Ivana Lowell and her mother and her fathers

In my last post I looked Ivana Lowell's memoir, Why not say what happened?, and a particularly blatant piece of plagiarism. With minimal changes, Ivana presented a piece that her mother, Caroline Blackwood, had written about Francis Bacon as her own. Now that I've finished the book, I want to consider her possible motivation.

Her book's interest for readers is largely the depiction of the way of life of the very wealthy society she grew up in, and her relationship with her mother. The book's main interest for her, though, is about her relationship with her father. After Caroline's death, Ivana found out that the man she had thought was her father wasn't. There were two possible suspects, and she eventually found that her biological father was (and there's a hint in his name) Ivan Moffatt. She was disappointed that it was him, but angry with her mother for never having told her.

In the second half of the book, covering the period after Caroline's death, Ivana's anger towards Caroline is clearly expressed. It contrasts with the generally rosy emotional mood of the first half. But of course the whole of the book was written in a state of knowledge. Isn't it likely that the bout of plagiarism was an irruption of that anger? The worst assault on a writer is to steal their words.

And is it too much to suggest that there's a link with the notion of authorship? Caroline deceived Ivana about who her author was. What better revenge than to deny Caroline's authorship of something? Unplanned, I'm sure, but a revenge planned rationally would be less reckless, less easy for a man in Catford with too much time on his hands to uncover.