The High Court was informed today that a US novelist included in a £2 million case for plagiarism plagiarised the work of Boris Pasternak’s grand niece at least 44 times.
Anna Pasternak, a British journalist, accuses Lara Prescott of stealing substantial portions of her biography for a book she wrote on her uncle, a famous Russian poet, and his masterpiece Dr. Zhivago.
It is said that Ms. Prescott used elements of Ms. Pasternak’s book Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago when she penned the 2019 hit The Secrets We Kept.
The plot of Dr. Zhivago, Pasternak’s best-known novel and the subject of David Lean’s 1965 epic film of the same name, starring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif, is explored throughout both books.
It is generally accepted that Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak’s mistress and literary muse, served as the inspiration for the figure of Lara Antipova, after whom Ms. Prescott is called.
The memoirs of Irina Kosovi, Olga’s daughter, served as a partial translation for both Ms. Pasternak’s and Ms. Prescott’s writings.
Ms. Pasternak paid for the memoirs to be translated in 2014 when she was writing her book.
She claims that Ms. Prescott violated her copyright by utilising translated sections from “Lara” in her own work.
In her writing, Ms. Pasternak outlined her hypothesis that Lara Antipova was actually inspired by mistress Olga Ivinskaya.
The British journalist Anna Pasternak alleges Prescott stole her selection and arrangement of the information to be included and removed in the story rather than saying she “textually duplicated” her work.
While acknowledging some copying, Ms. Prescott disputes that it is “significant.”
In 2019, Ms. Prescott’s representatives held a drinks event where Ms. Pasternak and her first met.
There was some initial speculation that the two would work together on some publicity activities, but three months later disagreements about Prescott’s book’s acknowledgements led to the filing of a lawsuit, whose closing arguments are being held today.
Ms. Pasternak’s attorney, Nicholas Caddick, QC, concluded by saying that the “Lara” book was “more than simply a secondary source” and that “one got the feeling” that Ms. Prescott looked at it “a reasonably frequent basis” while testifying in front of the court in central London.
Given the “material we have now seen,” he claimed that Ms. Prescott would “inevitably” rethink her “initial view that it was just four words, one concept, and one phrase” that she had plagiarised.
She has admitted to using significantly more extensively than her defence would have us believe, according to his statement.
In my conclusion, I listed about 44 instances of copying.
It does raise the question of why this was only brought up by the defendant after disclosure and in the witness stand, and that is significant because the reliability of the defendant’s sources for her information and organisational structure is at the heart of this case.
She has basically stolen it from somewhere, and the question for the court is whether she did so primarily from “The Zhivago Affair” and “A Captive of Time” [Ivinskaya’s memoirs] and whether she used “Lara” as a cross-check, or whether it was the other way around and she used “Lara” as the main thing and the others as a cross-check.
Naturally, “We say it is the latter.”
When Ms. Prescott was writing her book, Mr. Caddick claimed that she had access to the other sources “for a long time,” but claimed that there was a “sudden explosion of activity and output in the exact period she had “Lara” in front of her,” primarily between October 2016 and January 2017.
Ms. Pasternak claims that Ms. Prescott copied the organisation and arrangement of material and facts—so-called “linguistic copying”—rather than the content of her work.
“If the defendant is looking at the text of ‘Lara’ with sufficient attention to copy it, then we argue it is likely that she is also looking at ‘Lara’ for the arrangement of material,” Mr. Caddick stated.
Regarding the writing process itself, it’s amusing in that you occasionally question if the parties are discussing the same case.
According to the defence, the claimant is a collatorist while the defendant is a thorough and precise writer.
Ms. Pasternak refuted the defense’s assertion that she was a “simple copyist” and that her work wasn’t original in her own testimony.
The fact that “Lara” took just over four months to create, according to her attorney Mr. Caddick, “does not reflect a lack of originality or a low level of creativity as a result,”
“The claimant is using sources to write a history book.” She shouldn’t be making up a lot of things, he argued, because doing so would suggest she was writing fiction instead of a historical book.
She has worked in this field for 26 years and is writing about a subject that is very interesting to her, which is one of the reasons she was able to finish this book so quickly.
The fact that she completed this task in four months should not be used to infer that she lacks originality and is a plagiarist.
In reality, the defendant is a beginning author. Her first novel is this one. She was diligent, thus writing this book didn’t take her years.
Yes, she put in a tonne of effort. She claims to have consulted a variety of sources, but she doesn’t have any notes on any of them, as she acknowledged during cross-examination, which is unusual for a thorough writer to do.
The question for the court today is which of those was foremost in her thoughts when she wrote those specific chapters.
“I would say that the story of sources is a bit of a smoke screen to mask the fact that the defendant is primarily depending on relatively few sources,” the defendant said.
The absence of notes, even for “A Captive of Time” and “The Zhivago Affair,” is significant in this case because it suggests that the defendant’s most recent reading is likely to have the greatest influence.
Mr. Caddick said that Ms. Prescott directly borrowed the literary works she chose from “Lara”.
He claimed that “all of these chapters we are now addressing were essentially created during the time the defendant obtained a copy of “Lara.”
There have been very few modifications to the selection of events, aside from a few post-event presentational tweaks.
Therefore, it is significant that those occurrences were mentioned in the defendant’s book at that point.
“The defendant admitted that she had not visited any other pertinent source for these issues throughout that time, between October 2016 and January 2017,” the court wrote.
She may have seen an article, but she was unable to name it, I believe she said in her reply.
She possessed “The Zhivago Affair” for 2.5 years at this point, while she had “A Captive of Time” for roughly a year.
It seems likely that “Lara” was what she had in mind at the time because it was the only fresh source she had during the time she was writing.
Judge Edwin Johnson questioned whether a writer had to describe historical facts in a specific order, as they actually occurred, while writing about events like Olga’s arrest and interrogation.
They might or might not, Mr. Caddick added. They might talk about what [Olga] ate that evening for dinner.
“All of those are true. The claimant argues that her decision over which facts to include is protected.
“My client cannot monopolise the individual facts, but the collection of information may be protected if it involves artistic expression.”
We’re attempting to protect the collection of facts, not a specific fact, like Olga finding out she’s pregnant.
Prescott said in her statement that the “whole situation” had been a “huge strain” and “stalled [her] blooming career.”
The defence closing arguments are coming this afternoon as the hearing resumes.