SOAPBOXING
The Facts
The facts are these:
1. I have never met Brad Vice, to my knowledge. I put it this way because I give public readings and people do come up and shake hands or ask to have a book signed, and they are often introduced, or they introduce themselves; but I do not-and I'll bet the farm Mr. Young doesn't-recall every name or every person. In any case, I have had no connection with Brad Vice at all, ever, and Mr. Young implies that I have.
2. I know for certain that I have never corresponded with Brad Vice, nor ever heard his name until the plagiarism business broke. In fact I had never seen it in print, and when I was told about the matter I assumed that the name was Veiss.
3. I know of Gail Hochman, and I know she is a reputable agent; and I may have suggested her to one or two of my good students and colleagues over the years, but I have never met her face to face, nor ever spoken to her that I know of. I know for certain that if she were seated next to me on an airplane I would not know who she was.
4. I did serve as guest fiction editor for Five Points in 2003 and elicited stories from Jill McCorkle and Alice Hoffman, among others. I did not read or see anything by Brad Vice. My name on the masthead is a courtesy I allow them, because I happen to like the magazine, as I like any venue for the publication of good work, since in America those venues have been growing smaller in number every year; I do also occasionally tell students with good stories or poems or essays to send the work there. But I have had and do not have any connection to the editing of the magazine. As anyone knows, as everyone knows, the task of guest editor is to help the magazine by putting one's name on it, and by prevailing upon one's colleagues to get stories poems and essays from established writers, to help further establish the magazine. This in turn helps the new talent that appears there because it widens the audience for it. I have not had any substantial connection with the magazine since guest-editing the one issue.
5. The Sewanee Conference does NOT have a room or rooms that anyone is barred from; they just don't. In my three stints there, I spent time at the French house, on the French house porch, with all of my students and with students of every stripe and kind from the other workshops. NOBODY is turned away from that room or any other room that I have ever seen or heard of. And I must say that it sounds like Mr. Young must have attended the conference and assumed he wasn't invited somewhere or other, and then turned that into a plot against him. Either that, or he has listened uncritically and without checking his source to someone who did feel that way. But about Sewanee-and for that matter about Bread Loaf-he just does not know what he is talking about. His paranoid screed about these conferences notwithstanding, they actually comprise two weeks of workshops, readings, and social occasions where people of like minds gather to discuss and to appreciate this blessed occupation. (It sounds, in fact, as if Mr. Young was IN a workshop, and people had critical things to say about his work. As EVERYONE knows, criticism takes place in a workshop. And also, as anyone who has ever taught one or taken part in one knows, there are sometimes people who attend them not to learn anything in particular but to have their own conviction that they are geniuses validated. These people often assume there is some 'coordinated workshop attack.')
6. I do not know the facts in the case about Mr. Vice. But I certainly have never read anything by him. I have been trying to finish a novel these past two years and haven't read in the magazines at all during that time.
Plagiarism is a bad thing, but so is character assassination and the use of innuendo to suggest untruths; so is the kind of unsubstantiated slander Mr. Young aims at me and the disrespect he levels at Barry Hannah, whose literary shoes he is not fit to tie-read the work of Mr. Hannah and the work of Mr. Young and see. It seems to me that one might ask around a little; I'm not unreachable. I could have given these facts to anyone really interested in the facts.
Richard Bausch, via email
PARANOIA
Robert Clark Young's expose of the Brad Vice plagiarism controversy sets straight much of the bizarre and misguided reaction in the blogosphere, where Vice has been defended as a "postmodernist" on the one hand and as someone whose "confusion" over fair use is excusable on the other. As an editor of Five Points, which published Vice's "Tuscaloosa Knights" shortly before I came onboard, I can attest that Vice did not mention any use of or homage to Carmer's work when he submitted the story to us. As with all stories we publish, we had a signed contract from Vice and his agent stating that the material was original. While it would be a handy trick if editors could read and commit to memory everything ever published, they obviously can't. They rely to large extent on the good faith of writers, which, in Vice's case, was apparently flawed.
