Some Words

Ian McEwan took parts of Atonement from another source and credited it, but not well enough. It’s a tricky one, and I’ll admit that the water is muddier because I liked the novel, a lot. The old adage goes that good artists borrow, and great ones steal. I’m in total agreement with that, but while I think McEwan is clearly good enough to steal, he doesn’t seem to have done so here. First off he sighted it, but the passages are close enough that he hasn’t made them his own. I disagree with Jack Shaefer, in that I like the scanning of the McEwan sample better, of the stuff sited directly in the article. But clearly he didn’t rework the text very much, such that I feel a novel I very much enjoyed was tainted. Obviously this woman’s story was not the same as the novel, I won’t go into why, in case one, or both, of my readers hasn’t read it yet. Still, a little more mulching of the text, to turn it into loam, instead of bits of old vegetables, would have prevented this.

Ah, but the evil thieves are all around us. Why fight?