The shortlist is out for Germany's big spring book awards.
We have only five titles, one of which I've read so far.
Jan Faktor, Georgs Sorgen um die Vergangenheit oder Im Reich des heiligen Hodensack-Bimbams von Prag - not out until March, but Faktor is a great writer who plays with language most impressively. The book is about growing up in socialist Prague and sounds like great stuff.
Helene Hegemann, Axolotl Roadkill - need I say more?
Georg Klein, Roman unserer Kindheit - this time a fantastic story of growing up in smalltown southern Germany.
Lutz Seiler, Die Zeitwaage - short stories from a hugely talented poet.
Anne Weber, Luft und Liebe - a twist on a love story by a novelist and translator who writes in French and German, highly recommended to me just the other day.
There are also prizes for non-fiction and translation - the nominees being Ulrich Blumenbach for DF Wallace's Infinite Jest, Christian Hansen for Bolano's 2666, Grete Osterwald for Hédi Kaddour's Waltenberg, Rosemarie Tietze for a new version of Anna Karenina, and Hubert Witt for Abraham Sutzkever's Wilner Getto 1941–1944 – Gesänge vom Meer des Todes.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Monday, 8 February 2010
Plagiarism?
32 of the past 45 Google searches bringing people here featured the words "Helene Hegemann". It would appear people are interested in the whole Axolotl Roadkill plagiarism issue.
So here it is in a nutshell. 17-year-old Helene wrote a book (see my very brief review plus a couple of comments on the issue) set in Berlin. The 16-year-old narrator takes drugs and goes to clubs in Berlin, among other depraved activities. Over the weekend the blogger Deef Pirmasens pointed out the many similarities between Hegemann's portrayal of drug-taking at Berghain and the portrayal in a previously neglected book, Strobo, by another blogger called Airen. And yesterday Hegemann admitted she hadn't actually credited Airen as one of her many sources and inspirations, for a book that rather comes across as a collage of ideas, images and pop-cultural references. She talks about an online culture of sampling and remixing and comments:
Although I stand entirely behind my text and my principle, I apologise for not having mentioned all the people whose ideas and texts helped me from the very beginning.
According to a sympathetic Felicitas von Lovenberg in the FAZ, the novel was at least going to be shortlisted for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. We'll have to wait until Thursday for the dust to settle and the shortlist to come out. But of course everyone has an opinion right now.
Want to know mine? I don't care. I still think it's a good book, owing much more to Kathy Acker's techniques than to Airen's description of the Berghain toilets. Yes, it's downright disrespectful to credit David Foster Wallace and not "some blogger" as he's referred to in the text. Yes, even a 17-year-old should know better, especially one as apparently media-savvy as Helene Hegemann. But no, the publishers don't have a duty to check every word in every book for plagiarism. And no, there's so much more to Axolotl Roadkill than the few pages in question.
Whatever people wanted to believe about the book - and I'll admit I'm far from immune myself, with the intruiging narrator and the impossibly glam writer exerting a certain pull over me too - it is a work of fiction and should stand alone as such, not as a factual account of underage depravity in noughties Berlin.
I hope the HH phenomenon doesn't prove to be a house of cards. Because then I'd have to eat my words - but I don't think that's going to happen.
Update: According to Jürgen Kaube in the FAZ, Hegemann has compiled a list of sources:
There's now a list of writers whom Helene Hegemann hadn't thanked for using their works word for word or almost word for word. (...) The list ranges from Malcolm Lowry – for the book's first sentence – and David Foster Wallace through Rainald Goetz and the blogger Airen to Kathy Acker. It comes from Hegemann herself; the publishers Ullstein Verlag intend to make it available soon.
And yes, and yes, it's still a good book. It ought to have been clear from the beginning - had we cared to look! - that Hegemann was "sampling", as she puts it; all those snatches of lyrics ought to have been a bit of a giveaway. But I'm fascinated by the reactions, which vary from plain insults and abuse tainted with obvious envy to fierce defences of the poor little baby writer.
If you read German, that FAZ article is well worth a look, reflecting as many have been over the past few days on our expectations as readers of "young literature". We want it to be real, dripping with pathos, we want young writers to run straight home from the darkroom and spill their guts into their laptops. We want to live a vicarious wild youth - but it has to be genuine misery memoir to get our pulses racing.
I'm waiting for that list before I eat any words. And I can be very stubborn.
