When the so-called plagiarism flap against Ian McEwan for liberally making use of Lucilla Andrews‘s memoir – a tactic he acknowledged freely when ATONEMENT was released – erupted late last month, so did the inevitable firestorm. The latest twist, the Telegraph reports, is that a group of the world’s best-known authors – including Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Martin Amis, Thomas Keneally, Zadie Smith and Margaret Atwood – have rallied together to support McEwan and admit that they, too, find it impossible to write an historical novel without taking or borrowing some details, color and reminiscences from memoirs or diaries contemporary to the period they are writing about.
McEwan’s editor at Jonathan Cape, Dan Franklin, rallied the authors together and said yesterday that McEwan was hurt by the accusations which he called “absurd”. “These kind of allegations have to be taken seriously. They effectively mean that it could become impossible to write historical fiction – set in any recent times – unless you, the author, were actually there yourself.” As for Pynchon (whose entire letter can be read at the Telegraph site) he was equally playful and passionate. “Unless we were actually there, we must turn to people who were, or to letters, contemporary reporting, the encyclopaedia, the Internet, until, with luck, at some point we can begin to make a few things of our own up. The worst you can call it is a form of primate behavior.”