April Fool's Day: Lemony Snicket and Malcolm Gladwell in Major Plagiarism Scandal

Posted on April 1, 2014

It would not be April Fool's Day without some kind of writing scandal. Today a shocking plagiarism scandal erupted between bestselling authors Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.

Snicket posted a press release on his website detailing Gladwell's nefarious dealings. Gladwell, for his part, denies the accusations and has made a retaliatory threat of his own against Snicket.

Snicket claims that Gladwell's new book, David and Goliath contains material lifted straight from Snicket's new book, File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents. Those who are suspicious of any press releases issued on April 1st might note that both authors are published by Little, Brown, have new releases out and are friends. Still, the evidence presented by Snicket (see it all here) is compelling. Snicket shows that Gladwell clearly plagiarized the words "if," "I," "that" and "you." He also used a photo of a policeman in his book. Snicket has a cartoon of a policeman in his book.

Snicket told Publishers Weekly "Every time I blink Malcolm Gladwell steals from me like an outright outlier. I've reached the tipping point. It's like an old biblical story I can't think of right now." PW gave Gladwell the chance to respond. He replied, "Mr. Snicket is asking All The Wrong Questions. He better watch out, or this will turn into a series of something or other."