Update update: There's more evidence of Hegemann's, ummm, naive approach to other people's intellectual property at Viceland. In this case she wrote a short story dangerously close to a film, which was based on a short story, which of course is rather similar to her version. I'm still not eating those words yet though.
So here it is in a nutshell. 17-year-old Helene wrote a book (see my very brief review plus a couple of comments on the issue) set in Berlin. The 16-year-old narrator takes drugs and goes to clubs in Berlin, among other depraved activities. Over the weekend the blogger Deef Pirmasens pointed out the many similarities between Hegemann's portrayal of drug-taking at Berghain and the portrayal in a previously neglected book, Strobo, by another blogger called Airen. And yesterday Hegemann admitted she hadn't actually credited Airen as one of her many sources and inspirations, for a book that rather comes across as a collage of ideas, images and pop-cultural references. She talks about an online culture of sampling and remixing and comments:
Although I stand entirely behind my text and my principle, I apologise for not having mentioned all the people whose ideas and texts helped me from the very beginning.
According to a sympathetic Felicitas von Lovenberg in the FAZ, the novel was at least going to be shortlisted for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. We'll have to wait until Thursday for the dust to settle and the shortlist to come out. But of course everyone has an opinion right now.
Want to know mine? I don't care. I still think it's a good book, owing much more to Kathy Acker's techniques than to Airen's description of the Berghain toilets. Yes, it's downright disrespectful to credit David Foster Wallace and not "some blogger" as he's referred to in the text. Yes, even a 17-year-old should know better, especially one as apparently media-savvy as Helene Hegemann. But no, the publishers don't have a duty to check every word in every book for plagiarism. And no, there's so much more to Axolotl Roadkill than the few pages in question.
Whatever people wanted to believe about the book - and I'll admit I'm far from immune myself, with the intruiging narrator and the impossibly glam writer exerting a certain pull over me too - it is a work of fiction and should stand alone as such, not as a factual account of underage depravity in noughties Berlin.
I hope the HH phenomenon doesn't prove to be a house of cards. Because then I'd have to eat my words - but I don't think that's going to happen.
Update: According to Jürgen Kaube in the FAZ, Hegemann has compiled a list of sources:
There's now a list of writers whom Helene Hegemann hadn't thanked for using their works word for word or almost word for word. (...) The list ranges from Malcolm Lowry – for the book's first sentence – and David Foster Wallace through Rainald Goetz and the blogger Airen to Kathy Acker. It comes from Hegemann herself; the publishers Ullstein Verlag intend to make it available soon.
And yes, and yes, it's still a good book. It ought to have been clear from the beginning - had we cared to look! - that Hegemann was "sampling", as she puts it; all those snatches of lyrics ought to have been a bit of a giveaway. But I'm fascinated by the reactions, which vary from plain insults and abuse tainted with obvious envy to fierce defences of the poor little baby writer.
If you read German, that FAZ article is well worth a look, reflecting as many have been over the past few days on our expectations as readers of "young literature". We want it to be real, dripping with pathos, we want young writers to run straight home from the darkroom and spill their guts into their laptops. We want to live a vicarious wild youth - but it has to be genuine misery memoir to get our pulses racing.
I'm waiting for that list before I eat any words. And I can be very stubborn.
Update update: There's more evidence of Hegemann's, ummm, naive approach to other people's intellectual property at Viceland. In this case she wrote a short story dangerously close to a film, which was based on a short story, which of course is rather similar to her version. I'm still not eating those words yet though.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Bell & Hemon in Super Fantastic Podcast
Listen to Aleksander Hemon and Anthea Bell on European literature and translation at The Guardian. Fascinating stuff, especially the comment on "militant translators" jumping on journalists for forgetting to name them.
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Hamburg's Finest: Ham.Lit & Die Vorleser
There's more than one way to skin a cat. You can go out into the world and listen to writers in cavernous bunkers, or you can listen to people talking about books from the comfort of your own sofa. Ham.Lit was the excruciating title of an impressive event in Hamburg on Thursday, "a concentrate of the most exciting young German-language literature and music of the moment - on one night, under one roof."
And what a roof. Hamburg had decided to veil itself in mist for my visit, with a huge five-storey WWII bunker rising like an icebreaker between the snowy pavements. In we ventured, then up to the fourth floor in a lift crowded with hip young things. There were three venues hosting 18 writers plus two bands. Which meant that inevitably, one was constantly torn between poetry and prose, slam and short stories.
