What do you think?
I walked into my library today and on the shelf found Quentin Rowan Markam's Assassin of Secrets. I debated what to do, not believing that the librarians could not have heard any of the brouhaha about it. But they had not. When I informed the librarian, I felt like a book banner. She looked at me as I was the crazy lady who is always at the computer by the window playing bingo. And I felt strange.
But should this book be on the shelf?
And then another odd thing happened, the librarian checked on Amazon, looked up, and said to me, "It's a very valuable book. There's a copy for $250."
"Yes," I said, "but that's because Mulholland pulled most of the copies. And because some people like to collect such things."
I am not sure that book is not back on the shelf as I write this. Should it be? And if it is, shouldn't there be a warning that every word "even the thes and the ands" are a lie. (Thanks Mary McCarthy for a good line.) I am not a thief.
What do you think? Should libraries put this book on the shelf and allow people to believe Markam wrote it?
Or should it be burned?
23 comments:
Well, a warning tag on it would probably be my decision as librarian...I'd expect it to be stolen soon, by someone thinking they'd hit a jackpot, though of course an ex-lib probably wasn't going to fetch $250 (but probably more than it should from those driven by the scandal). It's a curiosity, after all...and as long as the "writer"/transcriber isn't making any money from it, as he won't in this situation, it's a lesson in how such things can go. That note would definitely in my scenario point toward the actual novel...and it would be a sad commentary if that original wasn't in the collection.
I petty much agree with Todd. leave it there, with a note slid inside the cover's plastic coating, letting readers know what the deal is. They can make their own decisions.
Todd beat me to it. Once word gets around, it will be lifted by someone.
I wouldn't care to read it. Hell, read the ones he stole from. I have most of them any way.
Little Brown did the right thing in recalling it and ending sales, I see no problem with libraries that have already acquired it making it available to the public. Like it or not, people are curious about it--I know I was. I took it out of my local library and found the book unreadable. About as bad a book as I ever tried reading. But at least it satisfied my curiosity.
I guess it shows you how out of the loop I am. I'd never heard of the guy or the book before. They still have James Frey's books on the shelves so why not this, as Dave says.
It reminds me of when "Dimitri Gat" plagiarized John D. MacDonald's The Dreadful Lemon Sky in his second book, which was recalled and destroyed. Also, he had to apologize.
I've never been tempted to ban books, but there are times when I have no problem "hiding" books I find personally offensive.
Jeff M.
And I had a scrambled sense, not having read the relevant articles at all closely, that he'd plagiarized one source. Sorry the librarian gave you the three-heads treatment...
Didn't know about this either until googling just now on the subject. But then I live in the West of 100 years ago (read: under a rock). I'm thinking now how easy it would be to do a pastiche drawn entirely from westerns without anyone noticing. Fortunately, I don't have that kind of time to kill.
Back when I was a Book Product Supervisor for Tower Records in Sherman Oaks, I dealt with the issue of banning a book.
A customer threatened a "Christian" boycott of our store if the book "Satanic Bible" was not removed from our shelves. The owner of Tower Chain got involved, but they all left it up to me.
The thought of us vs a local boycott appealed to us mavericks that worked at Tower. But it was the beginning of the Holiday season that made us the cash to stay open the rest of the year. We were a CD store with a book section (Top 15 bookseller in the chain). The book had not sold in over a year and remained on our shelf because this was Tower and I had added Christian books for both points of view.
I removed the book for December. Then returned it to the shelf in January when it sold four times as many copies than we had sold in two years and more than we would ever sell again.
Is removing a book from a shelf due to plagiarism the same as banning it? I hope not.
I will bet Rusdie faced this across the globe.
Librarians and booksellers remove books from the selves for a variety of reasons. But you do try to let your customers make the final decision.
Why the librarian thought how much a book sold for on Amazon determined its value worries me more than her leaving the book on the shelf for each reader to decide.
The word banning is overused today. It is hard to get upset when a junior high school library bans a book anyone can buy at a nearby bookstore compared to the book burnings in the past.
But then, this time the book burner was the publisher.
