Copyright Law Trustees Of Margaret Mitchell

Grumpy Old Bookman: Eva Hemmungs Wirten: No Trespassing

Now I suppose we had better admit at the start that the average would-be writer -- indeed the average publisher -- could probably go through life quite comfortably without actually reading this book, which has a definite academic slant to it. However, I have always taken the view that it never does any harm to learn as much as possible about the background of the business you happen to be in. So I would encourage you to borrow a copy of this book, and at least have a look at it, even if you don't actually buy it for your bookshelf. The book has three main subjects, which are stated in the title: authorship; the ownership of intellectual property rights (in a whole lot of other things besides books); and the 'globalisation' of the media in the last few decades. Along the way, Wirten looks at the relationship between authors and translators; the impact of the photocopier; and what I would describe (though Wirten doesn't) as the massive greed of modern media conglomerates (Wirten calls them TransNational Media Corporations, or TNMCs). I know that business is business, but sometimes these people go a little too far for my taste. Secondly, this is a very academic book, and there are certainly chapters where Wirten resorts to the kind of litbabble which does no one any credit. She has got in with bad company (too many professors of Eng. Lit.), and has picked up some nasty habits. On the whole, however, the book is, to use the publisher's description, scholarly yet accessible. Well, reasonably acessible. Bits of it are just plain incomprehensible, especially when Wirten quotes other academics. What strikes me most about this chapter is just how clueless some academic critics are. This is an all-too-familiar but always somewhat astonishing realisation. By and large, academics insist on finding more in a book than is really there, and they complain bitterly when anyone actually sets out to entertain the reader. In my view, this attitude is often adopted, consciously or unconsciously, in order to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the reviewer; and I find it socially, professionally, and morally objectionable. What is worse is that such critics' views are invariably dressed up in fancypants language, with a level of obscurity which often manages to disguise the sheer banality of the ideas on offer. develops into a woman-in-peril story. And when you're writing a woman-in-peril story, it's a good idea to put your woman in a really tricky situation.

Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood

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