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The “Imitation David”: Plagiarism, Collaboration, and the Making of a Gay Literary Tradition in David Leavitt's “The Term Paper Artist”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Kenneth Bleeth  and
Julie Rivkin
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Abstract

Charged with having plagiarized Stephen Spender's 1948 autobiography World within World in his 1993 novel While England Sleeps, David Leavitt responds through his novella “The Term Paper Artist” and his coedited anthology of gay writers Pages Passed from Hand to Hand by defending the place of copying and imitation in the transmission of gay culture. Echoing the preoccupation with mimicry in contemporary gay-lesbian cultural theory, Leavitt's novella fictionalizes his accused self and presents a parable of how literary inspiration, like desire, derives from inhabiting identities not one's own. “The Term Paper Artist” invites a detective game of source study that leads to figures as diverse as Henry James, E. M. Forster, and Jack the Ripper, as well as to less mentionable icons of contemporary popular culture, all of whom are used to authorize a version of gay writing and gay literary genealogy that finds generative and regenerative power in the copy.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 5 , October 2001 , pp. 1349 - 1363
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

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