Arnon Grunberg
Words Without Borders

Eyebrows Are Raised

The worst thing is to accuse an author of is plagiarism. Of course, many authors have been accused of being mediocre, tasteless, pornographic or boring, but compared with the accusation of plagiarism, they are peanuts. When your novel is belittled as an “uneventful story of a minor talent, all in all as forgettable as secondhand smoke,” just to name a few adjectives and nouns that you find from time to time in literary reviews, you can always say, "Well, the reviewer is frustrated, or has bad taste, or he could not stand the fact that I slept with his wife, his sister and his father."
As a publisher once told me, “There is always a reason for a bad review.” Very much so. Unfortunately, there are as many reasons for good reviews and compliments as there are for the negative ones and the insults. But strangely enough, I’m still waiting for a novelist to say, “Yes, this reviewer called me a ‘genius,’ but that was just to thank me for the fact that I refused to sleep with his wife, his sister and his father.” The problem is that plagiarism needs some sort of proof. You can use the same arguments to prove that a novel is as forgettable as secondhand smoke as you can to prove that this novel is best of the last century. But for the accusation of plagiarism, more is needed than just a snappy expression.
After all, we are speaking here about a deadly sin among authors, so I sat down when I read the following headline in the New York Times a couple of days ago, “Eyebrows Are Raised Over Passages in a Best Seller.” The best seller in question is the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan. And the eyebrows in question have to do with the memoir No Times for Romance by Lucilla Andrews.
The awkward thing is that Mr. McEwan named Ms. Andrews’ memoir in a note at the end of his novel. Atonement came out in 2001. Does it take six years to read No Times for Romance? According to the examples given by The New York Times, I would say that Mr. McEwan needed some information about nursery in London during World War II.
For my last novel, I needed some information about what a hedge fund is, exactly. So I had coffee with an investment banker in London. I believe that one or two of the sentences he uttered that afternoon made it into my novel. Thank God he likes investment banking more than writing memoirs.
I hope that one day I will stumble upon the headline, “Eyebrows Are Raised over Passages in Collection of Poetry that Sold Five Copies.” Then I will know that the poet must have done something really bad.
Probably he will have plagiarized the menu from a famous bistro around the corner.


200520062007200820092010

JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember

19152229