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Jewish World Review Jan. 23, 2002 / 10 Shevat 5762
Philip Terzian
That is, of course, the wrong question to ask. For it is not a matter of
what readers will take -- a lot, as it happens -- but what writers will do,
and writers ought not to swipe the words of other writers and pass them off
as their own. And that is what Ambrose has done. His admission that he will
correct future editions and, henceforth, identify all quotations is welcome,
to be sure -- although a little late in the day. And his notion that
references and attributions interrupt narrative flow is absurd. As JWR columnist Roger
Rosenblatt has written, that is "a defense a shoplifter might use in
explaining that he would have paid for his stolen items, but that would have
broken his stride on the way out of the store."
I was disheartened by all this for purely personal reasons. Twenty years
ago I reviewed the first volume of Ambrose's two-volume life of Dwight D.
Eisenhower in the Los Angeles Times, and to my surprise, it elicited a
thank-you note from Ambrose, written from London. Authors are not supposed
to do that sort of thing, but Ambrose's note poured the flattery on with a
shovel. Mine was "the most perceptive review the book has received ... and
the last paragraph a superb description of Eisenhower."
It worked. I have read very little of Ambrose's subsequent writing, but
I continue to think that the Eisenhower volumes were not only the best
accounts of the subject to date (and, I pray, the work of Ambrose alone) but
vital to any reappraisal of Ike's career. Along with Fred Greenstein's The
Hidden-Hand Presidency, the magisterial Ambrose biography has done as much
as anything to rescue Eisenhower from the partisan contempt of Arthur M.
Schlesinger Jr. and other disappointed Democrats in the historical
profession.
What consequences this will have for Ambrose's reputation I cannot say.
Popular historians such as Doris Kearns Goodwin and Alex Haley have been
exposed as plagiarists, as have journalists Molly Ivins, Jonathan Broder,
Nina Totenberg and others, but the revelations seem scarcely to have
affected them at all. There is momentary embarrassment, at worst, and then
all is well again at PBS, or wherever.
Because of his books celebrating the
Greatest Generation, Stephen Ambrose has an enormous following among
veterans and assorted history buffs, and there is little evidence of
disenchantment. Indeed, as is often the case, his fans seem angry at those
who have called Ambrose to account: We need our heroes, however flawed they
may be, they are saying -- as well as the people who write about our heroes.
Perhaps. But reading between the lines of Ambrose's not-so-contrite
remarks, I detect an element of defensiveness. I suspect that he understands
the gravity of plagiarism -- how could it be otherwise? -- but is anxious
not to jeopardize the industry he has created. Publishers no longer employ
editors who might have saved Ambrose from himself, and blockbusters are much
to be preferred to prestige. It is no exaggeration to say that, since the
extravagant success of D-Day in 1994, Ambrose has been cranking out
greatest-generation bestsellers at a prodigous rate.
In my neighborhood bookstore there is, literally, a Stephen Ambrose
display case, furnished by Simon and Schuster, where his recent books are
stacked conveniently for purchase. For that matter, the fact that he appears
to be the historian of choice for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who have
dramatized some of his work, has done Professor Ambrose's income little
harm.
For all of this, no doubt, a price has been paid. Stephen Ambrose
settled on a formula, cornered the market, and has been reaping the
benefits. But at what cost? There is, in plagiarism, the implicit admission
that you cannot improve on someone else's work, and are willing to rob as a
form of compensation. It is very well to say, as most plagiarists do, that
their research assistants blew it, or the pressure of a deadline induced
them to cut corners, or that they meant to put quotation marks around that
passage, but forgot to do so. Yet anyone who writes for a living knows that
this is nonsense.
Writing is a slow, methodical, personal process, and
anybody who chooses to purloin another's words, does so with full knowledge
that stealing is
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