France's leading contemporary author, Michel Houellebecq, has been accused of cutting and pasting passages from Wikipedia and other websites into his new book.
by: Henry Samuel
La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory) hit the bookshops this week as France's autumn publishing season gets under way and has already been tipped to win the Goncourt, France's top literary prize, in November.
The much-awaited book revolves around Jed, a young artist who hits the big time after creating works of art out of Michelin maps.
However, a French literary website, Slate.fr, has accused the writer of plagiarism, claiming several passages have been lifted from various websites, including Wikipedia.
Houellebecq's response to the claims has been to say that he was "sewing together" the "extracts" as a "patchwork".
According to Slate.fr at least three passages apparently lifted from the French-language edition of the user-generated online encyclopedia.
The entries are on the French hunting activist Frédéric Nihous, the town of Beauvais and the housefly.
Writing about Mr Nihous, the author notes: "In 1988, he had finished first in a fishing tournament organised in the Hérault (region) by fishing a 7.256 'nakin' carp." The Wikipedia differs only in that the it does not use the pluperfect tense and says "de" instead of "dans" when referring to the Hérault region.
Slate.fr also noted that Houellebecq apparently copied the description of the role of senior police officers from the French interior ministry website, and did likewise for the description of a hotel in southern France from the hotel's website.
Houellebecq is no stranger to controversy and was taken to court for passages in 2001 for passages of Platform, a pot pourri of sex-tourism and Islamist terrorism, on charges of provoking racial hatred for his depiction of Islam. He was later cleared of all charges.
His mother once branded him a liar, an impostor and a parasite for sticking her into one of his novels.
The author, who now lives in Spain after several years in Ireland, dismissed the plagiarism accusation as "ridiculous".
"When you use a big word like 'plagiarism', even if the accusation is ridiculous, something (of the accusation) will always remain ... It's like racism," he said.
"And if people really think that, then they haven't the first notion of what literature is. That is part of my method."
He said: "I hope it adds to the beauty of my books to use such material. I would like to be able to modify (the extracts) less than I do ... It's a type of patchwork, sewing together, dovetailing. Employing (written) material that is rare because of its 'extraliterarity' is a small source of pride."
He cited Argentina's Jorge Luis Borges and France's Georges Perec as other great writers versed in the arts of mixing "real" texts into fiction.
However, Slate.fr pointed out that cutting and pasting Wikipedia texts is theoretically illegal if a person fails to refer to the site.
La carte et le territoire is Houellebecq's first novel in five years. He rose to fame in the 1990s with Les Particules Elementaires, translated into English as Atomised.
Adding to the plagiarism row, a writer from the southern French city of Nimes yesterday claimed that the book’s title was that of a manuscript he published himself in 1999. Michel Lévy said Houellebecq “could not have been unaware” of this, as his sister was at the time the chair and founder of a Friends of Michel Houellebecq association.
"The writer came to see my sister on numerous occasions and could not have been unaware that I was publishing a book with this title,” Mr Levy told Le Parisien.
But lawyers at the Houellebecq’s publishing house Flammarion disagreed, saying the title was simply “an association of two commonly used words".
The passages in question:
On the housefly:
Houellebecq: "Each female of Musca domesticacan lay up to five hundred and sometimes a thousand eggs. These eggs are white and measure around 1.2mm in length."
Wikipedia: "Each female can lay up to 500 and sometimes 1,000 eggs, generally 5 times with a hundred eggs set down each time. The eggs are white and measure around 1.2mm in length."
On Beauvais:
Houellebecq: "The first traces of frequenting the Beauvais site can be dated back to 65,000 years before our time."
Wikipedia: "The first traces of frequenting the Beauvais site date back to 65,000 years before our time."
On police stations:
Houellebecq: " ... constituting the conception and management body of the national police."
Wikipedia: "Police stations belong to the conception and management body of the national police".
On the Carpe Diem hotel:
Houellebecq: "A smile will lead you from the garden (Mediterranean species) to your suite, a place which will overwhelm your senses".
Chateau et Hotels Collection: "A smile will lead you from the garden to your suite where all your senses will be awakened."
from: Telegraph
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