I'm reading a lot lately. Actual books, even! Of course there are the readings for class, the ones I have to really read (as opposed to that "fake" reading I did in college, skimming the surface, getting the main idea, avoiding eye contact with the professors...). It turns out that by really reading them, I get more out of them. Who knew?
Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is brilliant. Hemingway's "A Soldier's Home," brilliant. Godwin's "A Sorrowful Woman" and Chopin's "Story of an Hour," shocking. And once I got in the habit of really reading, I actually want to find more brilliance: J.M. Coetzee, brilliant; Kevin Brockmeier, so far, brilliant.
Reading books, writing anything, these are all activities that bring us closer to the truth. Postmodernism succeeded by forcing us to exam grand metanarratives and, if necessary, tear them apart, exposing false "truths." But it also failed by distracting us from that search for truth. I don't believe there are millions of little truths, one for each individual; rather, there is a truth out there (cue the X-Files theme) that is elusive but that we should also try to get closer to. Reading great books does that, as it allows us to see things through others' eyes. Writing does that, as we seek the best words to accurately describe or represent reality.
And that's why plagiarism is such a heinous act. The act of writing it, obviously, is false; worse, the act of reading it is also rendered false, and it taints everything that comes after. I describe it as a punch to the stomach, but more accurately it's a squishing of the heart.
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