“It’s Mixing Not Plagiarism”

I read a really fascinating article in The New York Times yesterday.  It doesn’t relate exactly to the stuff we’re talking about in class, but I do think some of the issues it raises pair nicely with the discussion we’ll have this week about Gertrude’s Stein’s language-play.

The article is about Helene Hegemann, 17, a German author whose very successful first novel has been the cause of a great deal of controversy.  It turns out she borrowed, cribbed, stole, poached, used to her literary advantage material from several other novels, blogs, etc.  In some cases, she includes up to a full page of unedited and unattributed source material in her novel.  In spite of this (or, perhaps, because of it), her novel is now nominated for a very prestigious award.  Unfortunately, we can’t get the novel in the US to see for ourselves what she’s up to.  But, this bit from the article gives us a sense for her intentions:

“Although Ms. Hegemann has apologized for not being more open about her sources, she has also defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher after the scandal broke.”

Here’s a link to the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/world/europe/12germany.html?hp

And another article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/weekinreview/28kennedy.html?ref=weekinreview

Check them out and share your thoughts.  Is this queer writing?  Also, feel free to comment on my statement about plagiarism from the course syllabus:

PLAGIARISM: First, I will say that if you are unable to complete an assignment for any reason, it is in your best interest to discuss the situation with me.  Authorship is a hotly contested topic in the academy.  At what point do we own the words we say and write or the images we create?  Among authors and filmmakers, creative influence, collaboration, and a certain amount of borrowing are acceptable (even encouraged).  So, what sort of statement or warning about plagiarism would be appropriate in this class?  Let me go out on a limb and say:  in this class, I encourage you to borrow ideas (from me, from the authors we read, from the films we watch, from your classmates).  However, even more, I encourage you to really make them your own—by playing with, manipulating, applying, and otherwise turning them on their head.  In the end, it’s just downright boring to rest on the laurels of others.  It’s altogether more daring (and, frankly, more fun) to invent something new yourself—a new idea, a new way of thinking, a new claim, a new image.  This doesn’t give you license to copy something in its entirety and slap your name on it.  That’s just stealing.  Instead, think very self-consciously about the way that you are influenced by your sources—by the way knowledge and creativity depend on a sort of inheritance.  And think also about the real responsibility you have to those sources.