Punk diva: Was Theresa Duncan plagiarizing or posing?

A recent story about Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake in the Independent relies heavily on an interview with Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols, who knew the couple. Theresa liked to tout her rock bona fides on her blog, but check out this Wit post (hat tip to Poussin) on the Chelsea Hotel:

If you doubt the Chelsea's status as the Haunted Indian Burial Ground of Baby Boomer hipster culture, consider that no significant counterculture has been produced by Western white middle class youth since Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend on this very spot and died of a heroin overdose in Rikers prison in the middle of the East River shortly afterward.

Did you catch the error? Sid Vicious did not die in prison at all. He died in a Greenwich Village apartment after being sprung from Rikers. Did Duncan not know this? Was she just posing a a punk fan or did she carelessly copy this blurb from another source?

Tuesday is for Tuesday Weld plagiarism

From an enterprising reader comes yet another example of Duncan stringing together sentences lifted from Wikipedia to form a post for The Wit of the Staircase. This time the topic is Tuesday Weld. Any high school English teacher in American will recognize this type of "writing." Lazy students engage in it every day. What makes Duncan special is that her writing has been singled out as praiseworthy by people who should know better. People like Rosenbaum. Perhaps it's wikipedia's pages that should be praised.

Duncan on Tuesday Weld:

In 1961, after starring opposite Elvis Presley in Wild in the Country, he and Tuesday Weld began an off-screen romance. In Hollywood, her reputation for a reckless lifestyle was fodder for the gossip columnists and Louella Parsons reportedly said, as politely as possible, that "Miss Weld is not a very good representative for the motion picture industry." The romance with Elvis did not last long after Colonel Tom Parker cautioned Presley against the relationship, fearful it would harm his image.

Tuesday Weld appeared with Jackie Gleason and Steve McQueen in the 1963 comedy/drama, Soldier in the Rain, and although her performance was well received, the film was only a minor success. Although frequently typecast as the "blonde in the tight sweater," both the critics and working members of the film industry acknowledged her talent.

Weld never achieved the level of stardom many thought her looks and talent could bring. In part, her lack of great success was a result of her turning down roles in films that became great successes and that made mega-stars out of others, such as Lolita, Bonnie and Clyde,True Grit, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Although Weld had the final say in such matters, many question the quality of advice her agent was providing. Actor Roddy McDowall, who co-starred with her in a 1966 film, said: "no actress was ever so good in so many bad films."

Wikipedia on Weld:

In 1961, after starring opposite Elvis Presley in Wild in the Country, the two had an off-screen romance. However, in Hollywood, her reputation for recklessness was fodder for pulp magazines and the more malignant gossip columnists of the day. Louella Parsons reportedly said, "Miss Weld is not a very good representative for the motion picture industry".[citation needed]
Weld appeared with Jackie Gleason and Steve McQueen in the 1963 comedy/drama Soldier in the Rain, and although her performance was well received, the film was only a minor success. Although frequently typecast as the "blonde in the tight sweater," critics and others in the film industry have acknowledged her talent. However, Weld never achieved the level of stardom many thought her looks and abilities would bring, partly as a result of her turning down roles in films that became great successes and that made stars of others, such as Lolita, Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, True Grit, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Roddy McDowall, who co-starred with her in a 1966 film, said: "no actress was ever so good in so many bad films".[citation needed]

Ron Rosenbaum on Theresa Duncan

In a long, rambling post, Ron Rosenbaum finally pipes up about Theresa Duncan, a topic on which he fell silent for a few weeks now. He (rightly) rails against conspiracy theorists and admits his own part in fueling the insane theories (it's about time), but also there's this:

I always found some brilliant beautiful (and explicitly sourced) arcane literary references on Theresa’s blog which, along with its beauty and diversity kept me coming back. If she plagiarized some things, shame on her, it doesn’t take away the pleasure she brought by bringing to light those explicitly referenced writers, should it?

Her blog was a fascinating collage of text, images, genres; her voice, her persona, unique. Are writers supposed to write about the least interesting artists they know?

IF SHE PLAGIARIZED some things? IF? There seems to some doubt in Ron's mind as to whether she plagiarized. But IF she did, then so what? he seems to be saying. She brought to light "explicitly referenced writers." So that settles it. If she plagiarized, it's no big deal.

Interesting, he included no links to The Wit site. We'd love to know what Ron's favorite posts are.

