A Tale of Two Plagiarists

A tale of two plagiarists is about the issue of Susan Sontag writing her then-husband Philip Rieff’s first book, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, written in 1959. The acquisition was that whether Susan writes the book or not. The discoveries were rather disconcerting and unexpected. Sontag was known as the one-time partner of Philip Rieff. Sontag was 17 years old when she got was married to 28-year-old sociology instructor Rieff, after a brief courtship. They had a son. But soon parted after 8 years of marriage. David Reiff was reputed because of his two books, ‘Freud: The Mind of the Moralist’ and ‘The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1996)’.

Sontag had written a letter to her younger sister in which she mentioned that she would take over most of the book-reviewing for popular scholarly articles done by Reiff. She also mentioned about writing the book and making precious notes of it. This saves Reiff’s time as he does not need to read the whole book and make reports quickly. A year before The Mind of the Moralist was published, a regional scholar Jacob Taubes enquired Sontag whether she relinquished all the rights as it would be a crime. Reiff had inscribed a copy of the book to Susan during the 1990s and conveyed his forgiveness through the book.

Moser tried to bring about the evidence that they both might have worked in collaboration.  This is because Reiff consider Sontag to be the true author of the book. A series of evidences followed the incident and everyone started believing the assumption made by Moser. There was only one exception. Janet Malcolm believed that Reiff has not written any inch of the book. The reason was that it someone who does not have moral values cannot write a book with several moralistic concepts. It goes beyond the psychology. Sooner, Moser felt that Malcolm provides a stronger justification of the issue which made him believe that Sontag has written every inch of the book.

The issue got shifted to the second book of Reiff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic and ho’s the real writer of the book. The style and tone of the second book is much similar to that written in The Moralist. There’s a hortatory tone in the second book that beholds the style of Sontag. This depicts the fact that Sontag might have written the second book.

 In the latter half, it has been seen that the phase of the book was copied from the Abrams. It was a masterpiece of Norton Anthony of English Literature that discusses Hazlitt’s masterpiece ‘The Mirror and the Lamp.’ The book had familiarity with several phases bring put by the critic William Hazlitt’s, relating to the anticipation of Freudian theories of creativity. Eventually, it came out that Sontag or Reiff has translated and edited the German passage into meaningful English sentences. They made certain changes here and there such as the modification of introduction and closing quotation but kept the remaining portion as it is.

The entire paragraph has been copied along with the quotation which is cited as an act of robbery. This shows that plagiarism essay detected was more than 80 percent. This is proposed as the tale of two plagiarists who have deliberately copied phrases from a book and has become popular. In 2000, Sontag was accused of plagiarism by historian Ellen Lee. According to Ellen Lee, Sontag has used several phases from the research of others' work in her 1999 novel, In America. Thus, it can be concluded that Sontag and Reiff have copied phases from several books and named them as their own.

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