Harry Gold

It’s Monday again already, and our short story hour is upon us. Today’s original short story is actually a crock of plagiarized material, refined and reconfigured for my own storied purposes. It was inspired by a literary incident ten or so years ago involving a novelist whose book turned out to be half plagiarized.

I forget the actual details, my safe haven being a poor memory when it can be used to my advantage. What I recall is that in response I wanted to try to write a story that was 100% plagiarized. My version, however, involves taking sentences from a variety of sources, mixing it into a stew in which there is the appearance of design and intent. Like much abstract or surreal art, or a Rorschach test, the mind synthesizes the details and images to infer meanings that are likewise self-revelatory.

Obviously for continuity’s sake I had to use the same name throughout, so I did alter a couple of the sentences to insert my primary character, Harry Gold. In retrospect I wish I had identified all my source sentences, but alas, I recall these few. A couple lines from Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. A sentence from something by Gide. A sentence from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer.

Of the making of many books there seems to be no end. Not everything has quality, but there’s plenty of quality out there. And many great sentences. Reading the great writers is somewhat akin to watching a magician. I’m constantly impressed when I read a simple sentence that is constructed in a manner I just never would have thought of myself. It may be vivid or vague, but it carries a latent spark of dormant kinetic energy that is explosive, and sometimes even profound.

Sometimes there is nothing so wonderful as a good sentence.

Harry Gold

The rule of "nothing unessential" is the first condition of great art. --Andre Gide

After dinner Harry Gold reads us the last two chapters of his La Nuit. The next to last especially seems excellent to us, and Gold reads it very well. Being rich is an occupation in itself, particularly for people who arrive at it via parachute in middle life.

We go out for a walk -- William Williams, Gold and myself. Never has it seemed such a long way to the top of this hill. The road with its tossing broken stones stretches on forever into the distance like a life of agony. It is hot as a furnace on the street and we sweat profusely.

I bring up the question of ownership. "Who owns language? Can a man words? Sentences? The turn of a phrase?"

Gold's face becomes agitated, defiant. "It's mine now. No matter what they say, it's mine."

It occurs to me that Williams doesn't like this reply, but there are no others to turn to and we are forced to accept it. Gold feels guilty because his work is heavy with borrowing. Ideas, phrases, sentences, even whole paragraphs have been shamelessly appropriated, pilfered without attribution, plagiarized.

Harry adds, in a low voice, "The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it."

I can not bear to see him like this. To myself I think, Why do you do these things? In human affairs every solution only serves to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. I consider how sages of the future will describe this historic day.