Germany’s teen novelist Helene Hegemann’s story of sex and drugs in Berlin was a big hit, with 100,000 in print and a shower of critics’ praise. However, it turns out some of it is lifted from a novel called “Strobo,” which was based on the blog of the of a writer who prefers to remain anonymous so he won’t lose his job. That novel has sold only about 100 copies.
So far, not so unusual. Every couple of years we hear a case of high-level plagiarism.
Here’s the formula:
“It was a research error.”
Then some more examples are found, so next we get:
“I mixed up my notes.”
Then some more thievery is exposed.
Next stop: breakdown and rehab.
And then comes the next book, which benefits from all the publicity that came with the exposure of the plagiarism in the first one.
What’s unusual this time is that, according to a story in the Independent, Miss Hegemann isn’t denying anything: “Interviewed last week about the charges, Ms Hegemann's defence was simply ‘I cannot understand what all the fuss is about.’
While she acknowledges that she used numerous ‘sources’ for her book, she also claims that she is a member of a different generation of writers which is used to adapting and using the abundance of information available online for its own creative purposes.
‘I remember sentences my friends tell me just as much as I take on the ideas of the Slovenian critical theorist Slavoj Zizek,’ she told Der Spiegel, which described her as a ‘know-all’. ‘I went everywhere I could find inspiration,’ she said about her book, and added: ‘There is no such thing as originality anyway, there is just authenticity.’”
Gosh, now I see I was wrong to blame the person who tried to steal my wallet a few years ago. She was just from a generation that is inspired by the abundance of money available in other people’s pockets. I was a source, not a victim.
As I said, the next step usually is that more examples of plagiarism are found. Miss H and her publishers have anticipated this by declaring, “this novel follows the aesthetic principle of intertextuality and may contain further excerpts.” They admitted she had taken 20 excerpts from the other book word for word, and there are at least another 20 passages ‘inspired’ in the same way. The fourth edition of her book will include a list of her “sources.”
Personally, I think Miss H is wasting her time with books. Her explanations suggest she's ready for a career in politics.
