A shameful sideshow of the squalid Darrel Bristow-Bovey plagiarism affair has been the number of scumbags actually prepared to side with the great pretender. Equally nauseating are the number of media luminaries who have remained publicly silent on the matter while condemning him in private; too spineless to openly criticise B-B’s actions for fear that he may single them out for punishment in next year’s Mondi awards (Darrel is a Mondi judge and there’s no reason, on past form, to believe he will resign as a matter of principle).
The more vociferous of Darrel’s supporters have decided that the best way to defend his transgression is to discredit his attackers, of which I am perceived to be one of the leaders. Luise Allemann, the editor of Marketing Mix, in an unbelievably hagiographical article, calls Darrel a genius and expresses the view that he only pinched someone else’s words because he was under tremendous pressure to perform. Ag shame! Allemann then goes on to trash my name in one of the most perversely reasoned articles I have ever read. She is clearly not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
My exchange of emails with Marlene Fryer, the publishing manager of Zebra Press (Bristow-Bovey’s protective publishers), verged on the surreal. Having read her spirited defence of her author, I emailed Ms Fryer to ask her definition of the word ‘plagiarism”. I heard nothing and phoned her office. She was in but obviously unwilling to take my call. She did however eventually answer my email request by saying something to the effect that I was perfectly capable of finding a definition of plagiarism without her help. I responded that I did indeed possess a dictionary but what I really wanted to hear was her quirky interpretation of the dictionary definition. At that point all correspondence on the matter was closed by the terse Ms Fryer. One must assume that she isn’t too keen to entertain the possibility that Zebra Press have been duped by one of their authors.
The interesting thing about this whole business is that plagiarism hasn’t been denied. On the contrary, it has been gleefully admitted with a two-fingered salute from the author in a particularly smug Independent on Sunday column and the riposte that plagiarism isn’t a crime in South Africa. The initial defence that he is able to recall, word for word, huge chunks of other people’s work seems to have faded in favour of the commonly repeated mantra that this is much ado about nothing and simply a case of a hard working writer bending the rules a little bit. This is a minor transgression, we are told by his supporters, and Darrel’s vast oeuvre is proof that he is a man of true genius and a good egg to boot. His accusers, in contrast, are a sad bunch of nobodies, jealous of his prowess with the pen and his vast celebrity status.
Not good enough, I’m afraid. We either have rules or we don’t. When a pension fund manager is caught with his fingers in the widows’ cookie jar the fact that he has successfully managed funds for the past twenty years without filching counts for nothing.
Bristow-Bovey lifted other authors’ work and hoped not to be found out. He clearly believes his readers are too stupid to have read either Bryson or O’Rourke. He has finally been exposed as a charlatan and no amount of ducking and diving can restore his tarnished reputation among journalists with a modicum of integrity. As the Mail & Guardian observed, an admission of guilt and a contrite apology would not have been out of place. However, sorry is the one word that doesn’t seem to feature in Darrel’s lifted lexicon.