Did Nic Pizzolatto Plagiarize "True Detective" From a Non-Fiction Book?

Is there any truth to one man's claim that Nic Pizzolato plagiarized material for "True Detective?"

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If you are the writer and creator of a successful TV show, you’re probably going to get accused of plagiariasm. It’s just kind of how these things go.

And so Nic Pizzolatto of True Detective’s time has come, as a man named Jon Padgett has accused Pizzolato of stealing phrases nearly verbatim from the nonfiction book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, by Thomas Ligotti. The evidence Padgett describes as “ample” is…not great.

Here are some of the examples he cites:


COHLE: It’s all one gutter, man. A giant gutter in outer space.


 “…in the black-foaming gutters and back alleys of paradise, in the dank windowless gloom of some galactic cellar, in the hollow pearly whorls found in sewerlike seas, in starless cities of insanity, and in their slums . . .” (“The Frolic,” Thomas Ligotti)


COHLE: And other times I thought I was seeing straight into the true heart of things.


“…horrible ‘inner Truth’ of things.” (CATHR on Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, p. 108)


COHLE: So my daughter, she spared me from the sin of being a father.


“…non-coital existence… the surest path to redemption for the sin of being congregants of this world.”(CATHR, p. 34)

Pizzolatto has also freely admitted that he was inspired by the work of Ligotti, so maybe Padgett should just relax and take this as a compliment? Somehow, we suspect that he isn’t going to change HBO’s mind about the show.

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[via UPROXX]

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