From ???@??? Sun May 17 18:42:24 1998 Received: by www for mac (with Cubic Circle's cucipop (v1.21 1997/08/10) Sun May 17 19:19:03 1998) X-From_: vamp97@sj.bigger.net Sun May 17 18:01:42 1998 Return-Path: vamp97@sj.bigger.net Received: from sjmail.bigger.net (sjmail.bigger.net [206.111.129.1]) by www.greynet.net (8.8.8/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA06907 for ; Sun, 17 May 1998 18:01:41 -0400 Received: from Laura.bigger.net (sjas-25-1-2.sj.bigger.net [206.111.134.218]) by sjmail.bigger.net (8.8.6/8.8.6/@bn) with SMTP id PAA10016 for ; Sun, 17 May 1998 15:26:38 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <355F64F5.62E3@sj.bigger.net> Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 15:30:13 -0700 From: Laura Kroutil Reply-To: vamp97@sj.bigger.net Organization: Residence X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01C-KIT (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mac@zetetics.com Subject: W. McElroy, Plagiarist Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Wendy, You had better read this letter, and read it carefully. You are in extremely serious trouble, legally and professionally. Your professional career is in your hands, and it reeks of death. I am accusing of extensive and deliberate plagiarism. Both you and I know that most of “your” Reasonable Woman book is sheer unadulterated plagiarism. And though I half expected you to pull this stunt some day, I thought that you would at least be clever enough to cover your tracks better. I suspect that, upon hearing that I had lost “everything” in storage some years ago, you figured I no longer had access to my original notes, drafts, etc., from those years that I taught Fundamentals of Reasoning – and therefore would be unable to prove any charges against you. Wrong. I HAVE IT ALL. Every handwritten note and outline, every typed segment of lectures on canary-colored paper (many of them with dates), every printed handout, and all those verbatim transcripts that you made some years ago of the tapes from dozens of classes – a volume of material that fills nearly two file boxes. This is why I was able to give several FOR classes for Sharon Presley about two years ago – and, by the way, I do have tapes of those classes, which sound strangely like a prevision of “your” book. Maybe you can sue me for my psychic ability to foretell what you would write in the future, word for word, even before you knew what it would be. Or, let me guess – you wrote all this some time ago, and I stole it from you. Or – I know, you actually wrote this in 1972, I wrested it from you psychically in 1973, and then began using it in 1974, one year before we actually met. Yeah, that’s the ticket.. You seem to have forgotten that I customarily opened a session from extensive notes, often reading for the first forty minutes or so. Hence what you recalled as my extemporaneous discussions might leave you in the clear, because you have the tapes, not me. But I have THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS from which I read, which then ended up on the tapes, then in the transcripts you made, and finally in “your” book. Even O.J. would have been convicted with this kind of blood-trail. . Before reading further, you may wish to scan the second transmission coming shortly after this, which quotes line by line from “your” book and the handout I wrote for the first class in 1974, one year before I even met you. This took me less than an hour to cull. I have sketched around ten additional pages of the same kind of miserable stuff, and I can produce all the original documents to back it up. If this becomes a legal battle – as it very well may – I presently estimate that I can specifically nail you on at least HALF of “your” book. And I don’t mean your version of my ideas (that covers an additional one quarter, with the remaining quarter being the only thing you actually contributed. ) I mean, in many cases, identical word for word, line for line, paragraph for paragraph. What you see here is only the small tip of a very big iceberg. This is not only plagiarism, this is stupid plagiarism. Couldn’t you have at least taken the time to paraphrase a bit, rather that just changing a word here and there? And what of the hundreds of people that took that course over many years? Did you figure that they wouldn’t recognize my material, even though some of them still have the original handouts themselves? I was amused by your comment when you suggested that the “intellectual therapy” chapters were based on your recollections from attending five sessions. You did indeed attend a number of sessions – mainly because we lived together, and you had nowhere else to go -- but your account is based entirely on the verbatim transcripts of my classes. You failed to note – gee, I wonder why --that you have dozens of tapes from several years of classes, and that you typed them up word for word a long time ago – often three or four versions of the same class. You have literally hundreds of pages of verbatim transcripts, AND YOU SENT COPIES TO ME, dummy. These constitute the core of your entire book – often with identical sub-headings, for example (one of many) all that stuff on types of error, the entire text of which is nearly verbatim in “your book” and the psychology of reasoning (exactly the same as one of the sessions, as is most of the text.) But – and here is one among many of your screw-ups -- I have, not only the printouts, but the ORIGINAL FLOPPIES WITH LABELS IN YOUR (GREEN) HANDWRITING, WITH YOUR LETTERS AND NOTES TO ME INCLUDED. You quote me extensively, as I interacted with the participants, but always as the “facilitator” and as “she.” So, after screwing me, you proceed to castrate me. (Freud would have been very proud.) Of course, if you had been honest, and prefaced the quotes with “George Smith,” people would have wondered why on earth you were quoting me so extensively without permission. And, of course, you add your own touches of pure fabrication from time to time – things that never happened except in your imagination. What’s that business about charging only a modest fee? I was charging $120 per person by the time they ended, hardly a modest fee for the early 1980s. Those classes were pure business, as you well know, and I made my living off of them for seven years, even opening up a suite of offices on Sunset Blvd. under the name, “Forum for Philosophical Studies,” during which I gave