Lethem...again

Excessive influence is most definitely a disadvantage to artists. Lethem says, "wheres there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing". When people plagiarize, or take too much of somebody else's idea to expand upon, nothing new is ever created. Everything gets repeated and eventually starts to sound the same. Writers will eventually be unable to come up with different ways to phrase the same idea and it will all look like plagiarism. Writers think that plagiarism makes them look smarter, obviously, or there would be no reason to take somebody else's work. "But the truth is...the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place..". Taking others ideas does not help anyone; it does not contribute to the public knowledge, but it clouds the "collective public imagination". Nothing is contributed to the world from which "we were nourished in the first place", and everything becomes rather redundant. Perhaps everybody just likes to say the same thing, or the ideas writers choose to write about have been used to the point where nothing much comes from it, like a sale rack at the mall where the sizes don't fit anyone. The world is filled with the so-called knowledge that has nothing more to offer.