Novelists Camille Laurens and Marie Darrieussecq at war over ‘theft of dead baby’
France’s notoriously lofty literary world is watching in slack-jawed amazement as the country’s leading female writers lunge at each other with daggers drawn in a ferocious battle about plagiarism.
A tennis metaphor — “ladies’ finals” — has been deployed in a magazine headline to evoke the extraordinary energy being invested by the novelists Camille Laurens and Marie Darrieussecq in the pursuit of revenge for various charges and insults.
Their mutual obsession was reflected in the appearance last week of books by each of them about the feud. One was a studious analysis of literary theft; the other was a thinly veiled fictional account of a novelist who is dropped by her publisher after accusing a young rival of plagiarism.
It all began with the publication of a novel by Darrieussecq in 2007, when she shared a publisher with Laurens. Tom Est Mort (Tom Is Dead) tells the story of a woman whose baby dies shortly after being born.
Laurens, who had lost a baby two hours after his birth and who had written movingly about it in a book called Philippe in 1995, accused Darrieussecq of “psychological plagiarism”, a new term in French letters.
So apparently it's not "word-for-word" plagiarism....
Also, 'plagiarism' is spelled weird.
I took typing in high school. I sort of touch type, but make a lot of mistakes in the beginning, then get better as I continue to type. Oddly, when I am touch typing, I sometimes find myself spelling things phonetically.
I would have like to have learned shorthand, it would be handy in meetings, and would have dealt with the guy in my old job who always wanted to borrow my notes after a meeting. I was like "dude, this isn't college, handle your own business".
I loved the Selectric. Such a sweet machine. I still have the manual Smith Corona I took to college. When the power goes out, I'll still be typing. At the height of my speed, I was at 92 wpm. I'm down to 60 now. Most of my jobs I can lay at the feet of the Business Typing class I took in high school.
I think I took touch-typing three times before it "stuck". I realize now that I don't spell subvocally as I type so much as spell the words out with memorized finger-taps -- I only have to slow down in order to spell out uncommon words (like 'subvocally').
The letters are worn off most of my iBook's keyboard, which makes it troublesome for some people to use, I've noticed.
I took typing in high school. Figured I'd need it at some point. I touch type ok. Not well enough to be considered good but I can type my own work fast enough. DH still types with two fingers. My kids will probably only learn to type with their thumbs.
So Owen reads at 3rd grade level. He really is a buffista baby. His IEP meeting went pretty well. Teacher is on notice about evil classmate.
Timelies all!
Am back from Atlanta, tired and feeling kinda bleh. Hopefully I don't have con crud.
Heh. I moused over your link and saw something about baseball, and knew what story you were linking to.
Oh man -- my coworker, who is going on maternity leave next month, just had a candidate reject her job offer. After waiting weeks for HR to call the references. Man!
The typing class was on IBM Selectric typewriters, which pretty much spoiled me for every single keyboard I've used since then.
Bliss. Oh bliss.
An older friend made me swear to him I would take typing so I wouldn't have to suffer like he did in college.
My mom wouldn't let me take typing in high school (I believe the phrase "over my dead body" was uttered), due to some amorphous feminist principles. This has led, over the years, to my developing rapid 2-finger typing.
My Mother refused to learn to type in High School. She was the only girl on the student council and they thought she should take care of the minutes. It was like the fish thing. She didn't have a problem when I wanted to because of the whole "its a different time" thing. Which always made sense to me.
I can't remember ever having learned touch typing in school, which is odd because from 7th grade on there was always at least one computer-related class, and we definitely had Mavis Beacon typing tests. But I have no idea when or where I learned concepts like "home keys."
Pretty sure those are in the Mavis Beacon exercises or tutorials or whatever they call them.
What do you do when you erroneously receive an email filled with personal details? Do you respond saying, dude, you've got the wrong email address? Or do you just delete it?
From a stranger? I replied with "you've got the wrong person". If it was someone I knew? Oh lordy, depends on the details I guess.
