Then tragically, in a manner whose precise circumstances are not necessary for the sake of this analogy, you discover how the book was written. This author’s great-grandfather was not a novelist by profession, nor did he express an interest in publishing any written work. But he did complete one manuscript and hid or forgot it in an attic drawer. Years later, the grandchild finds it and after leafing through a decaying prologue, they decide it is a success. Rather than share credit with their ancestor, the grandchild tran - scribes the manuscript. Maybe ghostwriting a few unintelligible lines and omitting a few problematic nouns. With no reference to this masterpiece in the true author’s will, nor any copy - right to infringe upon should anyone learn the truth, the grandchild rises to the top of the bestseller’s list. When the fraud is exposed, there is sure to be outrage, conversations online, argument among critics and prize judges. I hope through this story I have illustrated at least somewhat the fraud I am trying to explain. Deeper than professionalism and law, there is the promise that art has an artist. How can you think of whatever fancies you held for the plagiarist with embar - rassment and shame? How were you different from the insane narrator of Jorge Luis Borges’ “Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote?” where a man reads Don Quixote and realiz- es it was inspired by the life of his dead friend and not Miguel Cervantes who wrote it five hundred years ago? You may have thought the book gave you in- sight into its maker when you could never have guessed his name in a billion years. It is fair to object that this relationship to an author is not true of all readers nor of other audiences to other artforms. But can we not detect something of a director’s character through their relationship to the camera, their tic cuts? And there is, for the foreseeable future, the assurance that someone some - where cobbled together whatever you are enjoying these days.
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