To discover in the course of research some engaging detail we know can be put into a story where it will do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious act– it is simply what we do. The worst you can call itis a form of primate behavior. Writers are naturally drawn, chimpanzee-like, to the color and the music of this English idiom we are blessed to have inherited. When given the choice we will usually try to use the more vivid and tuneful among its words. I cannot of course speak for Mr. McEwan’s method of proceeding, but should be very surprised indeed if something of the sort, even for brief moments, had not occurred during his research for Atonement. Gentian violet! Come on. Who among us could have resisted that one?
From Letters of Note, again.
Cheap Talk 
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June 4, 2012 at 11:46 am
Enrique
Isn’t the the problem of plagiarism “reciprocal in nature”, to borrow a phrase from Ronald Coase’s paper “The problem of social cost”. That is, we may divide the world into “copiers” and “creators”. Ordinarily, people simply assume that “copiers” are “bad” and “creators” “good” — but this assumption rests on the premise that creators should have a property right or legal entitlement to their creations. While this rule makes sense in most cases (as a way of promoting creation and discouraging copying), there are many situations in which there is no ex ante right to one’s creations (e.g., tattoo designs or “body art”, fashion designs, etc.) — so, this is one way of looking at Pynchon’s apology of plagiarism: instead of saying that copying is inherent to the artistic process (it is, but so is creation), it would be better to say that there are situations where we want to exempt copying (or, in some cases, even reward copying) from the property rights of creators in order to foster more creation, in total and at the margin
June 4, 2012 at 12:10 pm
jeff
very much agreed