Are you buying it?

What, the book or the explanation?

On top of that (apart from the plagiarism) no-one who has read this book has found it be radically different from countless other historical novels. Thomas Pynchon it is not.?

So I think what Trowenna Sea is, is the beginning of a hybrid book in which [you have] the problematics of acknowledgement of historical material and historical inspirations. Where you have non fiction writers traversing that area then they can?

He?

Can I just say, that's a bunch of horseshit (quite apart from largely contradicting the previous explanation.)

I'm waiting for the English translation to come out.

Yet, as he has grown older, Ihimaera has become unhappy with some of his stories. The early books, he believes, were written as if he was "a possum caught in the headlights?

I have two more questions now. What's problematic about "acknowledgement of historical material and historical inspirations"? I'm sure I could probably?

If historical fiction would be spoiled by that, how about just a bibliography at the end of the book that acknowledges both the works relied on generally and a more detailed section that?

You could certainly do footnotes,and it could be all terribly postmodern and interesting, and you could go further and use different fonts and insert photographs and original documents, to draw attention to the?

Fiction writers can't use footnotes?

Don't tell Nicholson Baker because his second (and IMO best) novel, The Mezzanine, is full of the damn things.

"You reject students' essays for doing this and you fail them in exams for doing it.

"It makes you wonder what the title of a distinguished professor means in the University?

Thank you CK Stead for saying something so obvious. The role of Auckland University?

CK Stead weighs in very critically on both Ihimaera but most especially the university that employs them both.

Excellent points well made by Stead, but to be a little pedantic he took early retirement from Auckland University, with the title of Professor Emeritus, in the 80's. (Either just before or?

Only Peter can get away with phrases like "poltroons of pusillaniousness" ...

Especially since it should be pusillanimousness. Seems appropriate to link to the post which is here.

Especially since it should be pusillanimousness.

Thanks for that. His typo corrected.

It sure doesn't help the Arts Foundation's brand, to coin a phrase.

he Trowenna Sea: top-selling NZ fiction book for the last two weeks running. I dunno, people. Are you buying it?

No, Ihimaera is though. Sounds like this run will sell out!

We all know it was wrong & so too the Arts Foundation, prior to the award. They awarded Witi anyway.

When Hans Petrovic, the film critic for The Press?

When Hans Petrovic, the film critic for The Press cut & pasted from the Guardian. That was the end of his job there.

birds can do it, bees can do it
even Garth George can do it...
let's do it, let's plagiarise

making a song fit a situation- fun.

suggesting Garth George and educated fleas are interchangeable – Gold!

I also saw on the link the assertion that growing glaciers are a sign to disprove climate change.
Not so.
Current thought is that warming has increased melt so the glacier extends further down hill.

Giovanni – what happened over Garth George?

Take it away Hot Topic. Not a hot topic enough for the Herald editors it seems – GG is keeping his job.

suggesting Garth George and educated fleas are interchangeable

I don't recall saying educated.

http://www.artsfoundation.org.nz/about01.html

birds can do it, bees can do it
even Garth George can do it...
let's do it, let's plagiarise

Gio – a great looney
poltroon tune...
or is it a timiditty?

Lobachevsky

"Plagiarise
Let no-one else's work evade your eyes
Remember why the Good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes and
Plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise"

Are just about my two favourite lines in any song ever.

So, just how stupid does he think we are?

I don't think that's it. It's not that he thinks we are stupid instead he is just unable to say
"Sorry I fucked up, I never should have done that, you all have my sincerest apologies and the book will immediately?

The authors of the books quoted? Have they sued for copyright infringement? Or is a quote (especially of reported historical dialogue) fair use, even if unattributed?

The readers and purchasers? Does the fact it isn't Witi's work make the book less?

Hang on though, who's the victim of Ihimaera's crimes?

The authors of the books quoted? Have they sued for copyright infringement? Or is a quote (especially of reported historical dialogue) fair use, even if unattributed?

