German teen novelist

This is explicit material, but usefully explores and illustrates one of the common ideas associated with Pomo theory, that originality is now impossible: Then came the fall, as spectacular and dramatic as her rise to literary celebrity had been, when a blogger revealed that material in the novel had been lifted from the much less well-known novel Strobo, written under the nom de plume Airen. Other unattributed sources subsequently came to light, and the early gushing praise turned to a deluge of indignation and opprobrium. Hegemann is apologetic but only to a point. "There were 14 sentences that I took from a blogger and modified," she says. "Suddenly they were rubbishing the entire book. Critics who had feted me were suddenly distancing themselves completely. But I think they were looking for a way to neutralise me and debilitate me as an author, and the plagiarism claims were the approach path for allowing them to do that. "But I've said it again and it's still my best defence: there's no such thing as originality, just authenticity," she says. I cite the most infamous of the lifted passages, near the start of the book, where Mifti's brother Edmond tells her: "Berlin is here to mix everything with everything, man … I steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels my imagination … because my work and my theft are authentic as long as something speaks directly to my soul. It's not where I take things from – it's where I take them to." The thoughtful and precise English translation by Katy Derbyshire has been slightly but very noticeably altered from the German, to have Mifti pointedly ask her brother: "So you didn't make it up?" To which he replies: "No, it's from some blogger." The modified remark is intended, thinks Hegemann, to make clearer the quotation's origin. "But you know the joke of it is, they say I stole that sentence from Airen, when in fact it's originally from Jim Jarmusch, who I think saw it on a gallery sign somewhere, and then the line 'I steal from anywhere' is Jarmusch quoting Jean-Luc Godard." She beams as she tells me this. Throughout the interview she speaks in long, complex sentences sprinkled with the odd English word ("surrounded", "shit", "nightlife"). She says how stressful the accusations were and that her publisher, Ullstein, offered her little protection. "It is ironic that what I was accused of 'stealing' had already been 'stolen'," she adds, segueing into an explanation about intertextuality and how words and phrases percolate into works unconsciously. SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/24/helene-hegemann-axolotl-novelist-interview