HB Squad ALERT! . gossip + snippets
London : Jonathan Cape, 2001
Call No.: MAC
Click here for item availability.
Did Ian McEwan copy parts of his brilliant novel, Atonement from a romance title? Read about the controversy here and here (may need login). Check out Ian McEwan’s reply here.
For the record, Atonement is one of my favourite books of all time. You can check out some reviews here:
New York Magazine
Christian Science Monitor
London Review of Books
What do you think? Know of any interesting book-related news? Want to join the Hb Squad?
Email us at HBeditor@nlb.gov.sg
1 comment
sowhynot says:
Dec 22, 2006
well.. in music there’s sampling, in visual art there’s appropriation art..
so this issue of copying should not be looked at so simply.
I hope NLB can encourage the general public to learn more about the issue that is debated rather than simply referring readers to reports in the media.
A question of morality in the case of literature or other art work requires a deeper consideration than ‘names-calling’
NLB could instead use this chance to encourage more reading to understand the true background of the issues.
In this case, this incident can easily lead us to question the whole meaning of the ownership of one’s written work and thus lead us to consider the relationship between an written work and the author, and of course we can also learn to understand the role of the author as an artist.
The reader might not be able to follow through every recommended reading, but knowing that such possibilities exists expands our mind and the boundaries which the media has indirectly created for it.
I personally think that the public (i.e. the readers) is intelligent, but sometimes when we act as the authority figure, we seem to forget that.