Genius or plagiarism?
This article appeared on the New York Times website. I found the link in a writer's forum I'm a member of and the resulting debate piqued my interest.
Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/europe/12germany.html?hp
In a nutshell, a 17-year-old girl in Berlin wrote a stand-out novel that became a bestseller and is even up for an award. This girl has previously written and staged a play, as well as having a movie made. (I don't know the context in which either of these were achieved.) Suffice to say, she's got some brains in her head.
The problem is that her new novel, "Axolotl Roadkill," picks sample lines, passages, even entire pages and stitches them together in a patchwork of writing. I don't think the entire novel is written this way; as with your typical plagiarism case, it's more of a "fitting in an appropriate line where it works best." What makes this case even more baffling is, the author not only has no remorse for doing so, but neither does her agent OR at least one of the jurors on the award committee.
(Axolotl, fyi, is apparently a kind of salamander/salamander larvae, which I guess is a reference to the book's theme of transitioning into the adult world.)
Reason being - the "patchwork" of other writer's words is part of the story's theme. The author considers herself part of a generation that is mixing and matching information from all sources - a form of assimilationism that still seeks to preserve authenticity. In fact, quoted in the article, the author herself says, "There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity." Which I think is a salient point. The gist of the article seems to suggest that the underlying concept of the novel IS how generations are created by previous generations, through absorption of knowledge with various biases, which is then contorted by the individual's own self.
It goes against everything I respect as an author - but still - I kind of like this idea. I think it's interesting, creative and more than a little gutsy. It's that kind of rule-twisting that has always defined art; in the words of Oscar Wilde, "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
I wouldn't say that I'd consider the novel worthy of an award AS a novel, though. To me, it's best off looked at as an anomaly, or in a genre of its own. After all, it takes skill, time, and an endless amount of patience to write even moderately well, and I think it's belittling to the writers who poured themselves into their novels to be pitted against this mix-and-match book. That's my feeling, even though I think it rather undermines my point.
More than anything, I think the author's biggest error was in not a.) getting writers' permission before using their work, and b.) publishing the book without admitting to the copying in the first place. That makes her look a lot less like a creative artist and a lot more like a petty thief.
In sum, I think the author's idea is great. Revolutionary even. But since her handling of the book's contents was less than stellar, particularly since she did NOT get permission from the authors she copied to do so, my respect is lowered considerably.
This is particularly interesting to me since young writers always start out with a bad rap from someone, and when they're caught plagiarizing it's even more unforgivable. (The article actually mentions the particular young author I'm thinking about.)
More information found in Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1964424,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
Read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/europe/12germany.html?hp
In a nutshell, a 17-year-old girl in Berlin wrote a stand-out novel that became a bestseller and is even up for an award. This girl has previously written and staged a play, as well as having a movie made. (I don't know the context in which either of these were achieved.) Suffice to say, she's got some brains in her head.
The problem is that her new novel, "Axolotl Roadkill," picks sample lines, passages, even entire pages and stitches them together in a patchwork of writing. I don't think the entire novel is written this way; as with your typical plagiarism case, it's more of a "fitting in an appropriate line where it works best." What makes this case even more baffling is, the author not only has no remorse for doing so, but neither does her agent OR at least one of the jurors on the award committee.
(Axolotl, fyi, is apparently a kind of salamander/salamander larvae, which I guess is a reference to the book's theme of transitioning into the adult world.)
Reason being - the "patchwork" of other writer's words is part of the story's theme. The author considers herself part of a generation that is mixing and matching information from all sources - a form of assimilationism that still seeks to preserve authenticity. In fact, quoted in the article, the author herself says, "There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity." Which I think is a salient point. The gist of the article seems to suggest that the underlying concept of the novel IS how generations are created by previous generations, through absorption of knowledge with various biases, which is then contorted by the individual's own self.
It goes against everything I respect as an author - but still - I kind of like this idea. I think it's interesting, creative and more than a little gutsy. It's that kind of rule-twisting that has always defined art; in the words of Oscar Wilde, "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
I wouldn't say that I'd consider the novel worthy of an award AS a novel, though. To me, it's best off looked at as an anomaly, or in a genre of its own. After all, it takes skill, time, and an endless amount of patience to write even moderately well, and I think it's belittling to the writers who poured themselves into their novels to be pitted against this mix-and-match book. That's my feeling, even though I think it rather undermines my point.
More than anything, I think the author's biggest error was in not a.) getting writers' permission before using their work, and b.) publishing the book without admitting to the copying in the first place. That makes her look a lot less like a creative artist and a lot more like a petty thief.
In sum, I think the author's idea is great. Revolutionary even. But since her handling of the book's contents was less than stellar, particularly since she did NOT get permission from the authors she copied to do so, my respect is lowered considerably.
This is particularly interesting to me since young writers always start out with a bad rap from someone, and when they're caught plagiarizing it's even more unforgivable. (The article actually mentions the particular young author I'm thinking about.)
More information found in Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1964424,00.html?xid=rss-topstories