more, then sex

Okay, I just scrolled down real fast and I suppose it's not bad for 10-12 hours work. Probably shouldn't sweat it 'cos ultimately all I could really do is slave away for a bit to gain a few extra points that probably don't mean anything anyway: it's a bit like...water finds it's own level - or...what falls from an apple tree is generally apples. And if you don't get that, what I mean is, whatever I spew is probably gonna be worth anywhere from 62 to 68 - and on a good day we'll be hitting 70s. Despite everything, I'll be disappointed if I get less than 61 for this one.

In other news: have a little short story about sex; you deserve it. (Yes, it's fictional)


Carousel

Sex is for women: I’ve decided. It hits me about the same time her second orgasm begins to hit her, eyes closed maybe looking into some other world. But it’s a world I’m not privy to.
     Still, I make my faces, grab her boobs, maybe slap her arse when the moment demands it. Anything to get her off.
     “Come with me babe,” she says, “I want to feel you come inside me.” She looks down at me glassy-eyed and unfocussed. Long brown hair falls over her shoulders, one sweaty strand reaching for the corner of her mouth.
     I grab her bum and thrust.
     “You’re so sexy baby,” I say, “so fucking hot.”
     She moans at that: she loves a bit of dirty talk. Then she closes her eyes, arches her back and gasps out a couple of loud ones.
     And faster, faster, she humps me now, her pelvis grating hard on mine. Really going for it this time. Really blows my mind. Who is this girl? What is she doing? I feel a smirk spread across my face, watch her curious and amused. And then I turn my head and look over at the chair in the corner of the room, imagine I’m sitting in it quietly gazing over at the bed and seeing all this happen. For some reason I’m wearing blue-checked pyjama bottoms and a long silk smoking jacket; got one of those old-style cigarette holders too – though I don’t think there’s a cigarette. I lift it to my lips and grip it delicately between my teeth. And then I take it out and it becomes a pen and I jot something down in a notepad in my lap. The me in the chair strokes his beard, nods his head, looks on coolly, unperturbed.
     “Interesting, interesting,” he says (is thinking), “it’s as though he is merely a pole and she is riding him like a merry-go-round.”
     A pole, I am: I’m just a pole. But, I try and tell him, it wasn’t always this way: growing up I thought sex was something men inflicted on women, that women were demure and pure and men were ravenous beasts. It was the glory days of the post-feminist thing, every man a potential rapist and all that. And it was Yorkshire, land of the grim-faced miner who came home to his tea on t’table, beat his wife, and maybe grunted into her for thirty seconds of a beer-soaked Friday night while she lay cold and dry and thought of England. Poor women: all that was bad. And as a true child of the era – of a single, free-thinking mother, coming of age in the caring, sharing nineties – I was determined to be good. Books and magazines told us how to do that: several hours of cunnilingus, massage oils and baths; putting the woman’s needs first; delaying our own orgasm for as long as possible; and, above all else, foreplay, foreplay, foreplay. I bought into all this for a long time. It wasn’t until recently I found the truth.
     Take this one, for example, grinding away on top of me, and all that stuff about foreplay goes right out the window. Number one, she doesn’t give a fig for my going down on her – and that’s not because I’m no good – no, I’ve had many satisfied customers, let me tell you – it’s just that it doesn’t give her what she wants: it’s not intense enough, she says. Likewise, number two: sure, she likes a kiss and a caress to get her started – but it don’t take long before I feel the old chap being pulled into her like he’s on some sci-fi tractor beam. And when he’s there, more often than not, she wants it deep and hard and fast. This is what they don’t tell you in the books and magazines: everybody’s different. It ain’t so easy as that.
     I had this one girl once who would have me lick and rub her clit for hours before she wanted me inside her. She got off on that like crazy, squirted all over the place, soaked everything in sight. Even when we finally got down to fucking she’d still have me reaching around and rubbing away. “Rub me,” she’d say, and off I’d go again. Rub, rub, rub. But it was a guaranteed winner and I felt like I’d really got my moves. Only, the next girl I was with, no matter how skilfully I rubbed it seemed I could never hit the right spot. On the other hand, she would go mad for plain old missionary – and what I did discover with her, right when she was on the verge of orgasm: slip a finger in her bum and – bam! – it was like pressing some magic button that had her instantly oh Godding and collapsing in tremors and sighs and done. Nearly everyone likes it up the arse: and when I say “likes” what I really mean is “loves”. Speaking of which...
     I’m close, but I reckon I could hold it off. Sure, it’s awesome when you come together – and sometimes a bit of a letdown when you pass it up, trying to prolong the exercise – another urban myth – but what I’m thinking now is that if I get her off and give it a minute or two she’ll probably let me stick it in her arse and come up there. That would be nice.
     Raise the hips, change the angle, hit some spot. She scrunches her already closed eyes in an expression that, freeze the camera, could be pain, could be pleasure, and brings her right hand up to grab a breast. She lets her mouth drop open and her head tilts to one side. Sweat on my chest, her stomach and back. Change the angle again and hold a buttock in each hand as she moves down to the bed, hair in my face and a tongue burrowing sloppily into my ear. All these slight adjustments in angle and depth that mean so much to them – such sophisticated machinery, so many options – but all we’ve got is a cock that’s either in or out, hot or cold, and mostly it’s a battle to keep the thing from going off before it’s due.
     The ear thing is getting me hot. Fuck the arse. Fuck everything. I want the man in the chair to come on over, join in. He can do the other hole – and another me in her mouth – fuck it! let’s have a fourth and final me in my mouth, up my bum. Dogs and horses and that Irish sweet Catholic virgin girl who did me deep throat and loved to swallow, where is she now, I must look her up. I’ve never cheated but maybe I should. We’ll have a threesome. And that Portuguese with the amazing cunt that rippled in waves and held me tight, squeezed it out of me like some milk-maiding cow. Everything must happen: orgies and black men and piss and blood.
     That’s the mad millisecond I know so well. Another millisecond and all I’m thinking is towels and breakfast and work.
She sighs and flops down on me, sweat sliding on sweat, hearts pumping strong and firm, even as my poor, exhausted cock shrivels and dies inside her. She kisses my face and purrs content, whispering happy. She wraps her arms around me and holds me tight, and I hold her too, just as I’ve been taught.

essaydun

Hm, I haven't written nothing for a while - head busy with other stuff - you're probably all starving?

Well have I got words for you!

