"I idealize the transmission of intellectual property materials," Jonathan Lethem says (explaining why his novels read like mashups of cultural references, borrowings and outright plagiarisms). "Maybe that's why my books are full of pop music," he muses, naming some of the bands who've inspired him: Pavement, Camper Van Beethoven, stuff that's on the hard side of college rock.
With his salt-and-pepper mane, baseball T-shirt and engineer's glasses, Lethem could be just another music nerd enthusing about obscure '90s rock in a quiet Berkeley cafe. But Lethem is the author of literary sensation Fortress of Solitude, winner of a MacArthur genius grant and is about to author a new version of the cult comic book Omega the Unknown for Marvel.
Over his two-decade career as a novelist, he's written about women who fall in love with black holes, alien abductions, sentient transsexual kangaroos and Tourette sufferers. Known for blending science fiction and comic book themes with precise, literary prose, Lethem is the kind of guy who goes -- at least in his imagination -- where few have gone before.
Now he's got a new geek obsession: copyright reform.
Some fictional liner notes appear on his CD from Bedwin Greenish, guitarist for Monster Eyes, the band Lethem invented for his new indie rock novel You Don't Love Me Yet.
The novel, on its surface, is a sunny recollection of the music scene in early-1990s Los Angeles. But swimming beneath the sex-and-art idyll of its main characters (members of Monster Eyes) is a meditation on the way artistic creation defies copyright law.
Over the course of the novel, we discover that none of Monster Eyes' songs come from one author. They're cobbled together out of pop culture, history, conversations and the ephemera of everyday life. One character tries to claim copyright on the songs after contributing some lyrics, and Lethem characterizes his actions as "manipulative" and "bullying."
Lethem is a fan of art that comes from other art -- "collage art, cover versions, sampling" -- and in a recent essay for Harper's, he reclaimed the word "plagiarism," calling the act of appropriation central to all art. The essay concludes with three pages of sources whose ideas Lethem pilfered to write it. Plus, "Fortress of Solitude is loaded with uncleared lyrics," he says, referring to his hit 2003 novel. That's why Lethem wants to give back to the cultural commons from which he's poached so gleefully.
You Don't Love Me Yet is part of what Lethem calls his foray into "copyright experiments." He's just launched these experiments with the Promiscuous Materials Project, a website where filmmakers and dramatists can go to find several dozen of his short stories whose rights they can snap up for just one dollar apiece. "Many filmmakers and dramatists don't have access to the kinds of money and lawyers that are usually needed to obtain rights, so I wanted to remove that barrier," Lethem says.
As an extension of this experiment, Lethem will also give away film-option rights for You Don't Love Me Yet. More interestingly, five years after the film is released, he's promised the general public all "ancillary rights" on both film and novel. That means anyone will be able to create derivative works of the novel and film -- they can write new stories featuring the characters, publish a sequel to the novel or turn it into a comic book.
"I wanted to say any artist could make up their own way of dealing with copyright," Lethem explains. "I wanted to possess the activity. Some novelists have already done that by using Creative Commons licenses. But I'm saying we can make up a new set of rules every time we offer something to the world. Artists should take possession of the transmission of their art. In fact, that could be part of the art. Each copyright could be particular to with the art itself.
"The point is, it ought to be up to the artists."
Listening to Lethem, one imagines a world where every artist crafts an idiosyncratic copyright notice, with its own strange rules, to adorn the front page or liner notes or gallery notice fronting her creations.
Lethem doesn't think of himself as a copyright activist, nor does he claim to understand every aspect of intellectual property law. He just wants to tweak people's cultural perceptions, which is perhaps the first step toward changing laws.
"I urge people to think and feel differently about societal mores regarding originality and plagiarism," Lethem says. "I want to provoke people to reexamine the realm of imperfection that is copyright."
Comment on this story.
