And that's how your sausage gets made

Spoiler for the end of the New Yorker's feature on Quentin Rowan alias Q.R. Markham, the spy novel plagiarist discovered last fall: At the end he got another book deal, this time for a memoir, because people who serially fail to tell the truth should just get more money and attention thrown at them because that will totally make them go straight. To quote from the piece itself:

"One publishing executive told me that scanning every manuscript for plagiarism would be like 'vaccinating the entire population because two people had come down with some nasty disease.' Instead, publishers hope that editors and agents are well read enough to detect plagiarism, and they rely on intuition about an author’s credibility."

That intuition worked so well the first 20 times...

Steal from the best!

Kirkus Reviews' best of 2011 fiction list included (I assume it will be removed soon?) the plagiarized thriller ASSASSIN OF SECRETS. (Excited for the inclusion of THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ, though.)

The lessons of "Q.R. Markham," thriller plagiarist

This is about 18th on the list of important scandals this week, but anyway...

1. If you're going to plagiarize your thriller novel, don't steal from James Bond. Those Bond fans know everything, including that Q.R. Markham's debut ASSASSIN OF SECRETS was mightily stolen from a number of sources. Markham (pseudonymous with Quentin Rowan, Brooklyn bookseller) just had his first book yanked and the remainder of his contract canceled. Oops.

2. Even if you also steal from Graham Greene, people will know you as the guy who stole from James Bond. (Nine paragraphs in.) (9!)

3. This is not the correct way to vent your anger at not being one of the chosen Brooklyn literary elite:

In an interview with The New York Daily News last week, Quentin Rowan [alias Q.R. Markham] said he had previously written several literary novels, "but nothing wound up happening with anything I'd done."

He said he had grown "disillusioned" as he saw other Brooklyn writers such as Jonathan Safran Foer (EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED) strike it big as "wunderkind writers."

"There was a bunch of books by people who were technically my peers that felt showy and one-note. Maybe I had to dumb it down."

Showy and one-note? Burn!

4. Kaavya Viswanathan is never going to clear her name. I mean, not to minimize what she did, but we could pick on a comparable adult here (there are lots of them!)

5. It's too bad "Without A Trace" isn't making original episodes, because this would make a great one. Just look at this guy's picture. 43 minutes later, he's discovered in Istanbul going to the steam bath after his advance.

6. Things are going to get slightly awkward at Spoonbill & Sugartown, the bookstore Rowan co-owns.