But, first, I'll tell you what I've been up to:

I've been thinking about my essay

I've been writing a few little bits here and there

(musings disguised and short stories

my first tentative attempts at plays)

And I've been playing a bit of squash

Helping the missus find a car

Doing my Saturday Sunday afternoon

refereeing session

My Sunday night football

(third hat-trick in four games

team's fourth straight win since I joined;

they won none in thirteen before that)

And then I woke up at 2a.m. this morning to finally start my essay

Had to be in at 12

I think I just about finished it

Would you like a read?

It's probably mediocre and dull...

Using ‘Something Borrowed’ by Malcolm Gladwell as a stimulus, discuss how far ‘Frozen’ by Bryony Lavery plagiarises Gladwell and defames Dorothy Lewis.

How could Lavery have avoided controversy while still completing the play and allowing it to be produced?

Plagiarism: Sin or Symptom?

So the story begins in 1998, when Bryony Lavery pens ‘Frozen’, a three-character play about a psychiatrist, a serial killer, and the mother of one of his victims. It premières at The Birmingham Rep and within six years has reached Broadway, where it garners widespread critical acclaim and is nominated for four Tony awards. Broadway is also where Lavery’s problems begin.

Lavery’s play, it is discovered, is not all her own work. True, she has acknowledged the inspiration of Marian Partington, on whom she based the character of the mother, Nancy, after reading a 1996 article in The Guardian, ‘Salvaging the Sacred’. Also, she has talked extensively of the “fusion” (Gardner, 2002) she made of the killers Fred West and Robert Black, as profiled in Ray Wyre’s Murder of a Childhood, in the creation of her own killer, Ralph Wantage. But what she has failed to mention, in either interview or accreditation, is that whole sections of her play are lifted verbatim from ‘Damaged,’ a 1997 magazine article by Malcolm Gladwell, and that the character of Agnetha Gottmundsdottir, the psychiatrist, has been based on the subject of said article, Dorothy Otnow Lewis.

In ‘Damaged’, Gladwell wrote:

“The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.”

In ‘Frozen’, not once, but twice, the same line appears without any addition, modification, or edit whatsoever. Also:

It is the function of the cortex – and, in particular, those parts of the cortex beneath the forehead, known as the frontal lobes – to modify the impulses that surge up from within the brain, to provide judgment, to organize behaviour and decision-making, to learn and adhere to rules of everyday life. It is the dominance of the cortex and the frontal lobes, in other words, that is responsible for making us human.	The function of the cortex and, in particular, those parts of the cortex beneath the forehead known as the frontal lobes is to modulate the impulses that surge up from within the brain. The cortex and the frontal lobes are there to provide judgement, to organise behaviour and decision-making, to learn and stick to rules of everyday life. Ladies and gentleman...they are responsible for making us human.
Gladwell, in Damaged	Agnetha in Frozen, Act Twelve
I just don’t believe people are born evil. To my mind, that is mindless. Forensic psychiatrists tend to buy into the notion of evil. I felt that that’s no explanation. The deed itself is bizarre, grotesque. But it’s not evil. To my mind, evil bespeaks conscious control over something. Serial murderers are not in that category. They are driven by forces beyond their control.	Most forensic scientists tend to buy into the notion of evil. I don’t. I can’t. I find no evidence that people are born evil. To be evil is, dictionary definition, ‘to be morally depraved.’ To my mind, that bespeaks having conscious control over something. The serial murderers I have tested are not in that category. Their deeds themselves are bizarre, grotesque, life-destroying, but not evil. They are driven by forces beyond their control.
Lewis, in Damaged	Agnetha, in Frozen, Act Twenty-Four

Clearly, whether or not Lavery plagiarised is beyond debate. But what is subject for investigation are the issues around her plagiarism, as well as plagiarism in general, and how it was that she avoided both a charge of copyright infringement – the legal extension of plagiarism – and the devastating stain on her career that one might perhaps expect.

Plagiarism is defined as “taking someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own” and, with particular regard to writing, “literary theft.” (OED, 2006). While not a criminal offence in itself, charges of plagiarism have been enough to bring whole careers to abrupt and shameful halts. It is a moral crime that causes outrage in artistic circles: the stealing of another’s intellectual property for the purpose of advancing one’s own career and reputation. When Doris Kearns Goodwin was found to have plagiarised several other authors in her 2002 biography ‘The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys’ she was forced to resign her position as Pulitzer Prize judge and contributor to a prime-time current affairs show, as well as make financial restitution after bring threatened with a suit for “serious copyright infringement. Four years later, Harvard graduate and teenage novelist Kaavya Viswanathan lost a $500,000 publishing contract when it was revealed that dozens of paragraphs from her book ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life’ had been lifted from as many as five earlier works. All unsold copies of her novel were recalled and destroyed, a lucrative film deal with Dreamworks annulled, and, almost before it began, her career as a writer was over. Lavery, on the other hand, survived. But how?

Ironically, some of the greatest defenders of accused plagiarists have been writers themselves. When Ian McEwan was accused of plagiarising the memoirs of Lucilla Andrews for his novel ‘Atonement’ many prominent authors, including Martin Amis and Margaret Atwood, signed up to a campaign to support him. Likewise, when Helen Keller was found to have subconsciously copied extensively from an earlier work for her short story ‘The Frost King’ – the issue of cryptomnesia, or “accidental plagiarism,” has featured in the lives and work of such luminaries as Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Harrison, and Umberto Eco, among many others – she found a distant ally in Mark Twain, who wrote her in a letter:

How unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that “plagiarism” farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The bulk of all human utterances is plagiarism. No doubt we are constantly littering our literature with disconnected sentences borrowed from books at some unremembered time and now imagined to be our own. In 1866 I read Dr. Holmes’s poems, in the Sandwich Islands. A year and a half later I stole his dedication, without knowing it, and used it to dedicate my ‘Innocents Abroad’ with. Ten years afterward I was talking with Dr. Holmes about it. He was not an ignorant ass--no, not he; he was not a collection of decayed human turnips, like your “Plagiarism Court.”

(Twain, 2011, L.401)

Those who most understand the process of writing, it seems, are those who most understand the issue of plagiarism, and who in turn are most likely to forgive. To that end, Lavery found her salvation hailing from possibly the most unlikely source of all: the pen of Malcolm Gladwell.

While Gladwell was initially offended by Lavery’s ‘borrowing’ – in a strongly-worded fax to Lavery he wrote that her lifting of material without approval was equivalent to theft (Gladwell, 2004) – and made public his intention to support Dorothy Lewis in a lawsuit (Dolnick, 2004) after reading Frozen he came to change his mind. Lavery’s play, he wrote, was

“breathtaking…instead of feeling that my words had been taken from me, I felt that they had become part of some grander cause. [Lavery] was writing a play about something entirely new and she used my descriptions of Lewis’s work and the outline of Lewis’s life as a building block in making that plausible. Isn’t that the way creativity is supposed to work?”

