I’ll begin by declaring that I make no excuses for Jonah Lehrer’s actions nor justify his behavior. Frankly, I’m disappointed by what has happened. What I’m proposing here, though, is a clue to why things transpired as they did.

As a fan of his writing for many years, I’ve had the opportunity to interview him twice for the publication for which I work. It was me that prodded my organization to hire him to speak at our annual conference. After three years of pushing for him as a keynote speaker, he finally gave a well-received address to our association’s members in July. It was his last major speaking engagement before his fall from grace.

If you’re reading this and you have no idea who Jonah Lehrer is or what he did, then let me recap. He’s a neuroscientist and popular science writer with three books (two of them best sellers) under his belt, a heavy speaking engagement slate, and a New Yorker staff writer. Well, he was. He was all of these things until he admitted to misquoting  Bob Dylan in his recent book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. He resigned from the New Yorker, and now all his books are being thoroughly fact-checked for any other misquotes or fabrications.

Fact-checkers will determine in the coming weeks how far Lehrer has to climb out of his hole. In the meantime, I’d like to address the last chapter in Imagine, and the clues it offers as to what may have been going on in Lehrer’s mind as he wrote the book. I’m not a psychologist or doctor or anything of the sort. This is pure speculation, but something to consider when talking about Lehrer’s proposed sins.

In “The Shakespeare Paradox,” Lehrer begins by telling how Shakespeare was a genius at using others’ works and knitting them together to create is own “original” plays.

But Shakespeare didn’t just read these texts and imitate their best parts. He made them his own, seamlessly blending them together in his plays. Sometimes, this literary approach got Shakespeare into trouble. His peers repeatedly accused him of plagiarism, and he was often guilty, at least by contemporary standards. What these allegations failed to take into account, however, was that Shakespeare was pioneering a new creative method in which every conceivable source informed his art. For Shakespeare, the act of creation was inseparable from the act of connection.

Could it be that Lehrer was purposely misquoting Dylan in order to connect his ideas and his ideas to his audience? Four hundred years from now, will we be declaring Lehrer a genius, as we declare Shakespeare is?

It’s argued that the biggest difference is Shakespeare dealt in fiction. Plagiarism, though, doesn’t differentiate. I’m sure some of those playwrights and authors would love a slither of Shakespeare’s fame attached to them.

Lehrer, later in the chapter, discusses how copyrights and their continuous extensions stifle creativity.

The problem with these extensions is that they discourage innovation, preventing people from remixing and remaking old forms…And that his why we should always think of young William Shakespeare stealing from Marlowe and Holinshed and Kyd. (If Shakespeare were writing today, his plays would be the subject of endless lawsuits.) It doesn’t matter if it’s a hip-hop album made up of remixes and music samples or an engineer tweaking a gadget in a San Jose garage: we have to make sure that people can be inspired by the work of others, that the commons remains a rich source of creativity.

Lehrer is a huge Dylan fan. Was Dylan’s creative process of using others’ tunes to craft his own music an inspiration to Lehrer? Is the role of remixing (accomplished with quotes, too) a way of making something more clear, a way of bringing forth a universal truth?

So many questions, I know. As mentioned, I’m a fan of Lehrer, and this situation has me questioning him, his research, and the role of the writer in today’s society. Perhaps Lehrer’s book title inspired him.

…although the imagination is inspired by the everyday world–by its flaws and beauties–we are able to see beyond our sources, to imagine things that exist only in the mind. We notice an incompleteness and we can complete it; the cracks in things become a source of light. (From the “Coda” section)

If Lehrer misquoted/remixed Dylan (or maybe other sources), if he added lines to complete a thought to help us understand our minds a little better, is that a bad thing? Do you care if it’s truth or fiction if it helps you become a better person?

What I’m ultimately asking is: What’s the big deal? I can hear a lot of you gasping and saying, “Oh my, what gall!” Does Michael Moynihan’s discovery of the Dylan misquotes change the overall message of the book? The answer is no. Does knowing Shakespeare stole from others diminish your appreciation of his plays? Once again, the answer is no. Should Lehrer had been more upfront about how he created his work? Personally, I say yes, but as we’ve seen over time, artists and writers rarely acknowledge who or from what they’re cribbing. Before we draw and quarter these creators, perhaps we should all stop for a moment and examine the stories we tell ourselves in order to live a little more fully day after day. By doing so, we’ll soon find that we’re not that much different from Shakespeare, or Jonah Lehrer.

Send to Kindle