Thursday, September 27, 2018

HT Jim West, Carey Scott suit against Christine Caine, Zondervan and HarperCollins news in The Christian Post

https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/look-people-do-your-own-work-and-stop-plagiarizing/

https://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelist-christine-caine-sued-by-colorado-author-for-copying-book-227574/

Author Carey Scott has filed a complaint against Christine Caine, Zondervan and HarperCollins, back in May of 2018.

https://dockets.justia.com/docket/michigan/miwdce/1:2018cv00525/90898

Sort of a general reminder that Christian inspirational author types have come up in plagiarism controversies in the past five or six years ... although for things to go so far as suits is  a different level.

There was ... somebody who was a subject of blogging here and elsewhere he was embroiled in a plagiarism controversy for a while, but subsequent editions of books looked different from first editions.

POSTSCRIPT
It might be better to not read any inspirational/devotional/encouraging books from contemporary American "Christian"publishing than to buy books from an industry in which a company at the level of Zondervan and HarperCollins can become a defendant in a suit.

One of the subplots in Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco has Alice reading a manuscript slated for publication under the topic of religion and it turns out as she reads and studies the work the book is by an out and out fraud.  With the book so close to publication she "solves" the problem by relabeling it as "self help and actualization" so that the fraudulent book can get published.

People should reconsider whether to sink money into a "Christian" variant of a James Frey style "Million Little Pieces" inspirational tale of overcoming suffering and great obstacles which, not so coincidentally, is the formula for a best-selling author dryly trotted out in the aforementioned Whit Stillman film.  When a tertiary character complains about how stupid and formulaic that approach to writing a best-seller is, Kate Beckinsale's Charlotte rolls her eyes and acidly replies, "Of course it's formulaic, that's why they call it formula."  And since I've been reading Adorno books in the last few years that's also what can be called the engine of "the culture industry".  And ... also not so coincidentally, I'd say, it's part of what Joseph Campbell once called the hero's journey and is known as the monomyth. 

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