(Gladwell, 2004)

Gladwell felt that Lavery had taken what he had written – some of which he himself described as “boilerplate description…reworked [from] something I read in a textbook” – and “used it as she constructed a work of art” (Gladwell, 2004). In essence, she had breathed new creative life into his words, and expressed them to the world in such a significantly innovative way, as to transcend all accusations of plagiarism. Through the notably philosophical generosity of the one she had sinned against, Lavery was saved.

We can presume, however, that none of Gladwell’s epiphanies around the nature of plagiarism came as welcome news to Dorothy Otnow Lewis, who required his support in her legal case against Lavery: she had asked him to assign to her the copyright of his article and, while at first acquiescing, he later changed his mind. Lewis had been considerably more vocal in expressing how she felt about having her words and events from her life transplanted into a play:

“She stole my life. I was absolutely staggered. I felt I’d been robbed and violated. Can you imagine what it is like to find that a character is not just like you, it is you? It made me very angry.”

(Thorpe, 2004; Gladwell, 2004; Dolnick, 2004)

Lewis asked her lawyer “to pursue several legal remedies, including receiving credit in all advertisements and programs for the play, a public announcement of [her] biographical contributions to the character, and a monetary settlement, including a share of any future film or television sales” (McKinley, 2004). Lewis also made accusations that Lavery had lifted “a great deal of material” from her book ‘Guilty by Reason of Insanity’ (Przymusinski, 2004) – even going so far as to say “she stole my book” (Thorpe, 2004) – though evidence for this appears somewhat tenuous, based as it is around three non-derivative anecdotes:

‘Guilty by Reason of Insanity’	‘Frozen’
One of the murderers Lewis had written about had once said, “it was one of those days.”	Ralph, in Act Three, says, “it’s one of those days.”
Lewis wrote about biting her sister’s stomach as a child.	Agnetha fantasises about “sinking [her] teeth into [an air stewardess’s] neck…and biting out her throat.” (Act Six)
Lewis writes about “rushing out of the house with a black carry-on and two black pocketbooks.”	At the end of Act One, stage directions read, “[Agnetha] picks up her travel documents, bag, etc.”

It is hardly, it would appear, enough to support a case of copyright infringement. Furthermore, what Lewis didn’t realise at the time of her accusations was that ‘Frozen’ was already written, rehearsed, and but two weeks away from its première performance by the time Lewis’s book had been released: hardly enough time for Lavery to plunder its pages and rework her script. And, one imagines, had she somehow landed a copy earlier – through pre-publication, for instance – she would have done rather more with it than the aforementioned triumvirate of similarities. Without Gladwell’s assigning of his article to her, Lewis had no case to make, and while current published editions of ‘Frozen’ cite ‘Damaged’ as a source of inspiration, the only mention of ‘Guilty by Reason of Insanity’ is as a direction to readers and viewers who wish to develop their interest in the subject.

So, Lavery has managed to avoid two allegations of copyright infringement, but what of the third charge: that of defamation?

“Dorothy Lewis says that one of the things that hurt her most about ‘Frozen’ was that Agnetha turns out to have had an affair with her collaborator, David Nabkus. Lewis feared that people would think she had had an affair with her [real life] collaborator, Jonathan Pincus. ‘If everything up to that point is true, then the affair becomes true in the mind,’ Lewis told me. ‘That’s slander.’”

(Gladwell, 2004)

For a charge of slander, libel or defamation to be sustained, several criteria must be met, the most important of which are that “the accused has degraded the reputation of the complainant in the eyes of right-thinking persons” and that “the complainant is readily identifiable in the work in question.” (Lyons, 2011) But was Dorothy Lewis so obviously synonymous with the character of Agnetha Gottmundsdottir? To her, in the heightened emotional state she was so clearly propelled into by the issue, she was – and, of course, in Agnetha’s words at least, she was right. But how about to others? To the public at large? To, even, her own friends? Anecdotal evidence would suggest not: nobody links Lewis so explicitly with ‘Frozen’ until Lewis herself reads the play. Up until that point, even though acquaintance after acquaintance had recommended ‘Frozen’ to her, it is purely because of the subject matter and nothing to do with any notion that she is in it her or that her life had been “stolen” (Gladwell, 2004). If her own friends and associates fail to see the connection, how could the general public? Consequently, the idea that Agnetha’s fictional affair could have caused Lewis’s reputation to be degraded is, for all intents and purposes, rendered a moot point – though not one worthy of exploration. On the subject of her characters – speaking before the plagiarism story broke – Lavery had this to say:

“These are not real people; they are characters that I have imagined with feelings that I have imagined (Gardner, 2002). A fiction writer should really research and then make it up herself. So it is based on people’s accounts but the imagining is to do with me. I didn’t want to even suggest that these people were real” (Front Row, 2002).

While Agnetha may share Lewis’s job, her work, and even speak some of her words, the rest of her – her temperament, her personality, her manner of expression, her very thoughts and emotions and, in Lewis’s own words, her “essence” (Gladwell, 2004) – are entirely the creation of Bryony Lavery. In this, again, she receives backing from Gladwell:

“Lavery has every right to create an affair for Agnetha, because Agnetha is not Dorothy Lewis. She is a fictional character, drawn from Lewis’s life but endowed with a completely imaginary set of circumstances and actions.”

(Gladwell, 2004)

In the event, Lavery, though scarred, has emerged from this rather well – especially when we look at the fate that befell Viswanathan, Goodwin, and even Helen Keller, who as a 12-year-old was subjected to a trial before a panel of teachers and left so traumatised by the incident that she never again attempted a work of fiction. She has written further successful plays, been contrite in interviews – including one with Gladwell, in which she took him flowers, cried, and said, “I’m sorry” (Gladwell, 2004) – and vowed never to repeat her mistake:

“I felt so guilty – and I still do – that I hadn’t taken care of other people’s words well enough. I’ve changed the way I write. I make sure that I’ve left any research that I’ve done a very long way behind. What happened has made me much more careful and that’s a good thing. I think, writing Frozen, I was immensely naive and very stupid.”

