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poetic injustice?
Nov. 12th, 2007 11:07 am I can't help feeling a bit depressed by the court decision in favour of Pearson/Penguin in the case brought against them by one Stuart Silverstein.
In the mid-'90s Silverstein offered Penguin his compilation Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. Penguin turned the book down but offered him a smallish fee to include the compilation in future editions of a Parker Collected Poems. Not unreasonably, Silverstein declined their offer and went elsewhere with his book: to Prentice-Hall, I think.
A few years later, in 1999, Penguin published their Parker Collected Poems complete with -- oh, look, what's this? -- a section called "Poems Uncollected by Parker" that bore an astonishing resemblance to the compilation Silverstein had offered the publisher.
What had happened? Was there a cockup or malicious intent within Penguin? Was it feasible that this was one of those rare examples of parallel research? Or perhaps it was by contrast an example of what is euphemistically referred to as "parallel research"? -- i.e., someone had hoofed it to the nearest bookshop and picked up a copy of Silverstein's book. Who knows? To a certain extent, who cares? As far as I can recall (and I'm having to dredge back a good many years here), Silverstein asked that further printings give him a credit and received The Corporate Response: we're a lot bigger and richer than you, so piss off.
He eventually sued. It's been a long road, but the UK Daily Telegraph has just reported (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/11/09/cnpears109.xml) that the court has finally decided in Penguin/Pearson's favour.
Well, ho, hum. Ultimately the poems belong to the Parker Estate, I guess, not to Silverstein, who merely did the not inconsiderable work of tracking them down. And the sum he sued for -- $1m -- seems to be more "exemplary" than related to any possible loss of royalties he may have suffered. At the same time, this does appear to be a triumph not of justice and truth but of corporate might over individual rights, and as such yet another example of the slow progress of Western society from (flawed) democracy to corporate tyranny.
=====
In case anyone's interested:
LJ's little Music fill-in box allows only limited space. The pieces concerned were:
Hindemith: Clarinet Concerto
Patricia Kaas: Toute la Musique
Richard Thompson: Hand of Kindness
Schubert: Trout Quintet
I shall try to listen to fewer CDs between now and the next time I post.
In the mid-'90s Silverstein offered Penguin his compilation Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. Penguin turned the book down but offered him a smallish fee to include the compilation in future editions of a Parker Collected Poems. Not unreasonably, Silverstein declined their offer and went elsewhere with his book: to Prentice-Hall, I think.
A few years later, in 1999, Penguin published their Parker Collected Poems complete with -- oh, look, what's this? -- a section called "Poems Uncollected by Parker" that bore an astonishing resemblance to the compilation Silverstein had offered the publisher.
What had happened? Was there a cockup or malicious intent within Penguin? Was it feasible that this was one of those rare examples of parallel research? Or perhaps it was by contrast an example of what is euphemistically referred to as "parallel research"? -- i.e., someone had hoofed it to the nearest bookshop and picked up a copy of Silverstein's book. Who knows? To a certain extent, who cares? As far as I can recall (and I'm having to dredge back a good many years here), Silverstein asked that further printings give him a credit and received The Corporate Response: we're a lot bigger and richer than you, so piss off.
He eventually sued. It's been a long road, but the UK Daily Telegraph has just reported (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/11/09/cnpears109.xml) that the court has finally decided in Penguin/Pearson's favour.
Well, ho, hum. Ultimately the poems belong to the Parker Estate, I guess, not to Silverstein, who merely did the not inconsiderable work of tracking them down. And the sum he sued for -- $1m -- seems to be more "exemplary" than related to any possible loss of royalties he may have suffered. At the same time, this does appear to be a triumph not of justice and truth but of corporate might over individual rights, and as such yet another example of the slow progress of Western society from (flawed) democracy to corporate tyranny.
=====
In case anyone's interested:
LJ's little Music fill-in box allows only limited space. The pieces concerned were:
Hindemith: Clarinet Concerto
Patricia Kaas: Toute la Musique
Richard Thompson: Hand of Kindness
Schubert: Trout Quintet
I shall try to listen to fewer CDs between now and the next time I post.
