Fountain syndrome

Plagiarism, again. It seems to happen in waves, like high-school shootings. Three or four in a row, then a lull, then another batch, until they all run together in the mind and it becomes hard to tell one from the other.

The latest dustup stars popular historians Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin. I've never read Ambrose, but Goodwin interests me because I reviewed what may turn out to be the only book she's ever written that she didn't plagiarize: her memoir. I forget the title but it was about growing up as a passionate fan of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. She really is an expert on baseball and I gave her credit for that, but I attacked her on two other counts.

One was her unconscionable padding. She recounts that as a teen she worked behind the soda fountain at the town drugstore, and then proceeds to a detailed description of how to make an ice-cream soda; every squirt, every fizz, every dollop is presented for the edification of the untold millions who have never eaten or seen or heard of an ice- cream soda or set foot in a drugstore.

A good writer simply doesn't do this, even in a featherweight book like this one; rules are rules, and the rule about padding was etched on lit. crit. by Boileau, whom I probably quoted in my review: "All that is needless, carefully avoid/ The mind, once satisfied, is quickly cloyed." Especially by chocolate syrup.

The other thing I pounced on was either her hypocrisy or her blindness, I couldn't tell which. Reflecting on her childhood in a provincial Long Island town, she waxed nostalgic over the loss of the tranquility and safety she had known, and tentatively rued the loosening influence of the old monolithic Catholicism in which she had been raised. That did it. "Why," I wrote, "do liberals mourn the loss of the very things that their own politics have destroyed?"

I've read Goodwin's book about the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds, and the one about FDR during WWII. While they were fairly enjoyable, the thing that struck me about them is that I found nothing whatsoever to underline. Normally, when I get through with a book you couldn't get a quarter for it at a yard sale, but give me a Goodwin and I'll give it back in mint condition; you could use it for a Christmas present with no one the wiser. This may be proof of her innocence: Surely, if she stole from other writers, something would stand out. On the other hand, it may be proof of her guilt: Every stolen passage stands out like a sore thumb.

Goodwin is a classic example of mediocrity: There's nothing really wrong with her literary style, but there's nothing really right with it either; its natural home is the term paper, or the "kit" and "materials" that come with "programs" like Hooked on Phonics. Her penchant for stating the obvious with an air of perky pride gives her work the flavor of a dumbed-down version of the Book of Revelation, but she achieves full twit-hood in her ubiquitous television appearances, where it's hard to distinguish her banalities from those of the call-in viewers. This establishes her as "unthreatening," which is the whole point of American life. A typical Goodwinism-"The role of the First Lady was ceremonial and Eleanor really shocked people"-lowers the goalposts enough so that she emerges on the other side as the historian next door, a friendly academic cook making napoleons on Food Network while talking on the phone.

The latest plagiarism controversy is hot news right now, but only because it's a scandal involving celebrities. Nobody, including the media, gives a damn about plagiarism per se. That America regards it as a joke is evident from the cute headlines: "Tripping Over Their Own Footnotes," "Twice-Told Tales," "History Repeats Itself." Ambrose and Goodwin will lie low for a while, then reappear wrapped in mantles of modest triumph like the pill-poppers who shuffle off to the Betty Ford Clinic and live to tell the tale-eagerly, all over the tube.

The errant historians will appear before Larry King, who has forgiven more people than Jesus Christ, and talk about what they've learned and how they've grown. As a final fillip, somebody, somewhere will announce that plagiarism is an "addiction" and we will get six months' worth of talk shows about "PA Syndrome." Americans would never dream of excluding children when inventing new crippling disorders, so expect a spin-off debate about "Copycat Syndrome" and endless checklists on "How to Tell If Your Child Is . . ."

Once plagiarism becomes an officially designated addiction, its sufferers will not only be forgiven, but admired. This is the way America works. We cherish and reward mediocrity, cultivate it like the rarest of orchids. We don't want brilliant original historians because we don't want brilliant original anybodys. If you don't believe it, go to the movies. I Am Sam extols the mentally retarded (as did A Child Is Waiting way back in 1963), and A Beautiful Mind, for all its inspirational facade, warns of the dangers of genius.

Do I think Goodwin is guilty? Let's put it this way. The AP story about what she told the Boston Globe states: "She said she had copied from her notes rather than going back to the sources, sometimes losing track of which passages were hers and which were written by others."

I say this is impossible. Sentences are a writer's children; we can pick them out anywhere. Like children, they squirm and wriggle, hop up and down, scream at us, and in general make themselves instantly conspicuous. Blood is thicker than ink.

An interesting offshoot of the grand plagiarism that makes the news is the petit plagiarism that doesn't. In one of my books I coined-I thought-"If at first you don't secede, try, try again." Not long after, it turned up on Southern T-shirts and bumper stickers. Was I plagiarized? No. Anybody with half an ear could come up with that one.

Harder to pull off is the delicious phrase in a letter I just got from a fellow writer: "He has as much sense of play as a geriatric moose." Oh, God, I wish I had said it!

COPYRIGHT 2002 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group