(Gardner, 2006)

And so, one hopes, all suspicions of plagiarism in the works of Bryony Lavery are well and truly behind her: she knows what to do now, having been taught by this experience, and given the chance to live it all again there are no doubt many things she would do differently. Such as:

• Credit her sources. Lavery managed this on a multitude of occasions with regard to Partington and Wyre, yet Gladwell and Lewis were never mentioned. Some playwrights, such as Naomi Wallace and Sarah Ruhl, even go so far as to include citations and bibliographies with their work.
• Rewrite rather than copy. While the difference between plagiarism and paraphrasing is, on the whole, a matter of technicalities and [logistics], by our current value standards it does not violate ethical code. In fact, if we are to believe Twain, it’s all we are doing anyway.
• Contact significant contributors before the play is written: had she asked Gladwell to quote his article – “even liberally” – prior to production, he would, he says, “have been delighted to oblige” (Gladwell, 2004). What Lewis’s response would have been, we can only guess at – though she did say she “wouldn’t have cared if [Lavery had done] a play about a shrink who’s interested in the frontal lobe and the limbic system. I see things week after week on television…using material Jonathan and I brought to light and it’s wonderful” (Gladwell, 2004). The problem was in using “her life” – therefore…
• If she plans again to use the life of a living other as the basis for her work – and that other is readily identifiable and potentially defamed – she should either disguise her inspiration beyond recognition, or seek approval of her work before the project is finalised.
• Though rarely applied in the production of theatre, television and film makers practise ‘negative checking’ in order to establish that fictional characters and real people cannot be confused. Though it would be hard to imagine the words, “Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental” prefacing ‘Frozen.’
• With the benefit of hindsight, excluding the revelation of the affair between Agnetha and her colleague David would perhaps have saved Lavery some trouble. Certainly, Lewis didn’t like it, and it appears to have fuelled her hurt and ire more than any charge of plagiarism. Plus, artistically speaking, it could be argued that this disclosure is superfluous to the message of the play and even detracts from its climax. Hard to imagine Lavery agreeing with that opinion, though. (Post-furore, Lavery did modify Agnetha’s part in Frozen to a small degree, removing a scene in which she kisses Ralph on the cheek, based on a similar kiss Dorothy Lewis shared with Ted Bundy as related in ‘Damaged.’)
• Similarly, she might also have done more to modify and disguise the fictionalised version of Lewis’s colleague Johnathan Pincus , who reappears as the not-dissimilarly-named “David Nabkus.” Could she have made him a woman? A team? Omitted altogether what is really only a briefly visited and rather inconsequential character without adversely affecting the impetuous of the play? I think she could have. Likewise, looking at changing the basic details of a character – their gender, nationality, age or race – should be an effective way to not only hide the origins of one’s inspirations but also help protect them from any potential emotional hurt and real world difficulties that might arise from being portrayed on the stage or screen.

Bibliography

Eco, Umberto; et al, Interpretation and Overinterpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1992
Keller, Helen, The Story of My Life, The Echo Library, 2007, p.226

Lavery, Bryony, Plays 1, Faber and Faber, 2007

McEwan, Ian, Atonement, Vintage, 2002

Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2006

Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Volume 1, Issue 1, Navajivan, 1956 p.35

Reznek, Lawrie, Evil or Ill?: Justifying the Insanity Defence, Routledge, 1997

Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Art of Writing, BookSurge Classics, 2009, p.66

Twain, Mark, Innocents Abroad, Penguin Classics, 2003

Twain, Mark, Mark Twain’s Letter – Volume 5, Amazon Kindle edition, 2011

U.S. Census, April 1, 1930, State of Illinois, County of Cook, City of Chicago, enumeration district 1955, p.19-A, family 428

Articles

Dolnick, Sam, Tony-Nominated Playwright Bryony Lavery Accused of Plagiarism, Associated Press, 25th September 2004

Gardner, Lyn, I Was Naïve and Stupid, The Guardian, 6th April 2006

Gardner, Lyn, In Cold Blood, The Guardian, 26th June 2002
Gladwell, Malcolm, Damaged, New Yorker, 24th February 1997

Gladwell, Malcolm, Something Borrowed, New Yorker, 22nd November 2004

Goodman, Ellen, Sermons are Easy, Life is More Difficult, Boston Globe, 19th July 1997

Hoyle, Ben, Literary Lions Roar in Plagiarism Row, The Times, 9th December 2006
Hoyle, Ben, McEwan Hits Back at Call for Atonement, The Times, 27th November 2006

Juskalian, Russ, You Didn’t Plagiarise, Your Unconscious Did, Newsweek, 6th July 2009

Kellaway, Kate, Comedy of Terrors, The Observer, 23rd June 2002

Langdon, Julia, It’s a Matter of Good Manners, Mr McEwan, The Daily Mail, 9th December 2006.

McKinley, Jesse, ‘Playwright Created a Psychiatrist by Plagiarizing One,’ Accusers say, New York Times, 25th September 2004

Partington, Marian, Salvaging the Sacred, The Guardian, 18th May 1996

Przymusinski, Marcel, Professor alleges Tony-Nominated Play Steals From Her Life Story, 28th September 2004

Thorpe, Vanessa, ‘Author ‘Stole my Life,’ says Psychiatrist’, The Observer, 26th September 2004

Newsweek, Jul 7, 2009: You Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did

Radio

Front Row, BBC Radio 4, July 3rd 2002

Websites

BBC

BBC Radio 4 – Front Row

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/frontrow_20020703.shtml

Playwright Accused of Plagiarism

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3693538.stm

Malcolm Gladwell

gladwell.com/pdf/damaged.pdf

gladwell.com/pdf/borrowed.pdf

gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/04/viswanathangate.html

gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/2006/05/alright_alright.html

The Guardian

Salvaging the Sacred

www.lexisnexis.com/uk/nexis/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T13113536148&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T13113536152&cisb=22_T13113536151&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=138620&docNo=6

Comedy of Terrors http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2002/jun/23/features.review27

Author stole my life, says psychiatrist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/sep/26/arts.artsnews

I Was Naïve And Stupid

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2006/apr/06/theatre3

In Cold Blood

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/jun/26/artsfeatures

New York Times

Playwright created a psychiatrist…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/theater/newsandfeatures/25frozen.html

Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/books/25book.html

Other press

Tony-Nominated Playwright Bryony Lavery Accused of Plagiarism

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227134/posts

Professor alleges Tony-Nominated Play Steals From Her Life Story

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2004/sep/28/professor-alleges-tony-nominated-play-steals-from

You Didn’t Plagiarize, Your Unconscious Did http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/07/06/you-didn-t-plagiarize-your-unconscious-did.html

Teen Author Denies Intentional Copying

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/12494858#12494858

A Historian and Her Sources

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/793ihurw.asp

Lynne McTaggart on Doris Kearns Goodwin

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/817fdukv.asp

Sermons Are Easy, Life Is More Difficult

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1997-07-19/news/9707210073_1_prom-parenthood-gloria-feldt

Other

George Harrison

http://cip.law.ucla.edu/cases/1970-1979/Pages/brightharrisongs.aspx

John Dorsey

http://www.springerlink.com/content/t12283773872433u/fulltext.pdf

Anything else which appears to be lacking accreditation – isn’t. It’s simply “news.”

