Comments on: James Twitchell, plagiarist

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:37:26 +0000

Twitchell was always an obvious phony. When I was at UF, he also liked to hit on undergraduate females, but perhaps that’s another story….

By: Anderson

Anderson — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:59:10 +0000

Peculiar: I was googling for a different Twitchell, another plagiarist actually, and found this. (The case of Paul Twitchell is fascinating in that there’s a religion built around the guy.)

I find it remarkable that faculty regularly flunk undergrads for pulling stunts like this (I do), but certain of us are willing to do the same thing when it might be profitable to do so.

By: fouro

fouro — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:46:01 +0000

An sampling of (more?) Twitchell Collage…

Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America (1992),
For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture (1997),
Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (1999)

Well, Grant, I’m sure you enjoy the irony that Twitchell’s chased the dragon he purported to explain. Perhaps a suggestion for someone’s next book with a chapter on the “Professor” (footnoted of course): Edward Bernays, Andy Warhol, the fake Rolex and a padded resume: Why integrity is so 20th Century.

I hope you get some old fashioned glove-across-the-face satisfaction someway, somehow.

By: Peter O

Peter O — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:58:00 +0000

This is all very disappointing as I’ve enjoyed Twitchell’s work. He does have a tendency to recycle his own material–which it turns out isn’t necessarily his to begin with. The Diderot Effect actually makes appearances in at least three of his books, starting with Lead Us Into Temptation. A little Google Book sleuthing reveals that he basically copied and pasted the Diderot passages from book to book. The “good news” is that he finally did credit McCracken specifically in Branded Nation, though still hadn’t gotten around to enclosing the copied passages in quotation marks…

By: David Hoopes

David Hoopes — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:55:49 +0000

Wow. Wow U of Florida doesn’t seem to care. Wow Twitchell isn’t embarrassed. Wow academics do this. At least he was trading up (copying people whose work was worth stealing). Small consolation.

By: David Hoopes

David Hoopes — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:53:28 +0000

Wow. Wow U of Florida doesn’t seem to care. Wow Twitchell isn’t embarrassed. Wow academics do this. At least he was trading up (copying people whose work was worth stealing). Small consolation.

By: John Fast

John Fast — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:33:15 +0000

“I wonder if the threat of legal action by the offended authors might concentrate the editorial mind?”

IMO a good way to handle plagiarism would be a law that awards a plagiarized author either half or all of the royalties of the book. Of course this would be in addition to other sanctions.

By: JustinW

JustinW — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:13:01 +0000

Not that he doesn’t deserve this treatment, but I think Twitchell “hacked” and is not a hack.
This may be a case where a smart guy gets lazy. The thing that bothers me is his initial
approach to criticism and society being what it is seems not to have made any sort of
impression on him or how he works.
Of course you could say he was double-mirroring the present state of
post modern criticism just to prove a point, but my guess is he’s running out of angles so he’s
had to “borrow” to boost his ideas. All he had to do, particularly in
his field, was paraphrase, footnote, and cite the passages he stole–which
weren’t really juicy in the first place.
And this guy used to make us play baseball with his dog on Saturdays. He even took a friend of mine and I
to the Gator Nationals to make us real men. He was a guy we looked up to in high school.
It’s really too bad, he deserves better than this and his field deserves much better than this.
Oh well.

By: PS

PS — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:21:19 +0000

Grant,

Professor Twitchell has a place in my world as a definitional example for the Yiddish word “Chutzpah.” The classic definition is, of course, the man who is put on trial for the murder of his parents. He is found guilty and confesses, but then begs for mercy from the court since he’s an orphan.

Here we have a fellow who has spent years making “small errors in note taking” such that his writings are filled with complete duplications of the works of others. His solution; he promises he won’t write any more books. What Chutzpah!

Twitchell gives a new meaning to the term copywriter.

By: Jo Paoletti

Jo Paoletti — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:47:07 +0000

One of the most galling aspects of my displacement from a textiles department into American Studies was attending the ASA meeting that fall and not only not being recognized for any of my publications on clothing and gender, but being asked — several times — if I had read a recent book by an American Studies scholar whose chapter on children’s clothing and gender had been clearly based on my work (even using the same illustrations), but who filed to cite or reference me in any way. Re-establishing my reputation in a new field would have a challenge under ordinary circumstances, but having to perform in the shadow of a “rising star” in the field made it even more difficult.