The Validity of Ideas

In the few chapters that I’ve read of Reality Hunger, Shields has begun to question what is plagiarism and whether we really should abstain from using others’ ideas. The whole structure of the book uses others’ work for his creation and he progressively (or the fragments he uses) talks more about what copying means. In chapter “D” he quotes, “When I worked at a newspaper, we were routinely dispatched to ‘match’ a story from the Times: to do a new version of someone else’s idea. But if we had ‘matched’ any of the Times’s words… it could have been a firing offense.” Shields shows that we are always using others’ ideas no matter what. Even if you are some type of genius, your knowledge has its roots in what other people have thought or discovered. Shields asks, if we are using others’ ideas, then why is it so wrong to use their words? Any work, as Reality Hunger shows, needs information or allusions from other works or people.

Chapter “D” was interesting because it dealt with memoirs, a genre we’ve discussed in class. Shield criticizes memoirs as they are accounts of information. Everyone in the US does them and becomes famous with them. He points out that we shouldn’t try to “frame reality” as even people who write about themselves make up things. Basically he says that all language is rhetorical so we should not look at it in such a restricting way.

JT Leroy

While reading the book I thought it was interesting that not even a person’s ideas are “OK” if they’re not properly presented, according to social standards. Shields mentions JT Leroy several times, and in one point refers to him as a hoax. I looked him up and found out that Jeremiah Terminator Leroy was a pseudonym for Laura Albert, an American writer. Leroy made public appearances and even signed documents, making everyone believe that he was an actual person that wrote in The New York Times, but as soon as Laura Albert was exposed, everyone began attacking her and she was even convicted of fraud. I found this interesting as it shows how superficial society can be with copyrights. It doesn’t actually matter whether Albert or Leroy wrote the articles. What should matter are the new ideas, if she had any, found in her writing. Society shouldn’t limit creativity by having compulsive rules because they destroy the development of literature and knowledge.