And that's that. I feel a little bit disappointed in it, knowing there were several things I didn't say. I missed talking about Lavery's defence, which I had all laid out - something to do with her thinking it was "news"; and her mother died; and she lost her research folder - and I didn't really get into false memory syndrome and cryptomnesia, which was what I'd been planning all along. It also appears that I don't really have a conclusion - and there's a reason for all that: I ran out of time. Thing is, I thought I had like two hours and everything was going swimmingly and then - wham! - I got sucked in by the whole bibliography thing and it just took me ages and ages to sort out all my citations, find the web addresses, publishing dates, blah blah blah. I think I might do that first next time (no doubt I'll be last-minuting it again then) - although, all being well, that's about it for me as far as essays go this lifetime.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was possible sources for Gladwell's famous quote. Maybe it's a good job I did run out of time because that would've been at least another five hundred words and I was already pretty much bang on the three thousand word limit - without any effort whatsoever on my part, I might add: it all just flowed out and ended and added up to what it was quite naturally (not that I'm impressed with the content).

Anyways, thinking I might be able to wangle a few extra hours from my tutor I decided to write that part of it just in case, and that's what you'll find here (not that there's a cab in Hull's chance that anyone's still reading this):

Finally, there is the ‘smoking gun’ of the quote by Gladwell mentioned at the very top of this piece: “The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.” Lavery borrowed it and Gladwell nobly acquiesced for the sake of art and creativity – the humble hack seeing his words birthed with an energy and a life of their own – and yet, in this, his quest to stand above any notion of intellectual property (it should also be noted that he has written sympathetically in support of Kaavya Viswanathan, despite overwhelming evidence against her), he has perhaps done himself a disservice. “The difference between a crime of evil…” is already a line of art and poetry: a line so memorable and easy on the ear – and so succinct in summing up one of the main themes of the play – that it is by far and away the most quoted in critical reviews. One may go so far as to say it is the best line in the play – and perhaps it is little wonder that Bryony Lavery chose to cut-and-paste it whole rather than attempt a reworking. Gladwell absolutely had a case for copyright infringement and, perhaps, even, an excellent claim for a share in royalty payments, given its importance and contribution. And yet, as we have seen, he was also right in letting it pass to Lavery – in his own words, acknowledging that he “had a good, long ride with that line – and let it go.”

Gladwell also muses as to how that line may have formed in his own subconscious, correctly stating that Gandhi is quoted as saying, “secrecy is a sin and a symptom of violence” (Pyarelal, 1956, p.35), while it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he came into contact with a widely-read psychology journal that twice features the phrase “sin and symptom” (Dorsey, 1968) or a book on the insanity defence, in pre-publication at the time Gladwell was concocting his article, entitled “Evil or Ill?” (Reznek, 1997) Closer to home, he may want to consider this statement of Lewis quoted earlier in ‘Damaged’:

“Serial murderers are not...intrinsically evil...[they] simply suffer from a dysfunction of the brain, the way cardiac patients suffer from a dysfunction of the heart”

Or, in other words, “they are not necessary evil, they are ill.” But I am paraphrasing – how about this quote from Ellen Goodman, writing in the Boston Globe on young mothers who kill their babies?

“My friend does not want to hear me say that there is a difference between evil and illness.”

Goodman wrote that in July 1997, about four months before ‘Damaged’ was published; it was syndicated nationally in many different newspapers and it is highly likely that Gladwell read it. If Nietzsche could subconsciously reproduce several paragraphs of writing fifty years after reading – and if Helen Keller could write a whole story plagiarising another she had no memory of coming into contact with – and if George Harrison could write an entire song that was so closely matched in melody, structure, tempo, key, and rhythm that the two recordings can be played almost perfectly in tandem – then what of Malcolm Gladwell and his much-quoted, famously-plagiarised 21-word sentence?

Yeah, probably a good job: it don't really say much. The Lavery defence, though, is nagging me - it wouldn't have taken much - and I do think the false memory/accidental plagiarism could've been groovy.

So all you crazy kids out there who google some words and find yourself here and want to nick my stuff - go right ahead! It ain't nothin' I ain't never not done myself.

Cheers!

In a room at the uni of leeds...

Should be working, or maybe eating
but instead posting blogs from long ago
mad words that no one will ever read
unless i get famous and die
or famous and live
or someone decides to stalk me and my past

Here's what I wrote eleven years ago this week.
What was I on?
Ah
Beautiful, innocent
Fresh-faced Rory
Sweet and stupid and sincere

Everytime I look back I think
What an idiot!
Never been a time when I didn't
And you know what means?
That because I'll look back to today
And think the same
I'm being an idiot right now
Always have been
Always will be
What joy! :-)

Today

Today, I think, I could have done some of the following:

• Clean bits of rubble out of the cupboards in the flat
• Tidy up the back storage area
• Go to town and buy some useful things from the pound shop (hot water bottle, other things I can't currently remember)
• Write something creative
• Work on my essay

Instead, I've come to campus with my computer and sat on a sofa uploading really old diary entries to this blog. Naturally, I've read some of them too. Seems like I was really bonkers for a while there (spiritual phase) and sort of angry and wild for a period in my early twenties. Meanwhile, the theme of needing to get something off my chest has been pretty much constant.

PS Isn't sex strange? I see a video of a woman enthusiastically sucking a man's penis and I get turned on and fancy a bit of it myself; but if I see a video of a woman enthusiastically sucking a saveloy I'd just think it was a bit weird. Similarly, licking a vagina fires certain things in my brain and I feel pleasure - yet there about a million more things I could lick that, physically, would feel about the same, but they probably wouldn't rock my world. It really is ninety percent in the brain. And the thing is, sometimes I realise this and can see how it's working and it takes out all the magic. Then it's just sort of strange and funny.

Sex is for women, I've decided: they really seem to get something out of it. The man's job is just to provide that for them, and the best way to do that is to not enjoy it too much.

Still, they have invented a thing for a man to find pleasure and that thing is called "a blow job".

You can read said old diary entries by looking to your right and clicking on years that no longer exist, such as 1997, or 2008.