But Young's article is disturbing in its paranoia and allegations of conspiracy. Had I been on the staff at Five Points at the time we received Vice's story, I would have accepted it immediately and with glee, for one reason: the story is brilliant. Its brilliance is instantly tarnished if one has read the Carmer book, but if one has not-as I had not, and the editors of Five Points at the time had not, and as, I am willing to bet, Brad Vice's entire thesis committee and other supporters had not, at least not recently enough to note the similarity-the story is on its face the work of an exceptionally talented writer. I myself have been to the Sewanee Writers' Conference twice, as a scholar and then as a fellow, and as far as I've seen, there is no back-room conspiracy to decide who's in and who's out in Southern letters. While there is a certain hierarchy built in to the conference structure, it's wild exaggeration to claim there are "exclusive cocktail rooms that refuse admittance to any writer who has not yet published a book." I, at least, while enjoying the conference's special recognition of those who have published books, was never invited to an event that included only other people who had.
Granted, there is career value for some writers in making connections, to a sickening extent in discreet cases, and the reviews Vice has written of faculty work are indeed disquieting when arranged in proximity as Young does. But-and I'm willing to risk sounding naïve in this-most writers who reach the level of achievement of the Sewanee faculty actually do care about good writing and hope to support authentic talent. I was there at Sewanee when Vice read his story "Chickensnake" during the public readings, and while I have no way to know that Tony Earley did not engage in some closet trade of a prize nomination for a glowing review of his own work, I can assert that, of more than 50 short readings by up-and-coming writers that I heard, Vice's reading stood out in my mind as possibly the most impressive of the lot. If others had the same reaction, there is little surprise in the Best New American Voices nomination at Sewanee (which, after all, was "ultimately successful," as Young notes), in the publications in Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere, or in the eventual awarding of the Flannery O'Connor prize-no cronyism required.
Do I feel deceived that Brad Vice's work may not be what it seemed? Of course. But I continue to believe that good writing matters, that favors and friendship cannot promote poor work and that faculty do not gather in some cabal to "decide which writers will be greeted at the conference with indifference or official silence or, even worse, a coordinated workshop attack." They don't have time for such absurdity, for starters; they are busy with their own work. At a conference the stature of Sewanee's, where writers who are generally strangers to each other gather from across the country and all have a voice in the workshop, it is only the weakest among them, who are also as a rule the only ones in the room certain their own work is brilliant, who imagine conspiracies when their work receives the criticism it deserves. And I will continue to believe that the vast majority-if not all-of the writers who have praised and supported Brad Vice's work in the past did so for the simple reason that they were impressed with what they saw on the page.
Sheri Joseph, Associate Editor, Five Points
Assistant Professor of English, Georgia State University
Robert Clark Young Replies:
Sheri Joseph raises an important issue when she reports that Brad Vice lied when he signed a contract with Five Points, asserting that his short story was completely original. All publishers place this boilerplate in their contracts, which means that Vice also lied when he signed contracts with New Stories from the South and the University of Georgia Press. While plagiarism and copyright violation were valid enough reasons to pulp Vice's book, Georgia was correct in pulping the book for breach of contract as well.
Sheri Joseph and Richard Bausch are simply wrong that an exclusive drinking room has never existed at Sewanee or Bread Loaf-in fact, we are talking about entire houses. The Rebel's Rest and the Treman Cottage, respectively, have historically been off-limits to unpublished writers, although a published author has usually been allowed to bring a guest. While there has been agitation over the years to change these "elitist" policies, I have never cared who drinks with whom, and I do not object to exclusive clubs. Professional writers, like professionals in any other field, should be free to associate exclusively if they choose.
