"Down These Mean Streets..."
Now, I thought that was a Raymond Chandler quote, from The Simple Art Of Murder. I only looked it up to make sure I got it right. But, when I did, I got an interesting Google hit on the author of the quote: Rebecca Harding Davis. Her bio is here:
1831–1910, American novelist, b. Washington, Pa.; mother of Richard Harding Davis. Her early nonfiction pieces, particularly those collected under the title Life in the Iron Mills (1861), and her first novel, Margaret Howth (1862), foreshadowed the naturalistic techniques of later 19th-century writers by showing how a dismal environment can warp character. See her autobiographical Bits of Gossip (1904); biography by G. Langford (1961).
For a side-by-side comparison, here's the thinkexist.com quote attributed to Rebecca Harding Davis:
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
And here's the quote attributed to Chandler:
"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
If the thinkexist quote I linked above is correctly attributed to Davis, it would seem the great Ray dabbled a bit in the simple art of plagiarism.
Yep, new technology can be a bitch. It's best to assume that everything you say and do will one day be scrutinized by infinitely knowledgable supercomputers and reported to the masses -- so don't ever plagarize, and be an onion. A gloriously pervy onion.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at July 18, 2005 6:40 AM
And spell "plagiarize" correctly.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at July 18, 2005 6:41 AM
If he did steal it, he was wasting his time - his own lines are better.
Todd Fletcher at July 19, 2005 1:42 PM
This is why it's so important to attribute quotes where necessary, even if you're not quite sure who to attribute it to. If more than one person claims credit for the same quote, just credit the lot of them, I say! :-)
DorianTB at February 15, 2011 10:54 AM
Paul, only a small green onion as you did correct yourself.
plagiarize
vt., vi.
plagiarized, plagiarizing see PLAGIARY
to take (ideas, writings, etc.) from (another) and pass them off as one's own
Jay J. Hector at February 15, 2011 2:28 PM
Plagiarism is an interesting topic, because I read the unabridged English translation of the "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas when I was 8, and 8 years later, as a sophomore in High School, literally quoted a portion of that work in a short fiction piece I had to write for my Modern Lit class, without realizing that I was using someone else's words, and luckily my teacher and the principal believed my mom and the Assistant Superintendent (who was my elementary school principal, and saw me lugging it around in 3rd grade).
spqr2008 at December 19, 2013 6:43 AM
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