Yesterday, I heard the news about a novel being pulled by its publisher for plagiarism. This morning, I read Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg’s article in the Wall Street Journal about the novel in question, a spy novel by Q.R. Markham (a pseudonym of poet Quentin Rowan):
The book is a thriller about an elite CIA agent chasing a shadowy international group of assassins. But Tuesday, publisher Little, Brown & Co. recalled all 6,500 copies of the novel on the grounds that passages were “lifted” from other books. One sharp-eyed observer says he had identified at least 13 novels with similar material.
[…]
On the first page of chapter one of “Assassin” is this paragraph: “The boxy, sprawling Munitions Building which sat near the Washington Monument and quietly served as I-Division’s base of operations was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular work space.”In the book “Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency” by James Bamford is this: “In June 1930, the boxy, sprawling Munitions Building, near the Washington Monument, was a study in monotony. Endless corridors connecting to endless corridors. Walls a shade of green common to bad cheese and fruit. Forests of oak desks separated down the middle by rows of tall columns, like concrete redwoods, each with a number designating a particular workspace.”
Thirteen passages (at least) of that kind of straight theft is most definitely plagiarism.* I don’t see how it could possibly happen unconsciously. There again, until last year, I didn’t believe any plagiarism could happen unconsciously. But then I realised I’d done it. This kind of utterly unconscious borrowing is apparently known as cryptomnesia. (Thanks to @BuffySquirrel for the word.)
My borrowing was tiny in comparison–a matter of two images from the same poem–and I caught it long before publication. But it scared me rigid: I imagined just this kind of public crucifixion. I fretted for quite a while.
I relaxed gradually, and thought I’d put the matter to rest. But this case has put me on alert again. I don’t much fancy the notion of obsessively plugging successive 10,000 word chunks of Hild into a Google search box, just so I can relax. Does anyone know a more efficient way to check a manuscript?
ETA: I checked out iThenticate, the version of Turnitin for individual authors. It costs $50 per submission. A submission is 25k words. That would end up costing me around $400 for Hild, which I think is ridiculous. I’ll keep looking. Sigh.
* It turns out to be way, way more than that. Over at Reluctant Habits, Edward Champion turns up literally dozens of serious steals by Markham/Rowan in the first 35 pages of the book. It’s truly mind-boggling.
Nicola Griffith 
I think there is something that professors use to check for plagiarism in papers, but I'm afraid I have no idea what it is called. You could try asking a professor.
There must be a search engine designed to do that because English professors I know check their students' papers against a database. (And end up having to fail three quarters of the class for cheating.)
My professors used Turnitin. It looks like they also have a service for authors:
https://turnitin.com/static/products/ithenticate.php
Turnitin is what universities mostly use, I believe.
https://turnitin.com/static/index.php
Oh, of course! Turnitin. Excellent. Thank you.
I am respectful of your concern about plagairism, but you have such an individual and original way of writing, I don't see how it could happen to you very often. Perhaps I am naieve, and I know it could affect your livelihood.
To have so many lifted words seems like more than cryptomnesia in this case. If it was a line or two, maybe a single similar sounding paragraph and I'd be willing to believe it was accidental. But to have dozens? No way.
I had no idea there was anything out there that could check for plagerism. I'm deffinately going to make use of it from now on. The idea of accidentally lifting a line or so from someone else and have people think it was intentional. . . I don't even want to know what that would feel like.
Now there's one more thing to add in my steps for writing. . . *sigh* checking every story is going to get soooo expensive :(
barbara, I know I'm not being entirely rational about all this. If I had to bet money, would I bet that I had lifted something? No. But, oof, just the thought of it brings me out in a cold sweat. So I'll definitely be checking.
tranceptor, no, theft like Markham/Rowan's is not cryptomnesia. It's cynical thievery. But, yes, unconscious lifting is scary. And, yes, sigh, one more step to add to the editing process.