Jeez.

what the hell

So the flat is looking lovely: Ali's really gone to town and put a ton of effort in, painting cupboards and putting up all the little girly knickknacks she's accumulated over the years. I dread to think what it would have looked like if it had been left up to me (the same as it was when we moved in probably). The flat is cosy and cold and, having things like electricity and gas metres where you have to pop in fifty pences, it's got this olde worlde - 1980's - charm. Even though we're not poor we feel poor living there - being far more prudent with the lights and things - and we sort of like it, there really is a romance about not having any central heating and a bit of mildew in the corner.

In other news, I half-did my essay and decided that half was enough, proceeding then to waffle on in blog-style about what I would write when the time comes to do it for real: it was only a draft deadline, after all - which isn't really a deadline when you think of it. The essay's about plagiarism and, in particular, the furore that surrounded Bryony Lavery's 'Frozen' when it emerged that she'd nicked some words from the world's favourite fuzzy-headed Canadian, Malcolm Gladwell, and an uptight psychiatrist. It's actually quite an interesting subject - I reckon I can squeeze in brief excursions into cryptomnesia and even past life regression - though I do fear I won't be able to manage being snide and bitchy towards Gladwell, who sort of rubs me up the wrong way with his convenient, and shallow, wool-over-eyes theories and asinine physical descriptions of people that he likes. Not surprised he was so ultimately generous to Lavery: once you've looked deeper and realised his ideas don't really amount to much all you're really left with in his books is a summarised collection of fascinating psychological experiments - or, in other words, other people's work.

Then, for Tuesday, I was supposed to write a short story that began and ended with the same sentence. I had in mind that I could do something about South Elmsall, the sentence being "This is where I'm from," expressing the idea that, in the beginning, that phrase was sort of uttered in disbelief, and in the end, acceptance. But, as before, I couldn't get down to it and just did what I did last week, which was rehash a story I wrote a couple of years back. Well, at least it's not stuff I submitted for my BA - and I do believe I managed to improve on it.

Not being able to write is starting to become a bit of a worry. I mean, this is why I'm here, and sort of what I've set my whole life up to do. But short stories seem sort of pointless, and perhaps longer stories - ie, novels - would do too. When I contemplate what I'm capable of, and what people like Raymond Carver and Roald Dahl have already done, I'm not sure I can be bothered. What's the point in trying to do something in a field where it seems like everything I could achieve has already been done? Of course if it gave me great joy, if it was something I loved to do, then that's a reason. But writing short stories is something I feel I do out of obligation, there's no real drive towards it. Again and again it comes down to my wanting to write memoir-style musings and recollections - and always it feels like that's just about the most frowned-upon area of writing imaginable. Self-absorption, they say. Egotistical young men's drivel. And who am I to say they're wrong? Anyways, it's all getting ahead of myself: here I am and I've stories and essays to write and, whether they flow or produce joy or not, I'm sure they'll get done, and get the grades, and I'll devote my energies to the things I love. Maybe.

I was feeling quite emotional yesterday. I was wandering around Leeds and I got the sense you get when everything has fallen into place, when all the planning and struggles and dreams are over, and life begins. No more flat-hunting, no more job-hunting - no more thinking about whether it'll be an MA or Mexico, or girlfriend to hunt for, or logistics to do with moving, humping possessions, finding sporting outlets. Everything's been done and all that's left is reality. And reality can be scary. Or, at least, my reality frightens me - for what will I be when this year's over? That sense of not being able to write, and not even wanting to write creates an image in my head of the me post-MA and it's a me bereft of anything of this world: a me who has no interest in working or jobs or materialism, who has no more struggle to overcome to be in a position to write whatever he wants - that will have already been done - and a me who will be as weightless and unanchored as a helium balloon. Where will I float to? Will I float to a monastery in Tibet, or massively-bearded to the canyon in Mexico? Or will I float downstream, perhaps in the River Aire, bloated body and a 100-word article in the local paper. Without words there is nothing. And I'm not sure I want them. Certainly, it doesn't appear the world's that bothered...

It's not depressing; it's just a temporary arising, and it's interesting. Of course, all will work out well - he says as a young and non-desperate good-looking guy with a whole lot of years ahead of him. But what if I just go homeless and hairy and mad? Well I suppose there's always the old spirituality to get back to: they don't mind accommodating you when you're between 1 and 3 of those things. Must just remember not to get the girlfriend pregnant; that'll change everything...

I dreamed this morning that she'd had four kids. I also dreamed that I was in a house and a bear was trying to break in. I pushed it out but it got in another way and I think, after a wee bit of toing and froing, it started to eat me. Didn't like that. But when I woke up I remembered how John Milton had once told me that a person should relax into every situation and a little while later I'd applied it in a dream where a bear wanted to eat me and it was all good. Now I'm fighting it. We had unprotected sex last night - as ever, though it's a bit close to the ovulation point - and when I woke I had been thinking 'morning after pill'. But I guess I'll just relax into it.

All humans currently alive came into being 'cos someone put a cock into someone's fanny and spurted semen out of their balls. That's what your mammy and daddy were doing 6-9 months before you were born: getting sweaty and saying, fuck yeah, and, ohmygod and that's why you're here. What the hell. It's a mad, mad world.

Emails from a reader

Mark

Hey Rory, at least hope this is Rory and not some automatic response thing. Though you did give your email out at the end of the book so I’m guessing you might have to reply to some of the 100 of emails you get. Just finished your book discovering beautiful. Really liked most of it, well the first three quaters of it. The spiritual part lost me a wee bit. It’s not that I have anything particularly against that kinda thing, I just got the impression you were trying to convert the reader. Anyway I’m sure my opinion is of no relevance to you, bottom line it was a good read because it felt as if far a  large part of it I was with you in the discovery which i guess is what your aim was.

Anyway look I’m a singersongwritter and I’m in the last year of my degree, which I can’t wait to finish. I’m hitting the road myself but unlike you I will be doing it with a lifelong companion. The type of guy that greats a story everywhere he ventures. the reason I’m contacting you is that while I know it was such a long time ago, i was wondering if you’d recommend any spots in particular you think are worth visiting. We have a very loose plan that relies heavily on the generosity of people and my skills as a performer. Were the types of guys that if we were down to our last tenner wed defiantly spend it on a pint or whatever were able to get our hands on. I also was gona document it, but as I’m guessing most of the journey I’ll be playing catch op with consciousness I don’t really now whether I’ll be up to the task. As a man with experience in the subject was wondering if you have any tips..

Ano the world has changed since you travelled, and customs may be a wee bit stricter on two 21 year old Irish men, do you think you could still do it with no real visa. Or preparation? I’m hoping. Hoping you’ll say, that’s the beauty of it. But who knows. Anyway if you couldn’t be arsed replying no worries, don’t blame you. To be honest I’m sending this email to avoid the inevitable uni work.

