Just a thought on Seagull...

Jules Siegel jsiegel at pdc.caribe.net.mx
Wed Apr 30 21:50:28 CDT 1997


At 07:05 PM 04/30/97 -0700, Gershom Bazerman (from the wrong address)
<slim at humanitas.ucsb.edu>  wrote:

>Doesn't the title of his playboy article "Why Things Don't Work" sound an
>awful lot like something written by a certain Prof. Gold in a certain
>novel _Good_as_Gold_ by a certain author named Joseph Heller? No veiled
>anti-semitism here folks, just an odd thought...

"Good as Gold" was published in 1979. I've never read it. My story was
written in 1981 and appeared in 1982. The title came from an orphaned
assignment called "Why Things Don't Work" that was floating around Playboy
in the early 70s.

I am 100% scrupulous about identifying my sources. If I had known of
Heller's reference I would have mentioned it in the story as a bit of color,
just as I mentioned the actual source. I knew Joseph Heller and once
interviewed him. I would have been pleased to give him a free plug in Playboy.

Go look through Thomas Pynchon's works for material derived from
unattributed sources. You'll find plenty. No one here will accuse him of
plagiarism, of course.

I suggest that you compare Thomas Pynchon's descriptions of SHOCK and SHROUD
in V. with the radiation dummies manufactured by Alderson Research for the
Atomic Energy Commission in 1958-59. I gave Pynchon some of their press
materials and brochures when he visited me in New York in 1959.

Neither Alderson, nor I (nor The New York Times, which published photographs
along with a story about the devices that was part of the press kit)
received any credit.

--
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