What I object to is the cronyism of review trading, blurb trading and the inside route to publication. Thus, the third section of my article was about Brad Vice's specific instances of successful or attempted logrolling. Obviously, not all writers, in or out of a conference, engage in such practices.
In my opposition to cronyism, I rejoice in the hilarity of Richard Bausch denying no fewer than six times that he has ever had anything to do with Brad Vice. Rather than accusing Bausch of protesting too much, I will take him at his word and offer Bausch's frenetic distancing as an excellent ethical model for all of the writers and academics guilty of greasing Vice's career. The best route for Bausch would be to persuade Vice to stop thanking "the entire faculty and staff of the Sewanee Writers' Conference past and present."
Bausch joins those writers who have decided to attack me and my work rather than address the broad scope of Vice's plagiarism. And rather than condemn Barry Hannah's trading of reviews, Bausch chooses to use his Sewanee cronyism with Hannah as an excuse to attack the messenger. Out of the small number of people who have either defended Vice or attacked me, the vast majority have connections to Sewanee, which demonstrates yet again that the conference is a center for an ugly strain of cronyism.
Since the pulping of his book, Vice has been calling in his chits, asking established authors and academics to write to Mississippi State University in support of his keeping his teaching job, as well as to the University of Cincinnati in support of his keeping his doctorate, despite the fact that the Ohio State Supreme Court has ruled that public universities have the right to revoke doctorates based on plagiarism.
Any academic who defends plagiarism, or who is found to have colluded in plagiarism, should be dismissed. Thus far, only one of Vice's professors, Erin McGraw (who sat on his dissertation committee), has gone public in Vice's defense. Not only has she falsely claimed that postmodernism trumps copyright law, but she admits that "he talked to me at length about his intention to use the Carmer memoir as an embedded text." Ron Hogan, writing in Mediabistro.com, smacked her down for this collusion, then wondered "what the hell they're teaching kids in MFA programs these days."
Clearly, the only academically ethical and safe position for any of Vice's cronies is now "Brad who?"
TWO BITS
Every fan of Faulkner knows what he said when he was fired in 1924 from the post office at the University of Mississippi. "Thank God I won't ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son-of-a-bitch who's got two cents to buy a stamp."
Looking at the July/August 2002 issue of The Atlantic, I found Brad Vice's short story "Report from Junction." How does the first paragraph end? Kurt Schaeffer prefers not working at his uncle Pleasant's feedstore. Why? Because "he's at the mercy of any son of a bitch with six bits for a bag of Ripsnorter sweetfeed."
For me, this was nothing more than a semi-humorous echo of Faulkner, no offense taken. But for others? I report, you decide.
Jan Denman, Westlake, OH
Foetical
Very nice. But no surprise, really. This is exactly the type of thing that, I think, "Foetry" would have loved. Anyway, thanks for getting this out, and please thank the author for me as well.
Stuart Hayes, Carriere, MS
BLOOD-LUST
In Robert Clark Young's vindictive and personal smear on author Brad Vice, Clark notes the "confused and contradictory statements" made by Vice to various publications. The truth is, these statements all come from one general statement made by Vice, which he presumably sent to interested publications. The way Clark tells it makes it look like Vice was changing his tune to everyone that would listen, which is simply untrue. There are some very well-informed arguments on the net both for and against Vice as regards plagiarism. Young, however, isn't interested in justice or debate. He wants blood.
David Kary, Atlanta, GA
EATING THEIR OWN
Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer should look in the mirror to understand why he lost so badly. ["The Fix Is In," Azi Paybarah, Nov. 30]. Perhaps Ferrer forgot the results of the September Mayoral primary. Out of 2,600,000 registered Democrats, Ferrer received only 182,273 votes-seven percent. Eighty-five percent of the city's registered Democrats stayed home. This was not a resounding mandate to carry the party's banner into the general election.Ê
For the first time in modern history, all four major dailies endorsed a Republican Mayoral candidate, as did the Sun, the Staten Island Advance and the Observer. Mayor Bloomberg carried a majority of Democrats in at least four boroughs.
