Fittingly

Since I'm in New York visiting (about 18 hours left), I figured why go outside when I can have the superior experience of reading the New Yorker in a living room in New York? A story I read last night on Google's quest to scan all books eerily compliments Jonathan Lethem's brilliant 'collage' in this month's Harper's -- among many things a celebration of plagiarism as the motor of culture in all its forms.

Glued together, the two pieces raise the prospect something monstrous and tantalizing, of gotcha-plagiarism-hunting to a whole new level: using Google's inventory of all books -- and eventually, I imagine, magazines, then newspapers, then song lyrics, then flyers, etc -- plus perhaps another elegant algorithm or two to construct a plagiarism database, where anyone can see which revered singer/novelist/orator stole what from whom to create what.

What a democratic, leveling force! Finally, our most treasured wordsmiths subjected to the same humiliating cavity search as suspicious looking airplane travelers and hapless college kids.