Good end of business day, everyone,
To me, the attached article from today’s NY Times about Jonah Lehrer, a (now former) staff writer for The New Yorker, who admitted that he made up quotes attributed to Bob Dylan for a book he wrote called “Imagine,” is stunning. Stunning not because we haven’t heard this story before, or because we are surprised to hear it again, or because we won’t hear it anon. But stunning more because Lehrer is a staff writer for The New Yorker, that Mt. Olympus of a writer’s and reader’s magazine, the reputation of which has been drenched for eons in perfection, the magazine to which only the best of the best dare submit their words.
And because “Imagine” sold 200,000 copies and something must now be done about that.
And because, well, another writer fortunate enough to be paid for their work, in a field where that is not easy to do – either as a journalist for a newspaper, or as a contributing writer for a major magazine, or as the author of a publishable book – has chosen to sully the noble craft of writing by making stuff up.
Why do I care? Because I respect writers and journalists and poets and novelists, and because every day I hear someone who does not respect them hold forth with a belief that plagiarizing is okay, that making things up is of the moment, that some of us are too stuffy, that no one really cares anyway, and that it doesn’t matter in the end because everyone does it.
Really?
That general belief is why this particular gentleman thought it was okay to do what he did.
I have an idea. How about writing a good book and telling the truth? The pay is the same and you don’t have to be humiliated into quitting your job.
There’s an idea.
Giselle
July 30, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Man, How We Decide was a great book. And now, I don’t know that I can cite it as a source, anymore.
July 30, 2012 at 10:51 pm
I have no desire to be vengeful or vindictive, but I suspect the impulse to commit this act is so richly rewarded, that some writers are inclined to gamble their professional career and reputation against the [negligible?] fallout upon discovery. Giselle Minoli. Or non-publication.
It’s just words, right? What’s the harm. I can almost hear the internal justification dialog. I don’t know, some seriously ill-adjusted value-system happening within the so-called journalistic integrity model.
July 30, 2012 at 10:52 pm
My highest respect goes to Michael Moynihan — who decided to check it and follow up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen so fast even in academic writing/publishing… Some made-up things just travel from one book/article to another, with references to previous ones, and are eventually published so many times that nobody even bothers.
July 30, 2012 at 10:59 pm
paul beard I think your comment is particularly interesting, because it goes to the heart of yet another problem…which is the reader’s need to have something “anointed,” the need for pithy bon mots, otherwise a piece of writing isn’t, what? Interesting? Meaningful? Important? We live in a world where many, many people have no idea how they feel about anything and they are willing to believe _anything._ And writers who didn’t use to buy into all of this now buy into all of this and it all is recycled and regurgitated food for the mill.
Does it start with the writer? Or the reader? You tell me.
July 30, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Steve Faktor what, may I ask, did you edit out of your comment? 🙂
Matthew Graybosch I am so with you on this one. I know how hard you work. Last night I went to a reading of the writer Kim Barnes’ new book and she talked about the four years of research she did on In The Kingdom of Men. Four years.
There is no such thing as a little big of integrity. A writer either has it or they don’t.
July 30, 2012 at 11:04 pm
No kidding Stacie Florer. I’m a nonfiction writer, as you know.
July 30, 2012 at 11:05 pm
Actually, whenever I read a journalist writing about anything I happen to really know (something linguistic, for example), my hair grows a bit grayer… So now it’s almost totally gray.
July 30, 2012 at 11:10 pm
That’s terrible. Not only has he embarassed himself, his publisher and the NYT but he’s also made stuff up about a living person. I’d be annoyed if I was Dylan.
July 30, 2012 at 11:17 pm
Matthew Graybosch — that he hasn’t done that suggests that what is printed is considerably worse than just some “inaccuracies”.
July 30, 2012 at 11:20 pm
There are too many of BS books published every day to rule out this possibility…
July 31, 2012 at 12:27 am
I’m scrolling through all your comments on my BBerry so I’m a bit slow. +lena Levin +Eddie K and +Steve Faktor in interestingly entwined ways you all lead to the same place, which is not one of journalistic integrity but of being famous and of standing out. We used to have actorsn now we have celebrities,we used to have journalists, now we have news performers, we used to have a cultural od artistic endeavor where it was almost a rite of passage to pay your dues for many long years before making it. Now it is a social kiss of death not to be spoken about, on the tips of everyone’s tongues, not to have Klout, to have written a hit book. When did the aspiration to get paid for being good get replaced with being a hit? Steve you are right. This is only the beginning.
And Lena…in the academic, scientific and medical world you are nothing if you haven’t published.
July 31, 2012 at 12:33 am
This is aninteresting part of your personality +Matthew Graybosch. You give people grief, but not a smaller dose than you give yourself. I am deeply suspicious of people who aren’t critical of their work, who do not hold themselves to a high standard. Because if they don’t in this day and age I suspect it’s easy to find people with whom to work who will let them slide.