The hugely talented, heavily bearded Finn-Ole Heinrich opened the show with a humdinger, his knockout story "Zeit der Witze" - best of the night, said my delightful hostess Isa, and I agree. Plus the guy sure knows how to read - I'd have given him a later slot myself. Then came Kristof Magnusson with a nice taste of his novel Das war ich nicht (see my review). I stayed put for Jan Wagner, who once again struck fear into my heart with his sheer intelligence and genuinely enjoyable poetry. In contrast to Daniel Falb, who struck fear of a different kind into my heart. Back to Clemens Meyer, with a nervous rendering from his forthcoming diary-like Gewalten. It looks like it'll be a personal, political, very strange look back at 2009.
By that point I was exhausted, so Tilmann Rammstedt and Monica Rinck sadly went in one ear and out the other. And that's the only disadvantage to these huge events: sheer input overload. There were a hell of a lot of people there, many of whom wandered in and out of the venues, which doesn't make for concentrated listening either. And the crowd thinned out rapidly as the last trains left before the second band - the impressive GUSTAV - came on stage (I missed the first musical act but was briefly serenaded in the corridor to make up for it). Despite that, the event was a huge success and a great opportunity for Hamburgers to pick up on some very happening and talented writers. My radical suggestion for next time: don't hold it on a week night.
Those Hamburgers, I noticed, are quite different to the Berliners: completely and utterly laid-back. Presumably it was the Hamburgers who inspired that song telling Aurélie that the Germans flirt very subtly. Or maybe it was just too dark. And it's Hamburgers who make up the studio audience for ZDF's televisual literary extravaganza, Die Vorleser - including my delightful hostess Isa and the lovely Axel in yesterday's episode. You too can watch it online via that link.
I've mentioned it in the past, but this was the first time I'd got round to watching it. And I'm undecided - does the information value outweigh the irritation factor? Or to put it another way - does Ijoma Mangold outweigh Amelie Fried and, in this case, a barely comprehensible Detlev Buck? Mangold, for me, is the opposite of his fellow critic Sigrid Löffler - in the former case I want not to like him but can never quite manage. He says such a lot of clever things that I just can't help respecting him. Unfortunately, the show is done in such an irritating way that whenever anyone else is on camera I start gnashing my teeth.
It's obviously scripted, but the makers expect us to suspend our disbelief and buy the idea of Ijoma and Amelie chatting informally on the sofa. "So you want me to explain the title now, don't you, Ijoma?" tweets Amelie, and Ijoma nods as if he really, genuinely does. "Oh, you critics!" twitters Amelie, and Ijoma smirks as if he hadn't seen it coming. "I have adolescent kids!" squeaks Amelie, and we all try hard not to imagine what they get up to behind mum's back, while sighing over her all-too obvious appeal to the female book-buying demographic.
In between, Ijoma gets to enthuse over a couple of books, while Amelie looks mature and disapproving. All padded out with shots of the laid-back Hanseatic audience frowning. I don't know, it's better than Richard and Judy - but great telly it ain't.
And what a roof. Hamburg had decided to veil itself in mist for my visit, with a huge five-storey WWII bunker rising like an icebreaker between the snowy pavements. In we ventured, then up to the fourth floor in a lift crowded with hip young things. There were three venues hosting 18 writers plus two bands. Which meant that inevitably, one was constantly torn between poetry and prose, slam and short stories.
The hugely talented, heavily bearded Finn-Ole Heinrich opened the show with a humdinger, his knockout story "Zeit der Witze" - best of the night, said my delightful hostess Isa, and I agree. Plus the guy sure knows how to read - I'd have given him a later slot myself. Then came Kristof Magnusson with a nice taste of his novel Das war ich nicht (see my review). I stayed put for Jan Wagner, who once again struck fear into my heart with his sheer intelligence and genuinely enjoyable poetry. In contrast to Daniel Falb, who struck fear of a different kind into my heart. Back to Clemens Meyer, with a nervous rendering from his forthcoming diary-like Gewalten. It looks like it'll be a personal, political, very strange look back at 2009.
By that point I was exhausted, so Tilmann Rammstedt and Monica Rinck sadly went in one ear and out the other. And that's the only disadvantage to these huge events: sheer input overload. There were a hell of a lot of people there, many of whom wandered in and out of the venues, which doesn't make for concentrated listening either. And the crowd thinned out rapidly as the last trains left before the second band - the impressive GUSTAV - came on stage (I missed the first musical act but was briefly serenaded in the corridor to make up for it). Despite that, the event was a huge success and a great opportunity for Hamburgers to pick up on some very happening and talented writers. My radical suggestion for next time: don't hold it on a week night.