I wish he'd also explained how it's possible that a writer could be a plagiarist and at the same time have a unique voice.

Fishbowl L.A.'s Kate Coe shares insights on Duncan

Fishbowl L.A.'s Kate Coe, who's penned the most interesting piece on Duncan so far, has commented on this post of mine, taking issue with my suggestion that Duncan was a Hollywood wannabe.

Considering the extent of her knowledge on the subject, her response merits being called out in a separate post. Here is what she wrote (my response is in italics):

I don't agree--and I'm one of the journalists who wrote about her and her work. Duncan did create (working with others, credited or not) genuinely original and innovative work in CD-Roms and animated film (The History of Glamour is clever and smart and even a little touching).

I never meant to imply that Duncan was not genuinely talented at something. Note that I have not commented on either the CD-Roms (god that sounds so old school, doesn't it? so 20th century) or The History of Glamour. My main concern is with the blog, which was touted from the beginning as being this fabulous thing.

When she came to LA, Hollywood was busy scooping up ideas from a zillion different places, because the usual sources for movies weren't very good. But, CD-Roms were the perfect medium for small groups of creative and passionate people. Movies are the perfect medium for large groups of people who want to make money.

Good point . Which begs the question, though, why did she come to Hollywood? (If not to seek fame and fortune?) Perhaps I missed this somewhere. I'm starting to get dizzy from Duncan overload. (And I have only myself to blame.)

Duncan might seem like just a wanna-be, but compare her to Brett Ratner, and she's like Balenciaga to his Juicy Couture.

Point well taken. But, compare her to Ingmar Bergman (who died within weeks of her) and she is...Rachel Zoe to his Edith Head? I'm too lazy to check this out right now, but what's the word count on Bergman vs. Duncan in the L.A. times? The amount of glowing press Duncan has received in comparison to her body of work is just amazing.


She did try, with all her heart--she wrote the scripts and took the meetings and pitched great ideas. She wasn't just some poseur with a laptop at a Coffee Bean table.

I guess it depends on what you our definition of Hollywood wannabe is. Despite all the meetings she may have taken, Duncan was still on the outside looking in. In my book, that makes her a Hollywood wannabe.

She talked and wrote about people and ideas that most Hollywood types have never heard of and could care less about. Being too smart out here can shut you off from the main crowd very quickly.

Just because she was smarter than the average industry schmo doesn't necessarily make her brilliant.


I admit that I don't know what the Eureka! moment (if any existed) was when she and Blake decided that Beck's church was deliberately thwarting them. Her first agent told me, too late for my story, that he had many clients who blamed their lack of professional progress on various people or organizations (including but not limited to, the Church of L. Ron, the Republican party, the Democratic party, the NRA, the NFL, and parents whose kids went to Crossroads School).

I had not heard that before. This sheds some light on how incredibly tough and heartbreaking the industry can be, to the the point where desperation takes over. (Lana Clarkson—a blonde who also died needlessly at age 40—comes to mind.)


I was not part of her inner circle of friends, nor have I presented myself as such. But I did know her, and even when I thought she was embroidering a little or a lot, I liked her. She was funny as hell, very smart and more down to earth than her blog would present.

This blog does not mean to imply by its content or very existence that Duncan wasn't funny or smart, or that she wasn't a devoted friend or daughter, that she wasn't terrific company, etc. I've pretty much stuck to analyzing The Wit of the Staircase because so much praise was heaped on it from the moment she went missing.

But I love a mystery as much as the next person, and I was fascinated as the layers of the story peeled away, and I know that admission seems ghoulish, even for a journalist. I wish with all my heart that she and Jeremy had had a happier ending in NYC.

This story wouldn't be fascinating if it weren't for the fact that there are universal themes at its very core (about identity, creativity and career success, to name a few). I think it's safe to say that Duncanologists also wish this story didn't have a tragic ending. Thanks for uncovering some of the layers.

Did Theresa Duncan borrow or did she steal?

I've just found Ghost of a Flea's blog. He apparently knew Duncan and sparred with her. (I believe this was limited to verbal jousting, but I could be wrong. In one of her posts Duncan claimed to be taking fencing classes.). Now, post mortem, he's a bit of an apologist for the Wit.

Flea writes:

There are some people who would read irresponsible fantasy, even duplicity, into creating a second life like this. Oscar Wilde had a different name for the practice, viz Art. William Blake, the Imagination.

