The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem

The Ecstasy of Influence might be a good academic text to use in my remediation essay. In in the Lethem discusses artists, authors, singers, songwriters, cartoonists etc who have borrowed from other sources to create their works. Examples given are TV shows like The Simpsons, the surrealist art movement, Shakespeare and Bob Dylan to name a few. Lethem's  point is that today these works would be considered and act of plagiarism and piracy yet are a massive part of our cultural identity. Where would we be without them?

Lethem also speaks of the loss of "public commons" and the "gift economy" meaning - that inspirational work is a gift to those who take inspiration from it - the value is in the thought it generates not in the money it could produce. 

The 10 page essay is then followed by a bout of extreme referencing - 3 pages where the Lethem has tried to reference every single thought he had while writing the article mocking yet abiding by the extreme rules that govern how we express our thoughts.

 Favorite Quotes

•  "If nostalgic cartoonists had never borrowed from Fritz the Cat, there would be no Ren & Stimpy Show; .... If those don't strike you as essential losses, then consider the remarkable series of "plagiarisms" that links Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe" with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, .... If these are examples of plagiarism, then we want
  more plagiarism" (Lethem 2007)

• "The distinctive feature of modern American copyright law is its almost limitless bloating-its expansion in both scope and duration. With no registration requirement, every creative act in a tangible medium is now subject to copyright protection: your email to your child or your child's finger painting, both are automatically protected." (Lethem 2007)

• "And artists, or their heirs, who fall into the trap of attacking the collagists and satirists and digital samplers of their work are attacking the next generation of creators for the crime of being influenced, for the crime of responding with the same mixture of intoxication, resentment, lust, and glee that characterizes all artistic successors. By doing so they make the world smaller, betraying what seems to me the primary motivation for participating in the world of culture in the first place: to make the world larger." (Lethem 2007)
  
  
  
  Lethem, J. 2007. The Ecstasy of Influence, A plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem. Harper's Magazine February 2007. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387 (accessed 12/10/11).