literary theft

The buzzy thriller about a failed author who engages in an “act of literary theft,” forever changing his life, is primed for success.

His first presidential campaign ended largely because he appropriated language from a British politician, Neil Kinnock, a literary theft that today seems almost benign.

But the debate underscores how lines blur when considering literary theft and acceptable homage, and when the deployment of clichéd plot conventions becomes an egregious use of another writer’s work and ideas.

In the meantime, I asked a few academics for their thoughts on whether Dylan had committed punishable literary theft.

There is no sensible world in which copying someone else’s words is literary theft if you’re a Democrat, but an act of original creation if you’re a Republican.