I believe he is referring to Duncan's Lunar Society posts. And, if I'm reading this correctly, I agree with Flea here. At least with the first part of what he says. Anybody who took Theresa Duncan's fantastic Lunar Society posts literally is an idiot and deserves to be "deceived." Clearly these were meant to be amusing vignettes into an imaginary world. This is perfectly okay--totally permissible. Unfortunately Duncan's Lunar Society posts were hackneyed and derivative, the literary equivalent of Penthouse Forum. You can almost hear her getting off as you read them.

On the topic of Duncan's literary "borrowing," in response to Seaword, Flea writes:

Though I should add Americans - and Canadians - tend to take the view that every reference must be made explicit in order to be legitimate. This is not the case in French scholarship. In a country where it is still possible to assume a readership with a classical education there is no need to telegraph an allusion to Plato. Sadly, the English-speaking world has a created a culture where sensible people can quote Scripture or Shakespeare and have not a clue they are so doing.

We are not talking about that in this blog. We're talking about Duncan's blatant plagiarism from ordinary sources like Wikipedia, not Plato. She lifted whole paragraphs from other sources, made a few minor tweaks and posted them as her own. (Some of her lifts are embedded, so they appear to be quite deliberate.) Now, this may be essentially a victimless crime. But for the love of God and of all the bullshit that's written in the holy books, let's not call her writing brilliant!

What I've dug up so far proves how very ordinary and common Duncan was. The quintessential Hollywood wannabe. This story is fascinating because those of us who live in this town recognize the universality of the themes. The struggle against the grind, the need to create a persona with an aura and a mystique, to "brand" oneself creatively and yet be considered commercial enough. To use crude industryspeak: to be fuckable.

The fact that Duncan was a plagiarist, a woman who pretended to be something she was not (for one thing she pretended to be younger than she was and she clearly pretended to be a blonde), does not make her any less interesting. In fact she is fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons she would want to be.

Theresa Duncan and the history of electricity

In David Segal's Washington Post article referenced below, he describes Duncan's blog as "bouncing from lowbrow to high, from Kate Moss to Franz Kafka, from film to the history of electricity."

Ah the history of electricity. Nothing does more to solidify ones intellectual bona fides than to write about an esoteric subject. (Say like “Electric Fairy Tales: CD-ROMs and Literature"—but nevermind; we'll come back to that one another day.)

Let's examine the posts that The Wit filed under "the history of electricity" label. There are six posts total on this subject. Two of them are throwaways: one is really just a photo, the other is a supposed letter from a fan. That leaves just four posts on electricity. (Shocking, isn't it?) Only four posts, yet they merited mention in Segal's story. I wonder if he had the chance to read them. Have you? Oh, you must! I insist on it.

Here's Duncan, eloquently writing on lightning, mushrooms and omens.

Ancient Romans saw Jove's thunderbolts as a sign of condemnation and denied burial rites to those killed by lightning. Andeans hold similar beliefs and may ostracize the victim. In some cultures, medicines are made from stones that are believed to be a result of lightning strike. Roman, Hindu, and Mayan cultures all have myths that mushrooms arise from spots where lightning has hit the ground

Now here, curiously, is a meteorological website on the same topic:

Ancient Romans saw Jove's thunderbolts as a sign of condemnation and denied burial rites to those killed by lightning. Some cultures have made medicines from stones struck by lightning., Roman, Hindu and Mayan cultures all held the belief that mushrooms arise from spots where lightning has hit the ground.

On Benjamin Franklin, Duncan writes:

In 1750 Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas Francois d'Alibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment (using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, Franklin conducted his famous kite experiment and also successfully extracted sparks from a cloud, unaware that d'Alibard had already done so, 36 days earlier. Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St. Petersburg, Russia, were spectacularly electrocuted during the months following Franklin's experiment.
Franklin, in his writings, displays that he was aware of the dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical, as shown by his invention of the lightning rod, an application of the use of electrical ground. If Franklin did perform this experiment, he did not do it in the way that is often described, as it would have been dramatic but fatal. Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, which implied that lightning was electrical.

On Benjamin Franklin, wikipedia noted (on August 5, 2007):

In 1750, he published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment (using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, Franklin may have possibly conducted his famous kite experiment in Philadelphia and also successfully extracted sparks from a cloud, although there are theories that suggest he never performed the experiment . Franklin's experiment was not written up until Joseph Priestley's 1767 History and Present Status of Electricity; the evidence shows that Franklin was insulated (not in a conducting path, since he would have been in danger of electrocution in the event of a lightning strike). (Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St. Petersburg, Russia, were electrocuted during the months following Franklin's experiment.) In his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical, as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground. If Franklin did perform this experiment, he did not do it in the way that is often described, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, (as it would have been dramatic but fatal[17]). Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, which implied that lightning was electrical.

