AEG - borrowings

Stephen Hoy · 12 Apr 2009, 19:02 · from 2009-April.txt.gz

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From: stephenhoy at yahoo.com (Stephen Hoy)
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:02:55 -0500
Subject: (urth) AEG - borrowings
Message-ID: <NGECKNKNFCCKJFJGAFLHMEJBDMAA.stephenhoy at yahoo.com>

Fernando Gouvea recently noted a curious coincidence between Wolfe's 'Peace'
(1975) and Bartis's 'Tranquility' (2001), each work sharing a central
character named Weer. Gouvea also noted certain stylistic similarities,
enough to make us wonder about the extent of the parallels. Let's take a
look at a couple of similar items in AEG, and see if we can detect the
existence of an invisible line between literary theft and literary allusion.

While reading An Evil Guest, I noticed that the character Gideon Chase
shares a name with a central character in Timothy Mo's historical novel, 'An
Insular Possession' (1987). This might be a curious coincidence. It also
might be intentional. It's impossible to know with any certainty without
asking the author (and perhaps not even then).

Suppose that it's not a coincidence. Suppose Wolfe read 'An Insular
Possession' some years ago, and suppose that when he invented the character
of the wizard, he chose the name Gideon Chase as a reflection of some aspect
of this character, intentionally reinforcing the idea of Chase as a figure
bridging the gap between the two cultures colliding in AEG. Is there
anything wrong with that?
Let's take another case: the trembling mountain and the laundress. As Marc
Aramini pointed out in October, Wolfe reviewed a work with a similar motif,
Cory Doctorow's 'Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town' (2005). After
reading both works, it's hard to believe that Wolfe was not self-consciously
referring to Doctorow's mountain & washing machine, and, further, that Wolfe
fully realized Doctorow or any reader of 'Someone Comes to Town, Someone
Leaves Town' would recognize the motif in AEG. Is there anything wrong with
that?

To each of the above, I'd venture a guess that there's nothing wrong with
either act, but I have very different reasons for each guess.

In the case of the name Gideon Chase, it's not clear that Wolfe borrowed
from Mo. Assuming there is a conscious borrowing, there are very few
similarities between the two characters. Personally, I doubt that readers
familiar with both works would suspect Wolfe chose the name as a conscious
reflection of Mo's character, but the possibility exists.

In the case of the mountain and laundress, it's possible Doctorow and Wolfe
each borrowed from a common source, perhaps some work transcribing Algonquin
legends. It's also possible Wolfe asked Doctorow's permission to use the
idea--although one might expect to see a word or two about it in AEG or
perhaps even in an interview about AEG.

But assume Wolfe borrowed these two things without explicit advance
permission, somehow slipping them past the legal team at his publisher. But
is this any different from Wolfe's explicit use of a Baskin-Robbins in an
early chapter? Does anyone imagine that either Mo or Doctorow would object
to Wolfe's particular use as they appear in AEG?

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