Good read anyway, hope you return to the road again someday.

Me

Hi Mark, glad to hear you dug the book - well, three quarters of it! :-) - where is it you're thinking of heading to? Are you meaning places in America or the world in general?

Mark

Well were starting of in the states, mainly because they dig the irish accent, and because have of them believe there from there. Then we plan to head to S.America,  Austrialia and up into Asia. Although this trip is supposed to be a year out, we have absolutelty no boundries as to how long it will last and no immediate desire to return. Our only fear is that either one of us fall in love and become afraid of continuing on.

Me

Maybe things in the States have changed a bit since I was last there (2000) though I couldn't really say. Canada's a cool country that I've spent a lot of time in since and entering the US overland used to be easier. Plus you can get great one-way flights to Canada with canadianaffair.com. Depends when you go I suppose: the winter's not so much fun. But the rockies are awesome and it's very chill out west - Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Nelson, BC - which is also true of the States: seems to me that all the good stuff was west of the rockies in California, Utah, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, etc, etc. That's where I'd go if I was going back - perhaps especially Colorado and California (San Fran and north). Great people, great country. Though I do still have a soft spot for Charlottesville.

I was back in Mexico in 2009, hitched across from near Cancun right back to the Baja. Nothing much changed there. And my current girlfriend just got back from going overland from Mexico City to Venezuela. It's all groovy, really: the whole wide world. Only thing I'd be cautious about would be entering the US with guitars, as they might think you're wanting to work there. Maybe find out about that from others who have done it - not the naysayers that haven't - and see if you'd be better off buying them when you're out there. And don't enter the US without a ticket out of the country, they don't like that. Though maybe somewhere like Niagara it'd be okay. If you show you've got a ton of money in the bank before you get there that helps. Print out a statement or something. And if you haven't got a ton of money try and find a way to make it look like you have (eg, fake the statement) and take a credit card too.

Really all I've got to say is be open to stuff and go wherever you feel like. Depends what you're after really. But it's a world of possibilities. Don't worry too much when you get down to your last five dollars and you've nowhere to sleep - it always works out. Be good to people and let them demonstrate their generosity if that's what they want to do. A tent and a sleeping bag are good things to have, and then you've got ultimate freedom. And travel light: in fact, take almost nothing. These days I travel with a small daypack and I've been away for six months+ with one of those: never lacked for anything and always ending up with things I didn't need. Earlier this year I went to Israel for two weeks with just the clothes on my back and zero plans and it worked out fine.

I can't think of nothing else. Main thing is just to do it: whatever you can imagine you can probably do. But too many people just follow the narrow lines and don't really experience what's possible.

Have a blast!

Rory

warmup

It’s 3.58 in the a.m. I’ve just walked to campus and now, I suppose, I’m going to start work on my essay. It’s due in 11 hours; should be plenty of time. I even have one or two ideas of what I’m going to write about.

We moved house yesterday: it went okay, mostly because Nicola did pretty much all the work. I had to referee – did well – and later on play 5-a-side. Must cut down on my sport.

So the essay: no doubt I’ll be crying and tearing my hair out soon enough – though by the time you read this it may be done, to a fashion. I’m such a bad student. But not such a bad human being.

With love,
Rory

rory's most stressful week what anyone's ever had (even starving people and people living in warzones with child soldiers and shit)

tell me about your week. what's to say? it's been fraught with things - things mostly revolving around the impending doom headache of my university course, which is suddenly starting to kick in and the realisation of essays and short stories and reading that i'm not doing and inabilities. i have an essay due on monday, a short story on tuesday - and the words just ain't in me - but that's the future. monday i turned up to classes, sat there, played squash after, home for 10.30 - though sunday, let's see, i did my first ever game of refereeing a football match and i really, really enjoyed it, felt like i did a good job (some of the boys said "best ref in three years" which made me chuffed - though yesterday i reffed again and i was shite). shall i abandon this mode of typing? i'm not sure. i've got eric in mind, who i know reads this, and maybe i should make it more easy on the ear/eye. or maybe it already is. so that's monday.

The thing about this week, I feel, was stress. Every day I think about finding a place to live, finding a job. It's been like this for weeks. And then add to that the, like I say, impending doom of university work and it all feels like too much. Managing the girlfriend too. And the commute: we've been living in South Elmsall and though I thought I'd only have to go to Leeds twice a week and could spend the rest of the time chilling here it's been nearly every day, and getting home late, and -

Sunday, like I say, I refereed that football match, and then Ali and I wandered around looking for houses, tried to go climbing at the gym - got there too late - and then rushed down an all-you-can-eat curry before I headed DIRECT for a 5-a-side football game with my old team down at Goals. The curry man said, how many you usually score? Two or three? Tonight you'll get six. I figured it's a real test of whether or not I am actually superhuman to play 5-a-side after an all-you-can-eat curry. But I scored 4, and missed a penalty, and to be honest should have easily had six but for the keeper making a lot of good saves. Nice to know I still got it, don't need to retire to the cards and the whistle just yet.

The other thing about this week that, on top of everything else, I organised WAY TOO MUCH SPORT. So, like I say, two football matches on Sunday (one reffed, one played); then 90 minutes of squash on Monday; then TWO 90-minute games of squash on Tuesday; then 9-a-side on Thursday (played first twenty minutes in goal, we were losing 2-0; I said, enough of that, went up front, banged in 4, set up another, and we won 6-5); then a game of squash on Saturday followed by reffing; then today I'm reffing and playing 5-a-side again. It was a bit ridiculous. And the squash was after classes, 8.15 till 9.45, and it was all a bit much.

Tuesdays abiding memory is turning up for the short story class not having written the story I'm supposed to have, nor having done the reading - a real paltry amount of reading - and I'm not quite sure how it's happened. Sit there feeling cross with myself and trying to put on a face that says, yes, of course I've done the reading, I just don't feel like adding anything to the discussion. Don't think it worked. Resolve to pull my finger out.

Oh, and also that was the day when my girlfriend read some of blog - including the last entry (Love?) and that obviously created some problems. Although she handled it very well - she handles everything very well (ooh: innuendo) - and we had a talk. Pretty good in the end - but must have been shit for her to read some of the things she did. Don't know what to say about that really. Poor thing. I wish she hadn't read it (don't put it out there in the public domain then).

Wednesday I got down to some essay research: it's about plagiarism and Malcolm 'fuzzy Jew' Gladwell and the playwright Bryony Lavery. My 'research' led me on to such topics as false memory, cryptomnesia and past life regression. Thought I'd write it over the weekend but, alas, that hasn't happened. So that leaves tomorrow.