those classes twice a week for nearly two years. You attended no classes during those two years, yet the material I revised for them specifically somehow found its way into your book.. Morever 5 single-spaced typed pages on the Types of Error were not written until after we separated in 1985, when I held classes in my place on Franklin Ave. I wrote that stuff immediately after one of the classes in 1986. You had no direct knowledge of that class. Instead, you simply took my notes and inserted them in “your” book under the same heading and in the same words -- and I mean verbatim. That’s some memory you’ve got. If you feel you are in the right, then send that box of tapes to Prometheus, and let them listen to everything first hand – unless, that is, those tapes have mysteriously disappeared. And if you claim never to have had those tapes, then how in the hell did you transcribe those hundreds of pages that are in my possession? From memory???? When leaving the scene of the crime, you left behind footprints so large Godzilla could stand in them and still leave room for your ego. I can no longer publish my own material, because it would look as if I have stolen from you. THIS IS SEVEN YEARS OF MY LABOR ABSOLUTELY RUINED BY YOU. And you knew very well that I was planning to publish this as a book. I do not want to sue Prometheus for damages, even though this may be my only recourse. They were innocent victims in all this. You played them for fools, violating your contract extensively and explicitly, in which you guarantee that the material you gave them is original. You knew exactly what you were doing. This was all clearly premeditated and deliberate. (That must have provided a nice chuckle for you, but what are you going to say now ?–that you somehow inadvertently copied huge chunks of your book from someone else, but are very sorry and promise never to do it again?) If I have to sue Prometheus (two attorneys have told me they are fully liable for what they publish, even without knowledge of the plagiarism) they will doubtless turn and sue you for fraud, breach of contract etc. (hence the clause in your contract where you swear to originality). If this happens, you may be looking at one big fucking lawsuit, in which case you will be “slam-dunked” (as one of those lawyers put it, after looking at just a fraction of my evidence.) Publishers do not appreciate being defrauded like this. I will happily provide them with everything I have when they take you to court. These are no incidental slips, as when a writer may inadvertently quote someone else from a repressed memory. This is page after dreary of page of outright, clear-cut plagiarism. I doubt if any book in recent decades has contained such an astonishingly large amount of word-for-word duplication of someone else’s work – easily 75 pages nearly verbatim, with dozens more consisting of nothing more than superficial rewrites, which are put in the same order, with the same structure, sub-headings, phraseology, arguments, and illustrations. It simply boggles the mind. I will admit, however, that those clever quotes sprinkled throughout the book are entirely yours, and you deserve full credit for the hours you spent thumbing through some quotation dictionary. Cute touch, and so typical – like taping a pretty little bow on a package of stolen merchandise, before delivering it to the unsuspecting publisher. . . If you want to avoid this messy situation, you can buy my rights to the material outright for a lump-sum payment of $10,000 (U.S. dollars), which I must receive no later than Tuesay, May 26, 1998. That’s not much for stealing seven years of someone’s professional labor, so you are getting off cheap. Enclose a release with the check, and I will sign it and return it to you immediately.. That let’s you off the hook legally as far as I am concerned, and I will not take legal action against Prometheus or you. You have two days to e-mail me your reply, which I must receive no later than 9 a.m.(PDT), Tuesday, May 19, 1998. I will take a non-response as a refusal, and immediately set the gears in motion. I will begin by Faxing a copy of this letter to Prometheus, along with an expanded version of the parallel quotations, and with copies of the original documents. And that’s just the beginning. If you agree to the settlement, I must receive a certified check for $10,000 no later than (to repeat) Tuesday, May 26, 1998, or all bets are off. If you have any doubts about this, then show the brief list of quotations to your Hubby, or some other friend, and watch their faces drop in horror. Talk about the bloom falling from the rose. Welcome to the real world with real consequences, where people can turn even against a cute little Shirley Temple, and see her other face. It’s entirely up to you. You have until this Tuesday morning, 9 a.m., to get back to me by e-mail.. If not, Prometheus will have copies of everything within the next hour, and I suspect you will receive an “urgent” phone call shortly thereafter. I am dead-serious about this. Don’t imagine for an instant that I am simply blowing off steam. I put up with your other antics for years without fighting back, but that was personal. This is professional, and you know very well how I strongly I feel about this kind of thing. Consult your self-interest, and do what you think is best. I prefer the settlement, even though I stand to lose a great deal of money in the long run. I don’t relish a long and ugly legal battle, but I am fully prepared to take it on. And, believe me, you will lose, and lose big time. Just the little bit of material I am sending is more than enough to prove the legal case of plagiarism, but I’m talking about dozens of additional pages. And it seems to me that the least you can do is to let Prometheus off the legal hook on which you have so unceremoniously impaled them. You can start writing letters to all your friends, telling about some horrible thing I’m doing to you, etc., etc., etc. It won’t make any difference. The documents are there to back up everything I say in cold, hard print.. This is not a my-word against your-word dispute. This is about hundreds of pages of documents written by me, and plagiarized by you wholesale. Period. You have less than two days to think it over. After that, there will be no turning back, for either of us. George The interlinear parallel quotations will be sent in second transmission, within the next 20 minutes.