Plagiarism.

Allison Hetter, an artist, defined Postmodernism by saying “Everything's been done already.” And in “The Ecstasy of Influence” by Jonathan Lethem, he states (quoting someone else) that “The surrealists believed that objects in the world possess a certain but unspecifiable intensity that had been dulled by everyday use and utility.” This makes me think of soup cans, detergent boxes and Warhol. But throughout the article, Lethem is making an argument that art comes from a world where people are able to interact with other ideas they find, not blocked by cries of plagiarism and lawsuits. Since people don’t live in a vacuum and, in my mind, art is all about personal interpretation, it makes sense that people's work would be influenced by other work. Theoretically then, there is nothing that is plagiarism, since it goes through a personal filter before it is created.

That being said, when I first heard about the Salinger lawsuit, I sided with him. The Catcher in the Rye might not be my favorite book, but I think its literary merit would be hard to match and a bad sequel can affect the perception of the first novel, even if they aren’t written by the same person. On the other hand, I love Scarlet as a sequel to Gone With the Wind, even though I know that it’s far, far below the original in literary merit. (I’m a sucker for a happy ending.) And even that is something that’s up to interpretation.

Overall, I’m reminded of Palahniuk’s Fight Club (book, not movie) in which the protagonist says “I wanted to burn the Louvre. I'd do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now. This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead.” The idea that everything has already been done, and that if we want to create anything ‘new’ we have to destroy our history is a rather frightening thought. If you think of the number of books that are considered canon that are direct references to someone else’s story... on the other side, if you open a free for all for creative purposes, it’s very possible you’re going to get a lot of bad copies that hide the works of real merit.