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BY WARREN BOROSON
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
One of the most notorious instances of literary plagiarism in modern times is recounted in the book "Stolen Words," by Thomas Mallon (Harcourt, 1989). What is especially interesting about the case were its links to New Jersey.
Plagiarism is always in the news. People are forever being found guilty of using the words or the ideas of other writers without giving sufficient credit. Mallon's book even convicts such famous writers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Laurence Sterne, and Charles Reade. And did you know that Edgar Allen Poe accused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism? (Poe may just have meant: imitating British writers too much.) And Theodore Dreiser. Even Vice President Joseph Biden has admitted that he plagiarized a paper during his first year at law school.
One reason plagiarism is so common is that many people seem unsure exactly what plagiarism is. They think "finders, keepers." As the essayist E.B. White put it, a typical plagiarist is simply a dope — someone "who is a little vague about the printed word and regards anything in the way of printed matter as mildly miraculous and common property." (Another typical plagiarist, he noted, is the out-and-out thief.) Vice President Biden himself explained that at the time he copied a law-school paper, he didn't understand the need to cite sources carefully.
In the 1960s I was reading the "slush" pile for Pageant Magazine, the stuff that came in over the transom. One day I lit upon a submission that had plenty of good, solid information. The article was sloppily written and somewhat disorganized, but all it needed, I figured, was a quick rewrite. I recommended it to Pageant's editor.The editor read the article – and recognized it. The original had been published in Parade magazine that previous Sunday. The would-be author had re-organized the article (badly) and rewritten it (badly), and decided that now it was now hers to submit to Pageant magazine.
Then there was the time I was sent a pre-publication copy of a real-estate book that, I discovered, was largely based on my own published real-estate articles. I believe that I succeeded in persuading the publisher to quash the book.
One plagiarist in particular is described at length in Mallon's book.
Jayme Aaron Sokolow was born in 1946 in Perth Amboy. He received a B.A. from Trenton State College in 1968 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1972. He joined the history department of Texas Tech University in Lubbock in 1976. (A few years earlier, a reviewer of the history department supposedly said, "What this department needs is a good New York Jew." Mallon interprets this as a prescription "admiring brains, energy, and sophistication.")
Sokolow was prolific. He published article after article on all sorts of diverse historical subjects, Mallon reports, from the 18th century American scientist Benjamin Thompson to Benjamin Franklin's supposed influence on Leo Tolstoy.
He had even put together a book-length manuscript called "Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Origins of Victorian Sexuality in America."
Texas Tech's history department was at this point considering Sokolow both for tenure and for promotion to associate professor of history.
But then came revelations that some of Sokolow's publications had borrowed heavily from earlier publications, without sufficient attribution. In 1981, Mallon writes, the "undoing of Jayme Sokolow really began."
Sokolow had submitted an article entitled "Thomas and Mary Nichols and the Paradox of Ante-Bellum Free Love" to an academic journal. The journal's editor sent it to Professor Lawrence Foster for evaluation. Foster concluded that the article had clearly been plagiarized from the work of Professor Stephen W. Nissenbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. (Nissenbaum, by the way, now professor emeritus, informs me that he was born and raised in Jersey City, N.J.) Foster wrote to Nissenbaum on Dec. 18, 1980, that it seemed to be "the clearest case of plagiarism I have ever seen."
Around this time, Sokolow asked three university presses to publish his manuscript, "Eros and Modernization."
Now, it so happens that a foremost authority on that particular subject was none other than Professor Nissenbaum, and the three university presses asked Nissenbaum to evaluate the manuscript. Each time, he informed the presses that "Eros and Modernization" was cribbed from his own publications. The manuscript was then rejected.
From Sokolow's manuscript:
"God had left these passions free so that they might ‘act by His attraction.' But by creating the artificial institution of marriage, society ‘bound and starved' the passions by a ‘system of restraints and behavior.'"
From Nissenbaum's publications:
"God has left these passions free, Nichols went on, so that they might ‘act by His attraction.' But by inventing such artificial institutions as marriage, society has ‘bound and starved' them by ‘a system of restraints and repressions.'"
You get the idea.
The Ohio State University Press offered Nissenbaum $50 to evaluate the manuscript. Nissenbaum phoned and explained why he couldn't.
The State University of New York Press in Albany then asked him to evaluate Sokolow's manuscript. He gave the same response he had given to Ohio State.
Then Northern Illinois University Press asked him to evaluate Sokolow's manuscript – for $100. With the same response.
The manuscript was also rejected by Kent State University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Anyway, after an entire rapsheet of his plagiaristic activities had surfaced, Sokolow defended himself vigorously, mentioning "sloppy notetaking" and "coincidences." Still, Texas Tech did not grant him tenure and he was permitted to quietly resign. He had both published and perished.
Still, Sokolow landed on his feet. He obtained a position with the National Endowment for the Humanities, and one of his responsibilities was to consider proposals from professors doing research. Mallon blames Sokolow's good fortune on the timidity of all those university people who knew about his plagiarism and did so little about it.
Sokolow even succeeded, in 1983, in getting a university press to actually publish "Eros and Modernization."
When the published book arrived at the offices of the America Historical Review, an editor sent the book for review to ... can you guess? Mel Gibson? Derek Jeter? Stephen Nissenbaum?
Eventually the matter wound up before the American Association of University Professors, and the result was that "errata slips" were included in copies of the book still not distributed – slips that included numerous footnotes giving credit to Nissenbaum's publications.
Nobody with the authority to so, it seemed, had been willing to come right out and call a plagiarist a plagiarist.
What was Sokolow's motive? Perhaps he was an addict – addicted to the heady pleasure of seeing his name as the author of something or other. (I'm an addict like that myself. But not to the extent of needing to plagiarize.)
In any case, Sokolow seems to have once again bounced back. Click here.
Oh, there's one more thing. The name of the university press that blithely published Sokolow's manuscript.
The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in Madison.
I Googled Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and inquired about "Eros and Modernization."
"No matches," I was informed.
Still, you can buy a used copy of Sokolow's plagiarized book from Amazon.com for $47.
You can also buy a used copy of "Stolen Words" from Amazon.com for 69 cents.
Warren Boroson's financial column appears on Mondays.
