Saturday, January 10, 2009

This Spells "Literary Crisis"

Here is yet another story of plagiarism in the digital age. Neale Donald Walsch, apparently a best-selling author who has conversations with God, is accused of plagiarizing a Christmas essay that is all over the internet -- sometimes credited to the real author and sometimes not.

Walsch has tried to explain his misdeed. His explanation is hard to swallow, but there is always the cryptomnesia defense. I guess Hillary Clinton could have used that defense too during the whole "sniper fire" drama last spring.

But anyway, after reading the disputed essay, I have a bigger question. Who would want to take credit for this dreck? If that's what people are reading these days, we're in a literary crisis.

3 comments:

  1. here's another literary crisis. there's an article on yahoo news that 1 in 7 adults in the us is illiterate. the number give was roughly 32 million adults! yikes!

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  2. Oh here is that article: Literacy study: 1 in 7 U.S. adults are unable to read this story.

    I was actually being a bit flippant when I said the essay indicated a literary crisis. I didn't realize how bad the numbers really are right now.

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  3. And here is another related story: Bush is definitely writing that book he's been talking about.

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