In Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence', he is saying that not all plagerism is bad. by this he means that it is ok to use information from someone else as long as it is not the exact same thing. if the works are toyed with alittle then it is ok. john donne said "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. . . . "
what this is saying is that without plagerism certain things could be forgotten. by writers using stuff that has already been used, the writers are forced to "reinvent" the previous' writers work. for me the use of other people's works gives me almost no feeling. this is not true for all writers though, for instance Burroughs described his writing process as, "the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement." now burrough's was an author who was descovered to have used works of other authors in his own work. so it is quite clear that this bit of plagerism has given him excitement. some students on the otherhand might be made uncomfortable shameful of their use of plagerized material.