Communal Creativity

By Peter Lloyd

Don't look to me for an opinion one way or the other on the issue of communal creativity. That's what writer Randy Kennedy calls what others call plagiarism. I refrain from taking sides because, I like being appropriated. As a songwriter, it's an honor to have someone perform my work. If they make a million, I want part of it, of course.

So instead of interposing my opinion, allow me to summarize the case for and against communal creativity, because I think it's something creative people—inventors, writers, artists, and all kinds of innovators—might want to consider.

And in the spirit of communal creativity, I think I'll start by appropriating the work of Randy Kennedy in "The Free Appropriation Writer".

It seems a recent, prize-winning novel by the teenage German novelist, Helene Hegemann, uses "sizeable chunks" of another writer's original material. Hegemann, in reply to charges of unoriginality, not only admits appropriation, she defends her cutting and pasting. "There’s no such thing as originality anyway," she says, "just authenticity."

Musicians have been mashing the work of other musicians for some time. Les Paul, the great musician and inventor of the electric guitar, said it best. "To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any." Did he know mashing was coming or just appreciating all the copying musicians had already accomplished?

Kennedy quotes the great James Joyce brushing off qualms about appropriation with, "I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man."

But mashing novelists? Is this really something else, something new, or simply what Isaac Newton might call "standing on the shoulders of giants."

Those less attuned to what Newton was talking about—namely, benchmarking—want to prevent or punish copying from the past. But why start now? Imitation has been championed by the greatest of inventors. Thomas Edison advised his own would-be inventors that, "Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on."

If you read the article by Kennedy, you'll learn that author David Shields has penned Reality Hunger, a work comprised of little more than quotes from other writers.

You'll hear from Patrick Ross, executive director of the Copyright Alliance. He condemns Hegemann. "Our would-be novelist says nothing is original, yet the passages she lifted from other books were original expressions in those books, even if the ideas were not new."

I remain a champion of originality wiser for the sage observation of Voltaire, that, "Originality is nothing but judicious imitation." Besides, we all know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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