July 31, 2012 at 12:33 am
in the academic, scientific and medical world you are nothing if you haven’t published
This is not quite true (just as a first example — Grigory Perelman, who recently became the most famous modern mathematician by proving the Poincare conjecture, has not actually bothered to publish).
And it’s not really necessary to publish BS either.
July 31, 2012 at 12:57 am
“I have an idea. How about writing a good book and telling the truth? The pay is the same and you don’t have to be humiliated into quitting your job. There’s an idea.”
Hear, hear. Well stated, Giselle Minoli.
July 31, 2012 at 1:30 am
paul beard — I don’t think I agree (as far as academic world is concerned), and I am not sure I can really even think in terms “market value” of a human being.
July 31, 2012 at 2:06 am
Matthew Smith I really do wonder whether he feels embarrassed, or whether there is an army of spin doctors surrounding him advising him what to say and how to say it. I do realize it’s not the same thing, but didn’t Bernie Madoff say he also knew what he was doing was wrong but just go in over his head and couldn’t stop himself?
paul beard Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, eh? Yes…Andy said it, but he actually worked to create the legacy that surrounds that famous statement. Probably much more than many “artists” of any kind Warhol understood what the “notoriety” thing was all about.
July 31, 2012 at 2:09 am
Good grief paul beard you’ve just explained why it takes me so long to write something….
July 31, 2012 at 2:34 am
paul beard Didn’t Dan Rostenkowski’s political career end because he traded postage stamps in for cash?
July 31, 2012 at 2:37 am
Perhaps I should have written Lena Levin that the doctors and scientists I know feel less worthy without having published or aspiring to that. I know several female doctors in New York who left the profession when they had children because they couldn’t keep up with that at the hospitals where they worked.
Let’s face it, Lena, even here on G+ how often do we read “the Bible” of social media and post, post, post, post, post and post often or else!
July 31, 2012 at 2:39 am
That’s an interesting paragraph paul beard. In the end we are who we are through and through and through. Does it really matter whether it ended over mail fraud, postage stamps or ghost employees? It was bound, sooner or later, to have been something.
July 31, 2012 at 4:29 am
Some people are simply shameless, as hard as that is to put our minds around.
July 31, 2012 at 11:57 am
Mark Twain coined the phrase stretchers; fish grow each time the story is retold, home runs are longer each time the tale is recounted, an accident becomes more death defying with each remembrance. Why wonderful stories and phenomenal events are exaggerated is one of the great human mysteries and tragedies. Low self esteem and insecurities drive people to the depths of Hades. I feel sadness for the Jonah Lehrers.
Ironically, Dylan was a stretcher himself who fabricated achievements and a past to kick start his career and that habit, from what has been said about him, was never cured.
July 31, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Giselle Minoli I was thinking of the quote from Gretchen Rubin ‘s Moment of Happiness from this morning: “A comfortable home is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.” Health and good conscience are almost two sides of the same coin no? How sad that someone who had already been busted once in plagiarism (though it was self plagiarism, something which is a little hard for me to understand) gets caught again in cheating.
July 31, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Matthew Graybosch, I was not condoning either, because I do not. Whether Dylan is a musician, politician, or beautician matters not. Nor was I comparing the two, just stating that it is ironic, because it is.
July 31, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Oh and this is apropos: http://electricliterature.com/blog/2012/07/31/god-im-glad-im-not-jonah-lehrer/
July 31, 2012 at 3:00 pm
The Atlantic has a nice summary–
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/jonah-lehrers-grievous-oraclism/260532/#
“But we now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions. We have no patience for mystery. We want the deciphering of gods. We want oracles. And we want them right now.”
August 1, 2012 at 3:06 am
Hello hello hello Eddie K. I’m just getting a chance to get back to this and really appreciated your clipping in the Atlantic summary. Yeah, paul beard I agree…I liked that passage too, in general his whole summation, including clever answers taking precedence over profound questions.
As a writer of literary nonfiction, I’ve heard the argument by some fiction writers that the writing of nonfiction is “easier,” whatever that means. In fact I think it’s quite challenging. It matters not that one might pre-know the facts, the plot, the story, where it all ends up. The main thing is the asking of the profound questions – the How, the Why, the Wherefore, and perhaps leaving them unanswered. It takes more than a certain something to sit with that.
Those questions, often unanswered as they are, always
seem more interesting to me than anything a writer can make up, thus I can’t fathom the need to do it. Unless of course the pressure was just huge, in which case I wonder why he couldn’t have just said, “I don’t have them and I’m not going to make them up!”
You are dead on right paul beard when you write that “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” And now we know what Lehrer believes…or doesn’t believe, which is equally disturbing.
I suggest you stop neglecting your blog. I’d wager you’d have some readers here…
August 1, 2012 at 3:15 am
Hi, Leo Campos I knew some of those scandals of literature, but not all, most recently the James Frey one because it was, well, so recent and juicy and got so much press.
I think of Roshomon…and how, in the world of nonfiction, any party to a story, any story, remembers that story differently than anyone else who witnessed it…because everyone is coming from their own emotional interpretation, what they remember, what they need to see, to feel, to think. With families…isn’t this the struggle, the argument…in any family? So, literary nonfiction is the perfect place to ask the big juicy questions.
