other sources, but he also adds to what he copies in a creative way. In another context, this means that plagiarism is not definitively piracy and should not always be taken in its commonly negative context.