The recent micro-fuss about Ian McEwan is ridiculous. His offence was to draw on a memoir by Lucilla Andrews, a writer of “hospital romances”. It was factual material about the grim realities of--Marshal Zeringuenursing in the second world war, which he used when researching the grim realities of nursing in the second world war. There is no copyright in historical material – the Da Vinci Code case re-confirmed that – although there may be in the form of words in which it is expressed. Writers continually re-work each other’s sentences: how else would history be written? Perhaps McEwan should have done that more thoroughly. I am therefore offering a bottle of champagne to the reader who can best re-phrase this: “she dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, acquaflavin emulsion on a cut, and painted lead lotion on a bruise”.
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Re-phrase a line, win champagne
The ruckus over Ian McEwan's debt to previously published work has already been so widely covered in the culture pages that I hestitate to devote any more space to it. But Jan Dalley's take on the matter in the Financial Times is brief enough--and comes with a prize--that I thought I would pass on the money (pun unavoidable) paragraph:
