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GOODWIN FINGERS RESEARCHERS One of the most high-profile of contemporary biographers, Doris Kearns Goodwin admits she lifted passages from other writers' books and used them in her own. (AP, Sunday Feb. 24.) Most notably in her 1987 book, "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." When you do this kind of thing, it's frankly plagarism and there's no good excuse for it. Sounding much like a politician, Goodwin, however, will admit to no wrong. She will only say she used to write her books in longhand and would take notes on other books, also in longhand. When it came time to put the pages together, she says she couldn't tell a difference between her notes and her original writing. So the notes ended up in the manuscript -- notes that were word-for-word from Goodwin's sources. TRIVIA: In what famous Mark Twain novel did the title character have a girlfriend named Becky Thatcher? (answer below) Now comes word that Goodwin is going back to correct and rewrite some of the material she lifted from other books. No, actually, she says she's instructed her "research team" to stop working on her upcoming biography of Lincoln -- to go over her previous books to look for and correct any plagarized passages. Her "research team?" Gosh, I was shocked when I found out she stole some sections of her books. But at least I thought she was researching, writing and rewriting her own material. Now I know she's been writing only parts of it; and now I know she's not doing her own research. So does she still write the books that bear her name? Trivia Answer: Tom Sawyer.
I'm pretty sure Twain got along without
a "research team." |