I’m finally ready to review Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto by accomplished novelist Mark Helprin. The book has been out for a few weeks; if I were still a journalist I would have already been chewed out by my editor for ridiculously blowing a deadline. But I wanted to make sure I did the book justice. With one caveat (see below) the book is engrossing and engaging, exhibits admirable passion, and demonstrates Helprin’s poetic approach to language.

In a second post I will comment on the insightful and noteworthy insights on copyright found in this book. But in this post I’ll address the book’s tone.

It is vitriolic. There is no denying it. Helprin’s tone is not one embraced here at the Copyright Alliance. That said, Helprin is a novelist who, innocently enough, expressed his thoughts on copyright in an op-ed in The New York Times two years ago. For his trouble he was flamed online, fed by a law professor creating a wiki to do so. By Helprin’s calculation, he received three-quarter of a million attacks, a significant percentage of them less than constructive.

As someone who has been compared online to all manner of despicable rubbish, I can empathize with Helprin’s unhappiness, particularly with the ad hominem attacks. I can only sympathize with how he felt given the volume of attacks, because fortunately I’ve never experienced anything on that scale.

Helprin is a creator. Copyright law gives him certain rights. He values those rights and expresses his appreciation for those rights. He, in fact, has a right to that expression.

I must also note that Helprin, early in the book, informs his readers that the book is part policy tome, part memoir. He weaves personal anecdotes and family history in with his arguments. This, to me, reinforces his arguments, because he is demonstrating how personal copyright is to him, but I can understand those who are used to authors separating themselves from the policy positions they propose being a bit rattled by his approach. I say get used to it — anyone who reads this blog knows I come at this issue from the perspective of a creator, the son of a creator, and the father of a creator.

Still, Helprin’s approach in dealing with unwarranted attacks – by at times launching character-based attacks in response – obviously is unhelpful to his cause, because it allows his opponents to ignore the substance of his arguments and instead focus on his (at times outrageous) criticism of his opponents.

Recognizing this problem, in the next post I have pulled out some insightful comments by Helprin. I hope that by breaking them out separately, people can view them and assess them on their merits, and not devolve into whether they like Helprin as a person or appreciate his tone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 1:05 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.