Plagiarism

Lethem is not exactly advocating plagiarism. He is more saying that it is okay to recycle intellectual ideas. He even says that we, as writers, can use his own stories and ideas because they weren't really his ideas in the first place. This writer must me crazy, right? He just gave us permission to copy his work. Well, not really, because if you are a good writer or you are trying at all to create something new using Lethem's ideas- that is what is okay with him. Ideas are meant to be shared, elaborated, and inspiration to lead to new ideas. Lethem says that no one can really "own knowledge" it only starts with you. Once a writer starts off with a piece of knowledge, it is fair game. Fair game to rework over and over until it may look nothing like the original thought, or it might look exactly the same- as long as it is being shared. Other artists are likely to re create what you have to say, and using your ideas should be considered a good thing. Sharing ideas will keep the art, whether it is a story, an idea, or a fantasy, circulating and the ideas are made into many changing and intertwining forms of thought. He is saying that "intertextuality" exists because it has to. It has to, because ideas and stories need to be developed, for us to learn and evolve with the idea itself just as it evolves in our minds. As readers we are all relating eachothers ideas to other things and it is okay to intertwine your ideas with other ideas of previous writers because they ideas are meant to put back into the "economy" and it works together to create art. This is an economy of knowledge, and economy of writing, and it is successful when all writers and all intellectuals borrow ideas, as long as they donate imput and new creations derived from the original are put back into it.