Monday, July 30, 2012

Imagine There's Profit In Creativity

Where would retired politicians be without speaking engagements and the income they produce? Yet you know that it's the same speech being given, again and again, to a different audience.

So why all the fuss about Jonah Lehrer recycling his words for profit?

The New Yorker got worked up because the author repeated things he'd written before and presented as fresh. But if Bill Clinton can do it with the spoken word, it seems unfair for Mr. Lehrer to suffer.

From there, however, Mr. Lehrer went a step too far into the world of fiction, and he has now resigned from the magazine.

A journalist cannot make up quotes, you see, because that is a serious violation of ethics that not even a politician would consider....except maybe John Edwards, but we all know what happened to him and it wasn't pretty.

Jonah Lehrer not only recycled pieces from articles, but he wrote an article about the science of creativity and fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan. And then he turned his article into a full book.

A full book that HMH has now pulled from its catalog. Because it's supposed to be non-fiction but it's pure fiction. Well researched, perhaps, but it isn't all real.

Imagine how creativity works and you might imagine how Mr. Lehrer came to create quotes that did not exist, and then put them out in public as if no one would notice.

So Bob Dylan and all those associated with him would never think to read the New Yorker? Never do a Google search to see what's being said about the musician?

The author has apologized, but it's a fair bet that HMH will be looking for a return of the advance and royalties paid to Mr. Lehrer, who did not deliver the manuscript he promised but something not suitable for publication. And it doesn't have any of the elements of a good novel, so it can't just be shelved in the fiction division.

It isn't the first time that a journalist has made up stuff. It won't be the last. 

But can we please not be subjected to another "memoir" from the perpetrator of the hoax?

No comments: