Review of Marc Degens’ novel “Seduction of the Innocents” | EUROtoday

One would have suspected the house of innocence anyplace, besides within the dingy Ruhr space, the Babylon of West Germany. But Marc Degens’s novel “Seduction of the Innocent” can also be in regards to the finish of innocence (not least his personal as a writer). Furthermore, innocence has all the time felt snug within the dingy and poor; the place cleanliness and revenue reign, pure grace is far more in danger. And lastly, the place of motion, Essen-Katernberg between 2015 and 2018, stands for a special one anyway: for Berlin a very good decade earlier, when wild creativity (simply barely) was rampant from Mitte to Friedrichshain, not simply funding.

It might even be argued that the title of the novel is merely a quote. A warning in regards to the dangerous results of comics revealed within the USA in 1954 was entitled “Seduction of the Innocent”. What appeared to the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham to be an open barn door into ethical depravity, the world of comics, turns into for Degens an awesome allegory (to be exact: a metonymy) of his personal literary publishing enterprise, alienated to only the best diploma to sharpen his perspective.

You comply with the younger pupil Marthe, enrolled on the fictitious Essen Academy for Graphic Narratives (Comic Academy), on her method into the wild, open pupil life. When she strikes right into a shared residence with roommates Sina and Bo – the 2 of them run the self-made comics writer Bolsterbaumhaus collectively – an thrilling section of life begins for Marthe, impressed by high-spirited intercourse (particularly together with her soon-to-be-found boyfriend Oleg), violent and hearty binge consuming (within the native bar “Sadie”) and limitless creativity.

The creator describes every thing so vividly, with a love of element and enthusiasm you could see the most effective days of your individual pupil days mirrored in it. The gentleness of the type can also be value emphasizing. Well-placed amusing phrases seem genuine, however by no means intrusive, given the younger employees: “He talks like a case of beer.”

The exterior world’s slide into darkness just isn’t hid – the characters themselves touch upon Donald Trump’s (first) election victory or the army coup in Turkey – however on the plot degree that is counteracted by the idyll and freedom of a pupil Arcadia. Marthe makes pals with fellow college students, reminiscent of Suuk-Yin, Gyro, Kurt and Genoveva, and achieves success in her research. Her every day autobiographical animal comics are her first publications. Together with Suuk-Yin, she designs sex-positive “porn bibles” primarily based on historic fashions, which promote nicely at comedian gala’s.

The characters lead a veritable popular culture life that displays, analyzes and ironizes itself. The boundary between artwork and life turns into permeable. At one level, Marthe’s faculty pal (and aspect affair) Kurt describes his dream of a six-hundred-page graphic novel “that is complex, with many characters and different places.” With this comedian undertaking, which “could compete with a good television series”, it’s a bit as if he was describing the poetological program of the novel itself, which, on nearly 600 pages, immerses us so deeply within the truly undramatic lives of its protagonists that one begins to really feel at dwelling in it – like in good sequence.

Degens integrated his personal experiences as co-founder of the Berlin impartial writer Sukultur. This would not trouble in any respect, it simply makes the story much more advanced. Because the comedian scene setting is constant and enriched with lots of comedian information, it initially appears thrilling when actual position fashions shine by. For instance, when the “Schstromschnellen” publishing home is paying homage to Blumenbar, when “Cockrocks” and “Paillettenpresse” sound suspiciously just like the small publishers Kookbooks and Parasitenpresse. And the humorous “V for Dingeskirchen shows” by Suuk-Yin Breda and Marthe Frese are not less than not totally dissimilar to the fantastic “Berlin Bunny Lectures” by Ulrike Sterblich and Stese Wagner (a booklet with “Bunny Lectures” has been revealed by Sukultur).

Marthe is lastly requested to take care of one of many comics on the Bolsterbaumhaus publishing home. It is the story “Combo” of a sure Steffi, who calls herself Amadea, which relies on her personal experiences on a cruise ship and nonetheless requires lots of editorial work. This modifications every thing, sadly additionally narratively. It will quickly emerge that Urs Maerzwald, a younger comedian artist with dad and mom who’re influential in cultural journalism, has plagiarized essential passages from “Combo” and is justifying this as a part of a brand new copy-and-paste tradition.

This is in fact a direct reference to the plagiarism scandal surrounding the blogger Airen’s novel, revealed in 2009 by Sukultur Verlag, which dealt together with his techno and drug experiences primarily in reference to the Berlin membership “Berghain”. Helene Hegemann fully stole from him for her debut novel “Axolotl Roadkill” (2010), which was acclaimed by literary critics – or, based on her personal account, borrowed it (“remix”). The case remains to be attention-grabbing, particularly because the ensuing overheated debate in regards to the welfare and woe of “appropriation art” says rather a lot in regards to the egocentricity of the German characteristic part.

But Degens chooses a type that looks as if a betrayal of the primary half of the e book, particularly a quasi-documentary one by which the magic of the light-hearted artist’s novel largely evaporates. Dozens of the 2010 contributions that had been notably noticeable resulting from their redundancy – the arguments for and in opposition to Hegemann had been rapidly repeated – at the moment are being meticulously rewritten for the comics topic. Everything will be deciphered one-to-one. In what now seems to be a strained clausulation, one appears to be like at numerous statements, on the nomination of the Hegemann novel for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, on the protests of authors in opposition to this nomination (“Leipzig Declaration”), at a protection of Hegemann by Durs Grünbein (right here “Raheela Quarum”) within the FAZ (right here: “NAZ”).

In quick: the complete archive can be dumped, together with the non-public archive of the Sukultur publishing home. The beloved characters within the novel not solely recede past recognition, they’re additionally retrospectively broken, as a result of it now turns into clear that the concept of ​​an harmless, ecstatic life between intoxication and creativity itself was already foreshadowed by the “Strobo” plot.

In this (even bigger) roman à clef a part of the e book, you primarily study what the occasions fifteen years in the past felt like from the writer’s perspective. The temporary pleasure over the gross sales figures for “Combo”/“Strobo” skyrocketing to unprecedented heights was adopted by disappointment from critics (who usually remained on Hegemann’s aspect), authorized disputes with the opposing writer (“Bosse”/Ullstein) and eventually a falling out with the creator Amadea/the creator Airen. The ruinous consequence: everybody turns into grasping, innocence is misplaced, and the still-passable e book enterprise is not pleasurable.

At some level, the narrative lastly will get snarled within the small print (it is about e-book rights), and even intercourse with Oleg – Marthe’s elixir of life – is all of the sudden “so bad”. This appears conceptual, not developed from the characters; You have arrived at a those-were-the-days memoir. At least the narrative spirit returns within the final pages and exhibits how engagingly the story might have been continued.

There stays the little pleasure of trying by the keyhole (disgrace on you, flower bar!). There stays a reminder of necessary copyright points in occasions of primarily plagiarizing AI, though Degens doesn’t present how the Hegemann-Airen debate may very well be made fruitful for the current. Feuilletonists would possibly just like the e book as a result of they love coming throughout themselves (the creator of those strains additionally seems: Andela Chabvunga, who wrote an outrageous evaluate).

But the frustration at having slowed down a novel that began so fantastically would not diminish something. One can solely console oneself with the truth that the Ruhr space didn’t escape structural change both. Innocence is a fragile factor.

Marc Degens: “Seduction of the Innocent”. Novel.
Ventil Verlag, Mainz 2025. 550 pages, hardcover, €32.