05 January, 2012
Quentin Rowan and the Pathology of a Plagiarist
The story of Quentin Rowan, serial plagiarist, is now several months old, but as I was mired in Mark Twain and Frederic Jameson a few months ago, I will discuss it now! The story is as follows: Rowan, slowly rising to success as a poem and short story writer, published the spy novel The Assassin of Secrets in late 2011 with the reputed Little, Brown company. A few days after its publication, readers (including novelist Jeremy Dun) began to see significant similarities between it and several published spy novels. The Huffington Post has an excellent synopsis of the story here. After a brief silence on the subject, Rowan revealed all in a "Confession" where he describes plagiarism as an "addiction" and (sort of) explains why he did it. He says that plagiarism was a substitution for his earlier alcoholism, and encourages the public to see plagiarism "if not as a disease, at least as something pathological."
Rowan's confession is fairly persuasive in its buildup of pathos ("I first tried to get sober when I was 18") and insistence that he confessed to the plagiarism right away once caught (as though one can successfully deny it). I will not call him the names that he says others have called him, but I am suspicious of the addiction explanation he gives. Perhaps I don't understand addiction pathology, so I cannot begin to see how alcoholism would translate into stealing writing from others (literary kleptomania?). However, I do know that there is very little in the way of apology to Rowan's victims: not the authors whose works he stole, not the publishing company, and not his apparently savvy readers. I suppose it's great that he wrote a confession, but shouldn't there also be some contrition?
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Perhaps the compulsiveness, irrationality and recklessness are what addiction and plagiarism have in common?
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