London, October 20--The British author Martin Amis has accused the New York writer Jacob Epstein of plagiarism, charging that passages in Mr. Epstein's first novel, "Wild Oats," published last year by Little, Brown, are virtual duplications of wording from Mr. Amis's first book, "The Rachel Papers," published here in 1973.
"The boundary between influence and plagiarism will always be vague," Mr. Amis wrote in yesterday's edition of The Observer. "Reading 'Wild Oats, it soon became clear to me that the boundary, however hazy, had been decisively breached." Mr. Amis then went on to give numerous examples of parallels that were, in most cases, nearly word-for-word duplicates.
The two writers have other things in common.
Both are young--Mr. Amis is 31 years old, Mr. Epstein is 24. Both come
from literary families--Mr. Amis is the son of Kingsley Amis. Mr. Epstein's
father, Jason, is vice president of Random House and his mother, Barbara,
is an editor at The New York Review of Books. For a first novel, Mr. Epstein's
has had a respectable sale, as did Mr. Amis's seven years ago.
There are similarities in the plots of both books: young man embarking on life, permissive parents, sexual initiation with promiscuous girls, first serious relationship, neurotic preoccupations with school, biological functions. "These parallels worried me not at all," Mr. Amis said. "So far as mainstream fiction is concerned, plots are awkward, limited things and belong in a common pool."
However, Mr. Amis went on to specifics. Both books have aging men as the lover (Mr. Epstein) and the husband (Mr. Amis) of their young hero's mothers. The heroes of both novels regard these men with contempt. Both characters are balding. Mr. Epstein's has "two gray-colored wiry wings on either side of his otherwise hairless head." "Mine," said Mr. Amis, "in contrast, had two grey-coloured wirey wings on either side of his hairfree head.'"
"Well, at least Epstein changed the spelling," he continued. "That bit about 'wiry wings,' for example, was stolen by me from Dickens."
Mr. Amis alleged that there were some 50 sizable chunks of Mr. Epstein's book that simply parrot his own.
Amis: "I could feel, gradually playing on my features, a look of queasy hope."
Epstein: "He could feel, playing across his face, a look of queasy hope."
Amis: "My legs started off, at first spastically shooting out in all directions, then coordinating into a groovy shuffle."
Epstein: "Billy started toward her, legs spastically shooting out in all directions at first, then coordinating into a groovy shuffle."
Amis: "I always tried to look tranquil, approachable, full of Dear-Marje wisdom with no results."
Epstein: "Billy. . .tried to appear sensible and approachable, full of Ann Landers wisdom, but with no result."
Amis: "I wished she would go. I couldn't feel anything with her there. I wished she would go and let me mourn in peace."
Epstein: "He wished that she would go. He couldn't feel anything with her there. He wished she would go and let him mourn in peace."
"Epstein wasn't influenced by 'The Rachel Papers,' " Mr. Amis stated, "he had it flattened out beside his typewriter."
Mr. Amis pondered what action to take. "My own feeling was largely one of embarrassment," he said. "I am no real admirer of my first novel or indeed of my second, regarding them as a mixture of clumsy apprenticeship and unwarranted showing off. It shamed me to see sentences exhumed for reinspection 10 years on. But something had to be done."
He said The Observer article was his revenge. "I'm not terrifically indignant, but just feel it ought to be made public," he said. "The saddest things about the case is that 'Wild Oats' is the work of a genuinely talented writer."
Reached in Manhattan, Mr. Epstein, with some chagrin, asserted that the paragraphs in question had been excised from the second edition of his novel, but that these corrections were too late for the recent British publication.
"I've been dreading this for months," Mr. Epstein told a London reporter. "It is the most awful mistake, which happened because I made notes from various books as I went along and then lost the notebook telling where they came from. The first edition should never have been published. I wanted to write to Martin at the time, but was advised against it. I shall certainly be writing to him now to explain."
Mr. Amis observed that, ironically, plagiarism is a central theme in Mr. Epstein's book. "Epstein, in some half-conscious way, was too honest not to give a clue to his own imposture," he concluded. "The psychology of plagiarism is fascinatingly perverse. It risks, or invites, a deep shame and there must be something of the death wish in it."
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