Plagiarism In Malcolm Gladwell's Something Borrowed

Malcolm Gladwell’s Something Borrowed tells of Dorothy Lewis, a physchatrist who studied serial killers for over twenty-five years. When playwright Bryony Lavery’s play “Frozen” debuted on Broadway, Lewis received non stop calls from friends and acquaintances telling her that she “really ought to see it,” (Gladwell) because one of the main characters was also a psychiatrist who studied serial killers. Lewis was reluctant to see the play, having spent so much of her life studying serial killers, she told her friends “I need to see that as much as I need to go to the moon.” Eventually, a woman from the theater where “Frozen” was playing called Lewis and requested she do a talk-back after one of the performances. Lewis, delighted, asked for a copy of the script so she could read it in preparation.

Almost immediately, Lewis began to notice striking similarities from her work and personal life with the psychiatrist of the play, Agnetha Gottmundsdottir. The similarities range from attending the same school, to doing the same experiments, to being sniffed “in a grotesque, sexual way”(Gladwell) by a serial killer. Lewis was understandably upset, telling Gladwell she “felt robbed in some peculiar way” as if “someone has stolen [her]

He personally had his book, “Gun, With Occasional Music” reformed into a pistol by artist Robert The. Instead of being angry, Lethem was touched by “the strange beauty of its second use”(Lethem) and believed it was a “reward for being a published writer”(Lethem) one which he “could never have fathomed in advance” (Lethem). Gladwell and Lethem were both somewhat pleased to have their work used without their permission, however, neither was used to smear their