But making up stuff that Dylan said? Why bother? Isn’t the real stuff that he said juicy enough? I’d say so. Just reprint a song, any song, and be done with it!
August 3, 2012 at 7:42 am
At least, he resigned. In France, we have one extremely renowned journalist who has been doing far worse, plagiarizing, stealing his mistress’ diary and making a book out of it, etcaetera. No consequence.
The guy had the cheek to compete for “Académie Française”.
August 3, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Marie Hélène Visconti _That is wild._ Perhaps they think in Frances that writing is writing, that fiction is nonfiction and vice versa, and that the scandal is the important thing? Perhaps the world of writing is becoming a “Reality” show in itself of sorts. Is it true? Did the writer lie? Is it fiction? NonFiction? Literary or garbage? Does it matter? Does anyone care?
August 3, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Giselle Minoli this is what happens with too much PoMo 🙂 It gets really difficult. Every writer I know (of fiction) uses real life, sometimes verbatim, in their fiction. I still remember reading about the scandal (back then) of Joybe’s Dubliners (being real people, identifiable) as well as more recently Mayle’s A Year in Provence who also mentioned real people. So, an author taking his mistress’ diary and turning it into “fiction” seems fair play no? A little dishonest as a human being, but from an artistic perspective seems difficult to find a way to criticize it…
Indirectly, and Marie Hélène Visconti might have seen this, there is a lovely French movie called Roman de Gare (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0889652/) which deals with some of these issues…life imitates art?
August 3, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Good morning, Leo Campos I absolutely struggle with this issue as a writer of literary nonfiction. Struggle in the sense of I KNOW what it is right, ethical to write about. I do not want to hurt anyone in anything I write. That is not my goal. But I am aware that some of the things I write, if it includes a story or anecdote about a particular person, could hurt them because no matter how much care I take in writing something you cannot absolutely guarantee how your words will be interpreted. So I try not to mention names. And I ask permission to use them and if I am not granted permission, then I don’t. This is tough in all cases and I’m working on something at the moment that may break my own “rule.” But my goal is to find a way to reveal what needs to be revealed without hurting. In the case of a diary? I wouldn’t publish it. That seems seriously plagiaristic, boundary-crossing and flat out stealing to me. Yes? No?
August 3, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Giselle Minoli but you are a kind and ethical person. Not all artists are like that…this guy has a mistress – I know in France this is a national sport, but still, at a minimum this is someone who is OK with leading a double life….
From a creative and literary perspective only I find that the boundaries between fiction and reality are very very fuzzy (at best). Non-fiction is a little different because it is directly attempting to capture reality (biographies for e.g.), so the dynamics are a little different. But would it be ok to publish a diary, or large parts of it, in a biography? How about doing it without permission (as in unauthorized biographies)? Are they valid?
I know that the writers in my family tree were both loved and hated, because we all knew who they were using for their stories, even when they changed names etc. The little quirks, the details, that flesh out a character tend to come from some known quirks of real people. So we knew who they were….should they never have been allowed to use the detail? Not sure…I feel strongly about both sides of the issue!
August 3, 2012 at 1:22 pm
This is the most delicious conversation Leo Campos. Writers “borrow” from their experiences in life, just as some designers “borrow” from nature for inspiration, just as some filmmakers “use” the streets, neighborhoods around them as backdrops for their work, just as painters and other kinds of artists “incorporate” the reality of life – war, politics, scandals, front page news… – into their art. This is perhaps what we are supposed to be doing. BUT…with nonfiction, I prefer the Akira Kurasawa Rashomon approach: any event is experienced differently by the different people involved. Presenting it that way takes skill. It’s more honest in my view. But, No, still I personally would not feel right about publishing someone’s diary either as fiction or nonfiction. It doesn’t belong to me and capitalizing on it is decidedly wrong in my view.
August 3, 2012 at 1:29 pm
So do you not read unauthorized biographies, out of principle? Not saying I do (not that big into biographies anyway) but just wondering. I used to know a guy who believed that all art was “found object” art. He was a sculptor and used found objects in his work. But his theory was that all art is the same – just some artists are more honest than others and show the found objects, while others disguise it. His words, not mine. But I get his point.
In your craft, how can you possibly avoid (mis)using someone’s words etc? You must have some long sleepless nights worrying about this?!
August 3, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Writing nonfiction is a constant challenge Leo Campos. I don’t think I have any unauthorized biographies now that you mention it. And I prefer biographies myself. Because how someone perceives their own life is always more interesting to me than how someone else sees it. Sleepless nights? Well…I worry about the intent, the purpose, the goal of something. I question writing that is meant to hurt. Exposing wrong doing is different than libeling, slamming, destroying. The bottom line, and this is what the Jonah Lehrer story is about, is this: Does the writer have respect for the truth, getting at the truth? Or is it all about self-promotion? This will be debated until the end of time, and I have no doubt scores of people disagree with me.