Pro-Plagiarism and Postmodernism

I've just read Kenneth Goldsmith's intriguing article about what he calls "uncreative writing" as the future (or even present?) of literary output. Rather than attempt to create something totally original, which is impossible anyway, Goldsmith suggests that the most cutting-edge literature may be that which includes cutting and pasting, harvesting, "copying, and appropriation." He also, however, distinguishes between this literature and famous memoir frauds (Frey and LeRoy), suggesting that a difference in intent makes all the difference to quality and reception. Goldsmith spends little time on this point, but I see it as the crux of his argument. The work Goldsmith acknowledges to be plagiarism I myself consider to be as original as Shakespeare or Joyce (not that I necessarily say it's all as good). We never believe that the 900 page book made verbatim from the New York Times is new writing, and its "author" doesn't pretend it is. Pretense and fraud are not apparent in the works Goldsmith describes, though one could technically call them "plagiarism." Computers perhaps make this issue more interesting because it is now so easy to copy something and appropriate it wholesale, but it can't be a new one. We also come around to the perennial "what is art?" question, which may actually be more relevant to this article than the "what is plagiarism?" one. Is a shark in formaldehyde art? Is a bound book of credit card offers art, or even a novel? Can everything be argued into art status?

Quick Note on Outlaws

I've just come across this update to the Butch Cassidy story I wrote about a few weeks ago, which claims that the writer of Cassidy's biography was not, in fact, Cassidy himself, but an impostor who had pretended to be Cassidy and was in prison at the same time as Cassidy. It appears, then (according to this information), that instead of Cassidy impersonating William Phillips/Wilcox, Phillips/Wilcox actually spent most of his life impersonating Cassidy impersonating Phillips! It sounds, perhaps, as though Phillips/Wilcox might be a better topic of study in terms of fraud than Cassidy is, and more or less debunks the theory that Cassidy did not die a violent death in South America.