Pynchon backs McEwan in 'copying' row

[Dave Monroe]

Pynchon backs McEwan in 'copying' row

Dan Bell
Wednesday December 6, 2006
Guardian

The literary world is known more for arch feuds
between great minds than solidarity among fellow
scribes, but recent suggestions that Ian McEwan
"copied" from another author have not only rallied
support from his contemporaries, but brought one of
their most famously reclusive brethren to the
barricades as well.

Thomas Pynchon, the laconic American author of
Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day, yesterday made
the unusual move of breaking his customary silence,
and came out in support of McEwan who has been accused
of using elements of another writer's work in his
Booker prize-nominated 2002 work Atonement. The
accusations - strongly denied by McEwan - suggest that
he took bits of his book from No Time for Romance, the
wartime autobiography of the late Lucilla Andrews. In
a letter published in the Daily Telegraph, Pynchon
said authors writing about historical fiction who were
not present at the events "must turn to those who
were".

"To discover in the course of research some engaging
detail we know can be put into a story where it will
do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious act
- it is simply what we do," he wrote.

Pynchon's support of McEwan joined that of literary
heavyweights such as Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood,
Thomas Keneally and Kazuo Ishiguro. According to
reports in the Telegraph, they have all said that they
also "borrow" from other people's work. In an article
in the Guardian last week, McEwan described how he had
blended research and reminiscences to write the book.

"I have openly acknowledged my debt to her [Andrews]
in the author's note at the end of Atonement," he
said.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1965130,00.html


 
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