The Dogs (2021)

[holyzombiejesus]

The Australian novelist John Hughes, who last week admitted to "unintentionally" plagiarising parts of a Nobel laureate's novel, appears to have also copied without acknowledgment parts of The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and other classic texts in his new book The Dogs.

The revelation of new similarities follows an investigation by Guardian Australia which resulted in Hughes' 2021 novel being withdrawn from the longlist of the $60,000 Miles Franklin literary award.

That investigation uncovered 58 similarities and identical instances of text between parts of The Dogs and the 2017 English translation of Belarusian Nobel prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich's nonfiction work The Unwomanly Face of War.

It has since been revealed that The Dogs also contains passages which are similar to books including The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and All Quiet on the Western Front.

Guardian Australia has cross-referenced all the similarities between Hughes' work and those classic texts and found some cases in which whole sentences were identical or where just one word had changed.

Hughes responded to requests for comment on the similarities between the works by saying the past week since Guardian Australia's investigation had been the most difficult of his writing career.

"I don't think I am a plagiarist more than any other writer who has been influenced by the greats who have come before them," he said in an email.

The brass neck on the guy. Cheeky fuck.

Any other authors got fingered for pinching?

[Twit 2]

That woman who goes on about Jane Austen on TV and in books.

[holyzombiejesus]

TBH I only created the thread so I could use the title.

[Mobius]

Ha, saw this article the other day that he'd completely ripped a book off

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/09/miles-franklin-nominated-novelist-apologises-for-plagiarising-nobel-laureate-without-realising

(examples at the bottom of the page)

So turns out he's done it numerous times to various books? Brass neck indeed!

[13 schoolyards]

I suspect this kind of thing was always pretty common, but back in ye olde days where you had to write or type everything out yourself to create a manuscript it was a lot easier to remember to change a few words in the process. Now they're all just cutting and pasting and knocking out 10,000 "original" words before lunch