Adam Johnson's "Fortune Smiles" Wins Nat'l Book Award-Unfortunately He Plagiarized "Goodbye for Now"

Adam Johnson (b Amer 1967) is a writer of immense talent.  His novel deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize in (2013) for his piercing tale of the brutal regime inside North Korea.  "Fortune Smiles" a collection of short stories won the Nat'l Book Award (2015) but should be discredited for plagiarizing Laurie Frankel's novel "Goodbye for Now" (2013).   Frankel's novel & Johnson's short story "Nirvana" have way too much in common.  Both male heroes are tech savvy geniuses who've developed algorithms that reincarnate a loved one on the internet allowing for an ongoing simulated conversation that is eerily real.  Frankel pursued the comfort or grief of maintaining a dialogue with someone revered after their death.  "Nirvana" the 1st short story in Johnson's collection  is about a husband whose a whiz at writing programming code.  His wife Charlotte, has been suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome leaving her totally immobile from her shoulders down for the past 9 months.  Most patients recover mobility but for those who haven't had any improvement in 9 months, the prognosis is poor.   The only comfort in Charlotte's life comes from listening to Kurt Cobain's music.  To persuade his wife life is worth living he's willing to do anything.  He develops an algorithm program that archives a person's images, videos and data; essentially everything recorded by an individual and allows for the image to respond in a coherent conversation.  The idea & content for Johnson's "Nirvana" is notoriously appropriated from Frankel's 2013 novel "Goodbye for Now."  The 2nd story in the collection is "Hurricanes Anonymous".  It takes place in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.  This short story is a disaster.  It's ambigious what it's trying to achieve.  Is this about the failure of our nation to respond or of a man who floats along through life whichever way the wind blows?  Nonc is the main character.  He assumes the child left in his van is his from a previous relationship but he doesn't fully assume fatherhood.  It's also a story about Nonc & his dysfunctional relationship with his mute, dying father.  This story left me speechless for someone as gifted a writer as Adam Johnson.  "Dark Meadow" is a disturbing story of child sexual abuse and child pornography on the internet.  The other 2 stories "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" delves into prison life in East Berlin before the wall came down and "Fortune Smiles" revisits the oppressive N Korean regime.  Adam Johnson proved himself a master storyteller in "The Orphan Master's Son" but is disappointedly adrift in the short story format.  Most unfortunately, "Nirvana" is NOT an original idea.