Malcolm Gladwell's "Something Borrowed"

As I was reading the article “Something Borrowed” I was unsure of what to think. A side of me thinks that Byrony Lavery was wrong to use borrow from Gladwell. The reason being that she did use direct quotes from Gladwell’s writing. This is a form of plagiarism. Lavery should have gotten the inspiration from Gladwell but should have changed the words, to make it her own work. This would not have been plagiarism because the idea of her play was unique that was inspired (emphasis on inspired since her idea was different than her source) from Gladwell’s “Damaged”. In my opinion I think she should have given credit to Gladwell, the same way she gave credit to Marian Partington for inspiring her into writing a character for the play “Frozen”. Her reasons/explanations for not doing so, were very inadequate and I do believe her actions were irresponsible.

As for “borrowing” from Dorothy Lewis real life, I do not think it was wrong. I believe writers have used real people as inspiration for their writing and stories all the time. Also she did not steal any work from Lewis, she was simply mimicking the type of person Dorothy is. She needed to base her character off a real person in order to make her character “real”. In a way Dorothy Lewis could say Larvey invaded her privacy, but Lavery did change the name of the character therefore there should not be an issue. It could be that Lavery should have also credited her as inspiration but I do not think it was necessary to do so. I think that one should credit published sources because then all writing would have to cite inspiration. There is no rule for citing inspiration therefore Lavery should not be charged for plagiarism in any way in regards of Dorothy Lewis.

Lavery losing her reputation as a play writer for using a couple phrases is not right. She did not use the quotes for a paper or to discredit Gladwell, but rather to reinforce her creative writing. In no way did she try to steal Gladwell’s work to say it was hers. So would it be considered as plagiarism? I am unsure. She created something completely new it was not used for academics but for art. Art has always been based on inspiration from other artists. Would they have to cite that as well? Like the article was saying with music, there is a complexity on how to pinpoint what is plagiarism in art. I think that it was necessary to “borrow” in order to create something new but I also believe that she could have changed the words around from the quotes because that I do believe was a form a plagiarism. If it were not for that I would defend Larvey to say she did not plagiarize just simply was inspired and created something new.