Brad Vice - Controversy Over Alleged Plagiarism

Controversy Over Alleged Plagiarism

Shortly after Vice's short story collection The Bear Bryant Funeral Train was published, a readers' adviser to the Tuscaloosa Public Library in Alabama noticed that one of the stories bore a similarity to a section of the classic 1934 nonfiction book, Stars Fell on Alabama by Carl Carmer. Vice's 20-page short story, "Tuscaloosa Knights," used the background, setting and some dialogue from Carmer's book, specifically a four-page section of the chapter "Tuscaloosa Nights," which describes a 1930s Ku Klux Klan rally in that city. The library adviser notified the University of Georgia Press, which had published Vice's book.

Vice said that he was not copying Carmer's original section but wrote the story in homage to Carmer's book. He said he used sections of Carmer's description and dialogue to add "authority to my story with the visual details of Carmer's historical reckoning. I made a terrible error in judgment by omitting to acknowledge this due to my ignorance concerning the principles of fair use." Even though The Bear Bryant Funeral Train failed to cite Carmer's book, Vice's doctoral dissertation (which was an earlier draft of the book) did contain an epigraph from Carmer's book at the start of the story in question. Vice has stated that he was advised to remove this and other epigraphs before publication "to make the book look more conventional."

Despite this apology and explanation, the University of Georgia Press revoked Vice's prize and destroyed all copies of the book.

While many literary commentators and editors agreed that Vice had made a mistake in failing to cite the original source of the story, there was also a feeling that the University of Georgia Press overreacted to the situation. Jake Adam York, a Southern United States poet and editor of the Alabama literary journal Thicket, noted that Vice had allowed his short story and the four-page section of Carmer's original book to be published side by side in Thicket. To York, this action by Vice "implicitly acknowledges the relationship (and) allows the evidence to be made public." York added that doing this allowed the readers to enter the "intertextual space in which (Vice) has worked" and that what Vice was doing with his story was allusion, not plagiarism. York also stated that, according to his own analysis of Vice's story and Carmer's source material, Vice did not break copyright law.

Other commentators and editors who supported Vice stated that Vice was following in a long line of authors adapting older literary works for modern times. Examples of this include Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone (based on Gone with the Wind), Suzan-Lori Parks' Getting Mother's Body and Graham Swift's Last Orders (both updated versions of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying), and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (which plays off of Hamlet). Others stated that Vice' publisher acted in "haste" and questioned why the book had to be destroyed for what was probably not a copyright violation or a case of plagiarism.

Still, there were commentators who felt that Vice was indeed guilty of plagiarism and received the punishment he deserved. These commentators tended to state that since Vice was a professor of English, he should have known what he was doing.

After Vice's book was destroyed, remaining used copies on Amazon.com and other booksellers were selling for hundreds of dollars.