Robert Clark Young - The Neilson/Kingsolver and Wind Done Gone Controversies

The Neilson/Kingsolver and Wind Done Gone Controversies

In May, 2001 Young published an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that accused novelist Melany Neilson of plagiarizing, in The Persia Cafe, significant portions of verbatim text from the novel The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. Young criticized Neilson's publisher, St. Martin's Press, for refusing to pull copies of The Persia Cafe from stores. Young placed his argument within the context of the concurrent litigation between Alice Randall and the estate of Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind. He argued that Randall's book, The Wind Done Gone, was not in fact an instance of plagiarism, because Randall's intent was humorous and parodic, and therefore deserving of First Amendment protection, while Neilson's borrowing from Kingsolver involved verbatim text without parodic intent, thus Neilson's borrowing was not protected. Randall's attorneys cited Young's opinion piece among the evidence in favor of Randall, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated an injunction against publishing the book in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin .