Plagiarism has been in the air lately. Its latest draft blows our way from a recent report in the Guardian about an award-winning poet whose award-winning poem (with many others) turns out to have been written by someone else. And he wasn’t even the first prize-winning British copy-cat poet this year.
You might expect otherwise, but the latest victim, Canadian poet Colin Morton, is more puzzled than angered by what seems to be a growing trend. Why steal a poem, of all things? Well, there was a prize, but the imposter has had to give it back. It has not been mentioned whether Morton now gets the prize money instead. He is probably disqualified by some technicality, but I doubt he will complain. Poets are like that.
And besides, in most cases when this sort of thing comes to light the author whose work was cribbed does not actually suffer as a consequence. If anything, his stature is enhanced and his creative work receives public attention that might never have come to it otherwise. It was, after all, the poem’s previous lack of recognition that made it suitable for theft. No more. One can well imagine that it has been read more times during the last two weeks than during the first 30 years following its publication. Its author has become, for the moment at least, a celebrity among his peers
All of which I would not have thought worth commenting on if it had not been for a book we almost bought at about the same time.
The book was Les Jardins Precieux by Raymond Charmaison, a copy of which appeared at auction in Paris last week. It is a book we know well. There is not much to it in the way of text, but the 8 large plates are a tour de force of pochoir color printing. It is a beautiful book that begs for display, or, unfortunately, for sacrifice to the framer. If you happen to be in possession of a copy of Hinck & Wall Catalogue # 54 (“Garden History,” copyright 2002) you will find a lengthier and even more enthusiastic description of it at item number 29. For those who do not have a copy readily at hand I will reproduce our description here:
Edition limited to 300 numbered copies. Illustrated with eight stunning pochoir plates colored by Jean Saudé. Each plate presents a garden view focused on a special garden feature – a yew walk, an oil jar, a berceau, etc. – rendered in the richest colors of the pochoir technique: for example, the “Salle Verte” is a profound green hedge room with a yellow sky and a pool reflecting all the green variation as well as the vibrant color combinations of the flower plantings in the setting; the rose trellis is set against a star-lit, full-mooned midnight blue sky, again with pool reflections and with a rich parterre and border planting colors. These imaginary “Precious Gardens” are a testament to the power of the printed book as a vehicle for transporting the viewer/reader into the garden and a world of dreams. As Henri Régnier observes in the book’s gold-printed preface, “Il contient quelques feuilles avec des lignes and des couleurs, à peine les aurez vous considerées que vous serez transporté dans un pays de lumière et de soliel...” Pierre Corrard, novelist and poet, established his publishing house in 1912 and began working with such noted illustrators of the day as Georges Barbier, Charles Martin and A.E. Marty. After his death his wife, Nicole Corrard, resumed his publishing efforts under the name “Collection Pierre Corrard. Successive issues of “ALBUM DES MODES ET MANIERES D’AUJOURD’HUI and similar luxury productions made the house’s fame. Much as their luxurious pochoir renderings of fashion designs helped express the artistry of French haute couture during this period, so did the stunning plates of LES JARDINS PRÉCIEUX give graphic expression to the new artistic visions of the “jardins d’artiste.”
It is, I think I can say, a nice book. We had easily sold our first copy and so thought we might like to buy another. Naturally, before making a bid, we checked on viaLibri to see if any other copies might already be for sale. We were not surprised to discover that there were. What did surprise us, however, was how familiar the descriptions sounded. Ann Marie had written our catalogue description over 10 years ago, but she immediately recognized her own words and comments in the current listings she found online.
Ignoring the framed prints, there were, in fact, two different copies offered for sale, and each of them included significant chunks that had apparently been copied from our original description. But not all the same chunks. In neither case had we been consumed whole. Instead, we had served more as a banquet at which the two cataloguers had each picked out just those dishes that appealed to them the most. Some other parts were, on the other hand, completely ignored. Perhaps those were parts that we still needed to improve. We were never told. But if you are curious to know the parts which did satisfy the standards of these particular plagiarists you will find them in boldface in the excerpt above.
