Something Borrowed

In Malcolm Gladwell's "Something Borrowed" Gladwell argues that the main point of plagiarism is what and how much you copied, not that you copied someone else's piece of work. Gladwell first uses Dorothy Lewis as an example. Lewis is a psychiatrist who studied serial killers for 25 years and published her findings in a book titled "Guilty by Reason of Insanity." Bryony Lavery later produced a play called "Frozen." Lewis heard of this play and when she read the script found that much of Lavery's play was similar to Lewis's published memoir. When confronted about the issue Lavery claimed she thought the information she copied was "news." Gladwell also compared the music of many famous performers. He found that some artists accused others of stealing their work when yet they just used similar notes. I think the point Gladwell is trying to make is that everyone just assumes that if you take from someone else's work it is considered plagiarism. However that is not true. It is more important what information you copied and how much of it you copied. If you are ever concerned about how much or what to take just use your own work.

I'm not sure if I got the exact point of this article right. What I understood from it was that everyone sort of has their own definition of what qualifies as plagiarism. But Gladwell was more concerned about what information was used and how much of it you used. I was also confused by the series of events. Gladwell seemed to jump around a lot and came back to Lewis's story off and on. I'm also not quite sure what Gladwell was asking because his thoughts were all over the place.