Former Governor Mario Cuomo, Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and New York County and State Democratic Chairperson Herman Farrell each have a rolodex with thousands of campaign contributors. Imagine if they had worked the phones soliciting donations from their own regular campaign donors for Ferrer.
All 13 Democratic NYC Congress members, including Rangel and Nadler, have gerrymandered districts. Yet not one raised significant funds for Ferrer. Virtually all 25 Democratic State Senators and 59 Assembly members also serve in gerrymandered districts. Any of them could easily find 100 supporters to kick in $100 each. Too bad virtually all of Ferrer's so-called friends had fish hooks when it came to taping into their own financial base.
Many Democratic public officials have spouses, relatives and friends serving in the Bloomberg administration. Why would they want to bite the hand that feeds them?
It wasn't Bloomberg's millions that beat Freddy. I guess Democrats sometimes do eat their own.
Larry Penner, Great Neck, New York
WE'RE NOT SURE HE WOULD
I liked Tony Dokoupil's dispatch about the Jihad cocktail. ["Jihad and Be Well," Nov. 30]. But I think if a bar ever does serve that drink, that the bartender must yell "AYAYAYAYAYAYA" while serving and then slay the drunk infidel with a dagger and submit the footage on video to Al-Jazeera.
I think Tony would agree with me.
Dave, via email
DISGUSTING BEYOND DISGUST
I think your volume 18, number 47, the current one with the dead bodies on the front, is beyond disgust. ["Grave Robbers," Nov. 23]. It's disgusting. That's my opinion, and I won't look at your paper again for a long time.
Anon, via telephony
NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THAT
As a longtime reader of Jim Knipfel's columns and owner of all his books (yes, even The Buzzing), I am sorely disappointed by his recent hyping of the movie Cannibal Holocaust.
I didn't write after the first review, because I was loathe to give this movie any more attention in the off chance my letter was printed. ["Gifts for Enemies," Nov. 30 & "Cannibal Holocaust," Nov. 9]. Although, judging by the amount of NY Press issues languishing in the box by my apartment each week, it doesn't seem many people are bothering to pick it up anyway.
Now I find Cannibal Holocaust being pushed by Knipfel again, who recommends it in the holiday gift guide as a "funny" gift for "sensitive" types. I don't think a movie made by those morally repugnant enough to murder animals should bother just vegans. It seems to me anyone with a shred of decency should see this film for the criminal act it is and not give its makers another dime.
As a pet owner himself, I'm surprised Knipfel wrote so glibly about animal cruelty. I wonder if he'd be so lax if some NYU Tisch-hole (or, for that matter, Spielberg) borrowed his cat for a shoot, then gave it back to him decapitated in the name of "art."
I used to think Knipfel was a unique writer with a great flair for chronicling the weirdness of New York City life. He strikes me now as one of those lonely losers back in high school who would bring their Faces of Death videos to class-creatively bankrupt, their outsider status cemented, the only way to make people pay attention to them was to shock. To write repeatedly about a movie like Cannibal Holocaust is shocking, and yes, it got my attention. But it's also very sad.
Michael Adrienne O'Hagan, Astoria
HALF OFF NEXT WEEK?
Abortions on TV? ["The Voice Loses It," Tim Marchman, Nov. 23]. If "The OC" showed a character having an abortion and made it seem like it wasn't a big deal, it would ring false-a very scary product placement. Even if most people choose a side, politically, it would be strange for a person not to be ambivalent about abortions when it affected their lives. There are too many issues that are important to human beings involved, like love, money, family, religion and shame. Marchman is right to say that it should not be debated along party lines; however the fact that it's a touchy subject may explain our urge to oversimplify without reflection. The public discourse on abortion has become so full of slogans and "words without meaning" that it comes as a relief when someone discusses the gray areas in a frank way.
Amanda Marksteiner, Manhattan