Now, Duncanologists are smart enough to realize that wikipedia entries can be easily changed and updated. A prankster could very well have copied The Wit's brilliant post entry onto ole Benji's wikipedia page or that Duncan herself could have written it. (And btw, when is that next Lunar Society meeting? For some reason, I didn't get the evite this month.)

On Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (the guy credited with inventing the X-ray), Duncan writes:

On 8 November 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923) worked in his darkened Wurzburg laboratory. His experiments focused on light phenomena and other emissions generated by discharging electrical current in highly-evacuated glass tubes. These tubes, known generically as "Crookes tubes," after the British investigator William Crookes (1832-1919), were widely available. Roentgen was interested in cathode rays and in assessing their range outside of charged tubes.
To Roentgen's surprise, he noted that when his cardboard-shrouded tube was charged, an object across the room began to glow. This proved to be a barium platinocyanide-coated screen too far away to be reacting to the cathode rays as he understood them. We know little about the sequence of his work over the next few days, except that while holding materials between the tube and screen to test the new rays, he saw the bones of his hand clearly displayed in an outline of flesh.

It is impossible for observers accustomed to modern imaging to gauge the mixture of wonder and disbelief Roentgen must have felt that day. When he immobilised for some moments the hand of his wife in the path of the rays over a photographic plate, he observed after development of the plate an image of his wife's hand which showed the shadows thrown by the bones of her hand and that of a ring she was wearing, surrounded by the penumbra of the flesh, which was more permeable to the rays and therefore threw a fainter shadow.
On 28 December 1895 Roentgen gave his preliminary report "Uber eine neue Art von Strahlen" to the president of the Wurzburg Physical-Medical Society, accompanied by experimental radiographs and by the image of his wife's hand. By New Year's Day he had sent the printed report to physicist friends across Europe. January saw the world gripped by "X-ray mania," and Roentgen acclaimed as the discoverer of a medical miracle. Roentgen won the first Nobel prize in physics in 1901.

From the website of soysee, makers of X-ray products

In 8 November 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923) worked in his darkened Wurzburg laboratory. His experiments focused on light phenomena and other emissions generated by discharging electrical current in highly-evacuated glass tubes. These tubes, known generically as “Crookes tubes,” after the British investigator William Crookes (1832-1919), were widely available. Roentgen was interested in cathode rays and in assessing their range outside of charged tubes.

To Roentgen’s surprise, he noted that when his cardboard-shrouded tube was charged, an object across the room began to glow. This proved to be a barium platinocyanide-coated screen too far away to be reacting to the cathode rays as he understood them. We know little about the sequence of his work over the next few days, except that while holding materials between the tube and screen to test the new rays, he saw the bones of his hand clearly displayed in an outline of flesh. It is impossible for observers accustomed to modern imaging to gauge the mixture of wonder and disbelief Roentgen must have felt that day. He plunged into seven weeks of meticulously planned and executed experiments to determine the nature of the rays. He worked in isolation, telling a friend simply, “I have discovered something interesting, but I do not know whether or not my observations are correct.” In fact, one wonders if Roentgen’s experiments were as much to convince himself of the reality of his observations as to enhance the scientific data supporting the phenomenon.

On 28 December 1895 Roentgen gave his preliminary report “Uber eine neue Art von Strahlen” to the president of the Wurzburg Physical-Medical Society, accompanied by experimental radiographs and by the image of his wife’s hand. By New Year’s Day he had sent the printed report to physicist friends across Europe. January saw the world gripped by “X-ray mania,” and Roentgen acclaimed as the discoverer of a medical miracle. Roentgen, who won the first Nobel prize in physics in 1901, declined to seek patents or proprietary claims on the X-rays, even eschewing eponymous descriptions of his discovery and its applications.

Note that while there is a striking resemblance between Duncan's writing and the work of others, these are not exact replicas! It is quite possible for two writers to come up with very similar 100-word paragraphs at the same time. And, of course, it's possible that Duncan lent her considerable talents to other websites, perhaps moonlighting as a copy writer for an Xray equipment company and such.