Plenty more opinion pieces over the weekend regarding Witi Ihimaera and The Trowenna Sea, but the continuing debate is starting to look like a bun-fight. The backlash against the backlash has begun, and will not doubt continue until you can add another “against the backlash” into that phrase.
A simple explanation, it seems, is not to be ours. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe I’m owed anything by the author as a person. As I said in my second post on this, this is a professional matter, in a profession that asks me to be an audience (and to which I willingly agree), but when it goes wrong wants me to treat it like a personal issue and pretend it’s none of my business. And I know the whole plagiarism in art thing is fraught with many grey areas and terrible arty issues of owwwwnership (I’ve long repressed my Billy Apple rage), but that doesn’t mean there’s no way to follow the process of how a book with unacknowledged copied passages got all the way to the bookshop shelves.
Surely other authors, publishers and editors (and those of us who have a deep interest in the writing/publishing process) would like to know this? Would it not be an illuminating exercise for all? Perhaps when all the “oh la scandale” aspect of it has died and all parties come out of the “dampening down the fires” mode we may get some quiet and plain-language reflection.
Until then I’m not going to pretend I don’t haz a sad about the whole damn thing. And I bring you this:
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
Because if I can’t draw a line between lolcats and Witi Ihimaera, I don’t deserve the name BookieMonster. Watch my google stats go weird.
Oh and many thanks for the comments on posts too from readers and visitors – please continue!
ANYHOW.
Last week I started reading The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy by Barbara Vine (after my total fail Wilkie Collins attempt – I’m still upset). It’s seriously good. Srsly. A full review will be forthcoming later this week (assuming I finish it within this time).
6 Responses to “And moving on…”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Extra BookieMonster Blathery Goodness!
I think the lack of transparency as to how we got here is the most puzzling thing about this mess. I can certainly understand that stuff happens, and that things get missed or people make bad choices, or that “oversights” (lovely non-descriptive word) occur, but instead there has been very little in the way of an explanation, which makes the semi-apologies offered meaningless.
How do you apologies for something without admitting what that something is?
And it’s the question of “What happened?” that continues to lurk, which in turn prompts us to wonder why we’re not getting an explanation that seems to be a reasonable expectation at this point in time.
Yes! Very well said.
“Transparency” has been the word going around my head this morning – as in “why not more transparency”? This isn’t an issue that requires any opaqueness – we’re not talking about some horribly private personal problem, or some security issue. It’s a pretty basic question really that you think wouldn’t need to be avoided like the plague.
I also think the continued silence is doing more to keep this story alive than any supposed malicious intent on behalf of the media and/or other commentators.
Oh, I love the LOLcat (among the pigeons)!
I do think you’re right to home in on transparency as a major issue here. For all the talk about auditing the novel with a view to republishing it, how about auditing the process by which it came to be on the shelf in that state? How come the writer has a case to answer, but the publisher doesn’t?
Ditto with the silence and the mixed messages. Is the book, or is it not, withdrawn from sale pending permission to cite the borrowed texts? How can it be in shops and at the top of the bestselling list if it’s so broken as to need reissuing? (Thought: are we part of a mass-editing experiment? Is Penguin trying to crowd-source the necessary revisions for the second edition?)
A straight bat, along the lines of “it seems we rushed an imperfect draft to print to meet the Christmas market; our bad; we’ll withdraw the book from sale and fix it with all deliberate speed because we prize excellence and respect our authors; watch this space” would have gone a long way here.
Heh, there’s a LOLcat for every moment.
I can’t help but theorise that not unilaterally withdrawing the novel from sale is a cynical move to keep the money coming in while they can, as it were, but that’s entirely supposition on my part. Leaving it up to the booksellers is a bit of a non-action on their part and it would be interesting to know if the mainstream booksellers have taken Penguin up on their offer to return copies. The revised edition is bound to not be as successful (though I could of course be proven wrong on that point!).
It is an extraordinary act in the book world, to a large extent, for an author to buy back all warehouse copies, but it’s as if they don’t want to fully commit to it.
As I said on Public Address, the most dispiriting thing about Penguin and Auckland University’s role in this whole squalid affair is that they seem to view Ihimaera as a profitable “brand” that needs to be protected at all costs, as opposed to part of an academic/literary community who is as accountable as anyone else to pretty basic standards. Like not stealing other people’s shit.
Sigh… The only response I feel I can make is to boycott any Penguin titles while doing my Christmas shopping. Perhaps that’s the only thing Geoff Walker cares about.
Yes. This isn’t like Tiger Woods, caught out cheating on his wife. This is like if Tiger Woods was caught out cheating on his golf card. Accountability rather than salaciousness. (It also makes about as much sense – why cheat at something you’re actually good at?)
I’d be interested to know if Penguin is still following the comment stream from all corners on this issue. They seem determined to follow the old parental advice – “ignore them and they will go away”.