And now, coming to Thursday, I realise that wasn't Wednesday all, that was Thursday. Wednesday, I meant to get down and do some research, maybe hit up a short story or two, but instead what happened was I woke up, realised I'd left my keys sticking out of a computer at uni (they're on a USB stick) and I spent a few hours feeling frantic and trying to get someone I know in Leeds to go and look for them (I don't really know anyone) before giving up and deciding, arses, I shall have to go and get 'em myself. So it's on the bike, down to the station, on the train, cycle to uni, look for the keys, they're not where I left them, let's go to security, but first this nice lady, and - there they are, right by her 'puter. So I got the keys. And, of course, it all worked out wonderfully.

On Sunday we'd been in Headingley and passed a newsagents and I'd jotted down some numbers for some flats (one of which I saw on Monday and thought we ought to take, for lack of wanting to look any more, though a 'warning' dream about it that night put me off). So I'm off to Leeds solely to reclaim some lost keys: that won't do. So I rush frantic and arrange to see some flats and, whaddya know, the first one I think is really sweet, it's dirt cheap - sort of dated and grotty, not the kind of thing you see on TV, the kind of thing everyone wants these days - but it feels good. Girlfriend sees it the next day, digs it too, and we sign up. We're moving in this afternoon. And all because I forgot my keys.

So that was Wednesday. Thursday I did my research. Friday, I tried to write stories, got flummoxed, had to make love to the girlfriend - she's been a bit deprived of late - and ended up not really doing very much at all. Seem to have lost faith in my ability to write (again). All seems sort of useless. I know I can write a half-decent short story - but what's the point when you've already got a world full of them and there are people like Carver and Roald Dahl and God only knows who else - I just read a Vonnegut book of short stories that wasn't even published and they were better than mine - and the crushing realisation that none of them are ever going to make an impression, how could they anyway? Plus the very act of writing itself, in which I've slid back to grinding to a halt after three sentences because it's not good enough, not perfect, needs editing, won't come out all in one fully-formed whole - even though I know in theory that the first draft's just the sketch, just the outline, just the 1% before the 99% of the work that makes it good. But arses if I can put that into practice. It's better when you're rubbish, you can just write any old tat - some of my classmates read out examples, samples that make me cringe, and they don't seem to mind. The curse of a little bit of knowledge. If only one could get away with puking out blogs that no one could possibly understand or enjoy - typing, not writing - and be loved for that (he jests).

So that was Friday. And then Saturday, which was yesterday, I felt the whole mad weight of the whole thing. Moving house. Organising a van. Organising a van to go today to collect stuff from South Elmsall, and a bed in Wakefield, and a futon in Huddersfield, and delivering it all to Leeds. Meeting the landlord and signing the contract and getting the keys. Rendezvousing with my brother, with the friend whose house we're currently renting, and sorting out all the money. Managing the girlfriend (a phrase I've already used once; interesting) and the timing of it all. All this I did yesterday. Plus, I'd promised the girlfriend a session on the climbing wall in Leeds, which we squeezed in before my squash game at 11.45 - then rushed to meet the landlord - then rushed up to far Headingley to referee that game, with just enough time for a sandwich, and it was all too much. I was shit, and my boot fell apart, and I finished the first-half with one foot merely sockéd (please pronounce that right) and I hope it'll be better today 'cos I do enjoy the prospect of this refereeing lark. And then we went home, and I was drained, and my stresses had leaked onto my girlfriend - obviously all through this was the pressures of essays and stories and reading still undone - and she was getting stressed too. I said, no no, we can't both be stressed, one of us has got to be calm, and so I decided to be calm, and happy too. She said, I'm okay, I'll be calm, you've got a lot on, I should be calm for you. I said, no no, we can't both be calm, there's no point in that: if you're calm I might as well be stressed. And a little joke does you good - this was all on the massively crowded train back to Elmsall, all those Elmsall shoppers at the end of their day to the big city - and it was all good after that. Plus, I'd decided to eat fish and chips - what I really needed was fish and chips - and once that was decided there was only one way it was gonna go: fish and chips.

Fish and chips, and a bath, and a bit of Match of The Day, and then bed and a blow job and a shag and the essay'll have to wait till Monday. Obviously Monday's the handing in day - but then, isn't that what I always used to do at undergraduate? I mean, ninety percent of the time I didn't even start the reading until the final day (admittedly, sometimes it would be 4am, a nice early rise). Seems like nearly every time I tried to start something ahead of time all I did was sit there doing nothing and feeling crappy - feeling the stress, feeling the disappointment - and it wasn't until the last minute that the juice would kick in and the words would begin to flow. Sometimes the last minute didn't arrive until 4 hours before handing in time - but always the essay would get done, and would come out good, handed in on time and stupidly good grades. I have to remember this: I have to trust. Have I not the ability to fly myself into the future and merely copy from the essay that I've already written? I have. So what's all the worry and what's all the thinking, ooh, only five days to go, I'd better get cracking? It don't take but five hours to copy down three thousand words...

Today is Sunday and today we're moving. Ali's gone right now to collect the van and I suppose I should be hoovering. I will hoover because I can feel the end of this blog entry approaching. All being well, she'll be back inside the hour and we'll pack and leave, go pick up my bed from my brother's in Wakefield, and then I'll go ref while she goes to collect her futon and other stuff, and in about six hours we shall begin the process of settling into our lovely little eighties-style crofters' cottage slash basement flat stroke lovenest. And then I'll go play 5-a-side and maybe we'll celebrate afterwards with an all-you-can-eat curry. Life will begin then: no more flat-hunting, no more trains back and forth to Leeds. I'm going to give up looking for a job - the place is wicked cheap and I've enough savings for several months and I just can't be arsed anymore. I want to be a student: I want to spend my days reading, thinking, writing, playing squash and having saunas while others are in the middle of their nine-to-fives. And who knows? I might even get into debt, plunder the loan and the overdraft - there's a first time for everything - and dig this life of luxury. I feel burnt out, like I just want to stop, can't handle all these things at once, and my uni work is definitely suffering. Obviously things'll slow down once we get settled in - no more flat-hunting! woohoo! - and, obviously also, I managed perfectly well at undergraduate while working three days a week but - I guess I'm just a little out of practice. Things haven't flowed so easily up till now but I guess they'll start. And cut down on the sport! Seems like I made a real rod for my back with all the goddamned sport this week - went from having nowhere near enough - who does have enough sport in their life when they just move to a place and don't know anyone? - to having a surfeit. Anyways, I think that's about the end.

To hoover! And to put on some goddamned clothes... ;-)