Goodbye to All That Plagiarism

In my past high school English classes, one of my favorite assignments we would receive was adding a few pages to the text we were reading. I loved it so much because we got to attempt to mimic the author's writing style, which I found to be really fun (and an opportunity to make fun of the author). I attempted to write in the advanced prose of Dickens, the iambic pentameter and Early Modern English of Shakespeare, the detailed stage directions of Arthur Miller, and the descriptive short sentences of Paul Yoon. This recurring assignment is one of my fondest memories of past English classes, and part of what made me realize that creative writing is one of my passions.

The Andover Blue Book defines dishonesty as "including, but not limited to tying, cheating, plagiarizing, misuse of sources, or dual submissions of academic work; fraud of any kind, including, by way of example, deceit regarding permission forms or class excuse notes; or falsifying sign-in." While there is a long list here, it is still extremely general. What falls under plagiarizing? Does the fact that I ended that quote with a period and end-quotation mark as opposed to a footnote or parenthetical citation make it plagiarism? Is saying where the quote came from sufficient?

The first three essays I mentioned above were in my freshman year. The fourth, inspired by Paul Yoon, was part of my tenth grade spring final. We read his book Snow Hunters and were asked to write a few papers, one of which was a three page personal essay. The only criteria was that it had to be clear how it related to Snow Hunters. It could be on any topic we wanted. I chose to write about my great-great-grandparents, highlighting both the struggle they experienced as Jews in late nineteenth century Russia, and the hardships they faced when trying to immigrate to America. Paul Yoon used both intriguing time leaps and short syntax to tell his story, so I used these tools to tell mine. It also reminded me of the main character of Snow Hunters and his journey immigrating from Korea to Brazil.

I had a teacher who once told me that citing work wasn't enough. She would tell our class, "If you go to the store and steal a pair of headphones but then tell all your friends the name of the store you stole it from, is it still stealing?" We would all nod our heads, most of us rolling our eyes in the process. "The ideas have to be yours. You can't just take them from someone else."

After reading Joan Didion's essay titled "Goodbye to All That," I read Eula Biss's version of that same essay, which she called "Goodbye to All That" as well. It was really cool how Biss was able to tell her experiences in New York City in a writing style similar to Didion's but also maintain her own voice and creativity. She told her own story using techniques and inspiration from another author. It made me think of my paper on Snow Hunters.

Would my teacher have called Biss's essay plagiarism? Based on her headphone analogy, I think she might have. But maybe her headphone analogy was too basic. What if you go to a hotel and take the little shampoo bottle home with you? Is that stealing? Are you taking an idea or a bottle of inspiration? You can use the hotel's shampoo or your own shampoo and people will still see the same hair on your head. You can use a writing style inspired by a different author or a writing style you come up with yourself and people will still read the same story. Maybe your hair smells a little different from the shampoo and maybe your story has a different feel to it, but it is still your own hair and still your own idea.

Are the essays I wrote for class plagiarism? I think that as an academic exercise in learning about authors' writing styles, those are okay. What about the blog post I am writing right now? I am currently writing in a style greatly inspired by Eula Biss's essays, telling two separate stories and converging them into one. I wasn't required to do that in the assignment. Does that make this post plagiarism? While I am biased towards not getting reported to the Dean of Studies, I would argue that it is not.

Eula Biss took a wonderful essay and told her own story in the same manner, crediting that essay the whole way. She agreed with parts and disagreed with parts, but still gave it the recognition it deserved. I would hope that Didion would be flattered to hear that her story had such a deep effect on Biss's outlook on the world.