All this is nothing new. I probably would not have thought about it further if I had not made this discovery on the same day that I read the story in the Guardian. At first I looked at the obvious parallels and thought that, in some diluted way, our copied catalogue description might be like a stolen poem. I quickly realized, however, that it is not.
In truth, no one can steal a poem. Once you have written it and shown it to the world you can always put your name on it and claim it for your own. And that seems to be true of almost any published work that later comes into the grasp of a plagiarist. Once the author reclaims his authorship the plagiarist is readily exposed. An author never loses the ability to republish or recite what is rightfully his.
But I now see that there is an exception…
Once a catalogue description has been copied online it is, for all intents and purposes, no longer available to its creator. In our case, we can no longer use our description of Les Jardins Precieux. How could we? If we tried to catalogue another copy our potential customers would almost certainly do what we did: they would check first to see what other copies were available online. Doing this they would find two others described with the same words we were presenting as our own. Two thirds of our description would appear to be plagiarized from other booksellers. Any expertise or integrity we might previously have had in our customers eyes would be destroyed. That is something we dare not risk.
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As I said before, plagiarism is nothing new. The internet has, however, significantly changed its dynamics, both for the good and the bad. Much of the commentary about Morton’s stolen poem focused on this. One the one hand, the plagiarist is presumed to have found the poems (there were many) by searching online. This is certainly where the lazy booksellers hunt and trap. A quick cut and paste and it’s theirs. They will not always be foolish enough to copy current online listings, but any unlisted item that can be found by Google is regarded as fair game, especially if it doesn’t show up on the first one or two pages of results.
On the other hand, the internet is an equally powerful tool for discovering that copying has taken place. The first stolen poem discovered in the most recent case was recognized by its author at an online poetry site. After that, it only took an hour to find a dozen more. Obviously, internet search tools make this sort of theft much harder to get away with. It may mean the end of an era, at least as far as poetry plagiarism is concerned.
It is an encouraging thought, and it inevitably lead me to wonder whether internet search engines might not at some point also bring a similar benefit to antiquarian booksellers. Unfortunately, I tend to think not, at least as things stand now. The reason is that, in order for the plagiarists to be easily exposed, the original material that they copy must be easily found. At present, booksellers do everything they can to keep their descriptions off of the internet once the books are sold. They do this precisely because they do not want others to copy them. But the plagiarists will find them anyway, especially if they also once appeared in printed catalogues, as much of the most useful specialist material has always done. By hiding their intellectual property from easy online discovery the only thing they really accomplish is making it safer for plagiarists to use their material without fear of exposure. Hiding material from search engines will become an increasingly futile task as the age of Big Data rolls forward. In the long run, the only protection that will work will be one that makes is it harder and harder for plagiarism to go undetected when it occurs.
Most booksellers claim copyright for their catalogue contents, and a few even threaten legal action against violators. The law may be on their side, but I have never heard of a bookseller actually taking a plagiarism claim to court. Copyright is, it seems, a toothless protection.
But I have an idea for something that might actually provide the protection that copyright alone does not. As you might expect, it involves, once again, the internet. If that is where the crimes are now being committed, that is where we should put our cops to work. What I have in mind is a descriptive bibliographic database where booksellers can publish all their copyrighted descriptions in a way that clearly establishes priority and ownership. It would be a public place where you can claim what is yours. But it would also be much more than that. If enough booksellers participated, an open searchable database of this nature would soon constitute a valuable bibliographic reference that collectors, librarians, students and scholars could use for all types of research. It would make a useful permanent resource out of information that is now mostly ephemeral. It would also be a magnet for anyone with an interest in old books. An entry could be freely quoted, but only with complete and unambiguous attribution to the bookseller who was its source. This wouldn’t make it impossible to plagiarize, but any booksellers who tried to use these descriptions as if they were their own would be soon exposed. Once established, I would expect the incidence of plagiarism in book cataloguing to decline dramatically, at least among any booksellers who hoped to claim a reputation for expertise and integrity.
And if such a database existed today we would still be able to use our own words to describe our next copy of Les Jardins Precieux. What Ann Marie had created would once again be hers.
This is my suggestion. I think it is a good idea. As it happens, I also have the means to put such a thing in place, but only if I knew that there were others who agreed and were willing to join in. I am now, as they say “all ears”.