Google Book Search: The New Literary Lie Detector
The plagiarism police have found a new weapon: Google Book Search
First there is the story of Winston Churchill borrowing a few lines from H.G. Wells, though not directly attributed to the Google Book Search technology one would assume there was a good chance the writer employed it during his research.
War of the Worlds – World Wars – Talk about the boundaries of truth and fiction.
I can’t wait to find out who President Bush is getting his lines from.
Then the story of Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan “copying phrases and sentences for his best-selling novel “Atonement” in 2001 from a memoir published in 1977 by Lucilla Andrews, a former nurse and an acclaimed writer of romantic novels”
In McEwan’s reply he acknowledges Andrews as an inspiration but not the source of his text.
Undoubtedly, as our access to information continues to increase, whether through Google Book Search or other research tools, long shadows will be cast on our literary heritage.
This is simply another unintended consequence created by a new technology.
Talk about opening a “can of words”.
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Links to some good stuff regarding the McEwan caper from the Guardian:
John Mullan
John Sutherland
Sarah Crown