Those Hamburgers, I noticed, are quite different to the Berliners: completely and utterly laid-back. Presumably it was the Hamburgers who inspired that song telling Aurélie that the Germans flirt very subtly. Or maybe it was just too dark. And it's Hamburgers who make up the studio audience for ZDF's televisual literary extravaganza, Die Vorleser - including my delightful hostess Isa and the lovely Axel in yesterday's episode. You too can watch it online via that link.
I've mentioned it in the past, but this was the first time I'd got round to watching it. And I'm undecided - does the information value outweigh the irritation factor? Or to put it another way - does Ijoma Mangold outweigh Amelie Fried and, in this case, a barely comprehensible Detlev Buck? Mangold, for me, is the opposite of his fellow critic Sigrid Löffler - in the former case I want not to like him but can never quite manage. He says such a lot of clever things that I just can't help respecting him. Unfortunately, the show is done in such an irritating way that whenever anyone else is on camera I start gnashing my teeth.
It's obviously scripted, but the makers expect us to suspend our disbelief and buy the idea of Ijoma and Amelie chatting informally on the sofa. "So you want me to explain the title now, don't you, Ijoma?" tweets Amelie, and Ijoma nods as if he really, genuinely does. "Oh, you critics!" twitters Amelie, and Ijoma smirks as if he hadn't seen it coming. "I have adolescent kids!" squeaks Amelie, and we all try hard not to imagine what they get up to behind mum's back, while sighing over her all-too obvious appeal to the female book-buying demographic.
In between, Ijoma gets to enthuse over a couple of books, while Amelie looks mature and disapproving. All padded out with shots of the laid-back Hanseatic audience frowning. I don't know, it's better than Richard and Judy - but great telly it ain't.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Tell Us Translators, Are You Underpaid?
Siobhan O'Leary sums up the translator pay/royalties issue nicely in Publishing Perspectives - and Edward Navotka asks the above question.
So the ball's in our court, fellow translators. Are we? I expect the poor man will be inundated.
So the ball's in our court, fellow translators. Are we? I expect the poor man will be inundated.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Weather Too Shite to Blog
This blog is temporarily closed until it stops being cold and grey and snowy. If you were thinking of moving to Berlin, wait a couple of months.
Monday, 1 February 2010
Non-Fiction Links from the Comments
How easy life is when people just post content in your comments box. I'm fetching it up here so everyone can see it.
First of all there's Trevor E. Brown, who is an academic publisher and would like to publish more translations, but not fiction. He writes:
My knowledge of Deutsch is rudimentary so it is a struggle hunting in bookshops and the usual suspect websites. Really I need a partnership with someone, not necessarily from a publishing background who has a good 'nose'.
And I want to have fun doing this!
Who can help me?
http://fabooks.wordpress.com/
And then there's another of those anonymous tip-offs I love:
The Berlin Review of Books aims to publish high-quality reviews of, and insightful essays based on, important recent books published in any language, with a focus on non-fiction. While it will often approach contemporary debates from a European perspective, it is open to intelligent contributions from around the globe. Our goal is to promote honest and knowledgeable debate of issues of real significance; for this reason, we are committed to financial and editorial independence. The Berlin Review of Books does not normally publish fiction or poetry, except by invitation.
Thanks!
First of all there's Trevor E. Brown, who is an academic publisher and would like to publish more translations, but not fiction. He writes:
My knowledge of Deutsch is rudimentary so it is a struggle hunting in bookshops and the usual suspect websites. Really I need a partnership with someone, not necessarily from a publishing background who has a good 'nose'.
And I want to have fun doing this!
Who can help me?
http://fabooks.wordpress.com/
And then there's another of those anonymous tip-offs I love:
The Berlin Review of Books aims to publish high-quality reviews of, and insightful essays based on, important recent books published in any language, with a focus on non-fiction. While it will often approach contemporary debates from a European perspective, it is open to intelligent contributions from around the globe. Our goal is to promote honest and knowledgeable debate of issues of real significance; for this reason, we are committed to financial and editorial independence. The Berlin Review of Books does not normally publish fiction or poetry, except by invitation.
Thanks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)