Where is the line for what qualifies a book worthy of a library? It is a question with no right answer.
It worries me that they had three copies of this book on the shelves at a suburban library system. That none of them had heard about this months later. I can't believe it wasn't covered in the trade journals they subscribe to.
I've heard of the book and scandel. The real question is whether Markham's effort amounts to a book. It can't be a banned book if it isn't a book. Was it a serious effort on Markham's part to communicate? I don't think so. Still, there may be the curiousity factor as Dave points out. So while I don't think Markham can complain that his freedom of speech is being abridged (since the book is NOT him actually saying anything) the library may have an interest in keeping this book on the shelves. I'm sure there are thousands of library copies of Million Little Pieces.
My complaints about all the anti-Obama books that our small library system wastes its money on--I'm not talking reasoned policy disagreements, I'm talking hatchet jobs by Ann Coulter, etc.--have fallen on deaf ears, so I'm not surprised that a book that is "merely" plagiarized will stay on the shelf.
I only heard about this situation because of a link on John's Pretty Sinister Books blog some weeks back. (There's also a lot of question about a recent fictionalized version of Edgar Allen Poe's life which appears to have been plagiarized from a lesser-known book published decades ago. I haven't heard much about that, so don't know the outcome.) Matters of whether a book should stay on the shelf aside, I'm baffled as to how plagiarized books get published in the first place. Aren't there software programs to check for this sort of thing? We use a program in school to verify that our students aren't just copying-and-pasting their written reports. A lot of them see not problem with doing just that, I might add.
I think the book should carry a warning.
I go with the warning label argument here.
The closest I as a librarian ever came to banning a book came up around 1980. We acquired a book on herbal medicine that included a chapter on herbal contraception. I could imagine a teenage girl thinking, "Oh good. I don't need to go to my doctor or bother with condoms." The publisher included a disclaimer in tiny type on the verso.
I brought the book up, and we decided to keep it, but I still wonder sometimes.
Deb, those are exactly the books I meant above - Coulter, Glenn Beck, etc.
Patti, I'm disturbed that my library is buying books "by" Snooki (multiple copies!) or Nicole Ritchie. Yet when (say) Bill Crider's new book comes out there is only one copy in the whole system.
Talk about The Dumbing of America.
Jeff M.
Libraries have in my work experience been less than bright, too often, in their acquisitions...willing to stock up on "bestsellers" whether there's a real demand or not because they think there Might be. The Fairfax (VA) County Library System was drowning in uncirculating copies of L. Ron Hubbard novels at the turn of the '90s when I worked there.
Sadly, in the larger picture, I do agree with the demotic urge, to provide the Coulter piles to the patrons who might actually want to read them (if that's what one does)...but the non-purchase and deaccession of good books is much more upsetting to me.
Taking books off the shelves at a library isn't the same as banning them, but it's counterproductive.
The Coulter argument has always bothered me. It is wrong.
Back in my book selling days, my job was not to decide what people should read but to carry what people want to read.
Corporate bought one of the Coulter book. Every time I put it out someone would take it off the shelf and hide it somewhere in the store. The book did not deserve that much attention.
That is a dilemma. A book like this (Markam not Coulter) may end up being a collector's item although most copies have been pulled, I think. No publisher wants to be known as publishing plagiarists.
I'm not advocating censorship, I'm advocating careful consideration of how limited library funds are spent. The right wing does not like Obama--okay, I get that, they have every right to their opinion; but when resources are squeezed, do we really need several copies of a screed that is nothing more than a rehash of the screed that was published last month or last week? No library has unlimited resources and book selection must be based on something more than a patron (or patrons) request. As in the Bill Crider reference above--what is it I can find ten books by Glenn Beck at my public library but have to use the ILL system to get a Bill Crider book?
I'd let the library sell it to a collector and then use the money to buy other books. One book is off the shelf and more legitimate books are on.
Exactly what I suggested, Rob, since they have huge funding issues. A day later, three copies are still on the shelves in the system.
Well, again, not necessarily the brightest allocation of resources Rules OK, as in most bureaucracies.
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