I dare you to open one of these "what-is-plagiarism-and-why-is-it-a-crime?" cans of worms at this stage.?

Pro tip: if you're going to baselessly slander a mathematician in your humorous song, pick a dead one.

Thomas Pynchon it is not.

Interestingly, Pynchon has been known to make extremely elaborate use of others' work, but in a genuinely imaginative way. Eg the North Africa bits in V apparently owe a lot to an old Baedeker he'd picked up; and, equally apparently, heaps of the historical and?

I write as a veteran of last weekend's PA plagiarism wars ...

I would call it PA's 'plagiarism skirmish'. Or perhaps, like the Korean War, a 'police action'...

Fiction writers can't use footnotes? Maybe some fiction would have its flow spoiled by footnotes. Endnotes maybe?

Infinite Jest? Of which a large proportion of the 300+ endnotes are citations to a pharmacological dictionary (ab)used by one of the characters to find new and novel ways to get off his?

I would call it PA's 'plagiarism skirmish'. Or perhaps, like the Korean War, a 'police action'...

Come on, it was a domestic contingency operation at best.

I think it's worth pointing out that Lobachevsky was in no way a plagiarist — Lehrer just like the way "Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was his name!" scanned.

Here's what Wiki has to say, Stephen:

Lehrer chose Lobachevsky mainly because his name was reminiscent of Stanislavsky's, also because during the peak?

I didn't plagiarise in any of my essays when I studied... I was too lazy to read the original text, let alone something someone else might have written?

Pynchon has been known to make extremely elaborate use of others' work, but in a genuinely imaginative way. Eg the North Africa bits in V apparently owe a lot to an old Baedeker he'd picked up;

Pynchon's been perfectly up front about his creative lifting. In his comments in the?

Am I the only one who hears the phrase 'historic fiction' and thinks of the lovechild of Bryce Courtenay and Jeffrey Archer?

I'm a little surprised that it's taken this long for Courtenay's name to pop up :)

George Dangerfield's "The Strange Death of Liberal England", a classic of its kind, has not a single footnote or reference in the entire book. Since he was writing around 20 years after the events, he may have written the?

Pynchon certainly knows how to write a historical novel — perhaps The Trowenna Sea v2 will open with the lines "A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare?

Jolisa might be interested in the observation that plagiarism hunters historically have been a very poorly regarded group.

What Jonathan Lethem?

Pynchon certainly knows how to write a historical novel . . .

V features an orrery – a model of the solar system, complete with Pluto – in a scene set in 1922. Other than that, yeah, plus you get occasional lashings of deliberately anachronistic steampunk.

Pynchon appears to have?

Any belly-laughs in The Trowenna Sea?

Mmm, not really, but a few giggles. Page 91, Hohepa speaking :

...while modesty forbids me from talking too much about my appearance — after all, a man should not look into a mirror, as does a woman, to seek pleasure in his reflection?

My friends would have been somewhat shattered, though, to realise that it could treble in size when aroused.

Lawks, he's skating towards the Bad Sex Award there.

And?

dark purple spheres/crystal wine glass line

Has someone perhaps missed the figurative meaning of 'purple prose'?

Hopefully he can add unicorns in v2.

I'm guessing he has this on the wall of his writing studio.

Has someone perhaps missed the figurative meaning of 'purple prose'?

Or embraced it, and gone right over the top with it. Reading the book was like being at a Prince concert, only a little bit less sexy.

What happened to now?

We have newspapers for that.

I'm guessing he has this on the wall of his writing studio.

Wicked! Actual purple spheres!

Which, as a correspondent of mine pointed out, are originally Tennyson's. (I'd attribute this connection, but they wish to remain anonymous).

ur, 'great giant whales' eh?

He says that in Whale Rider?

I remember spotting "giant leviathan" — I wondered at the time what a petite but perfectly formed leviathan would look like (and for all that I enjoyed the book).

That's just awful writing-

Jolisa might be interested in the observation that plagiarism hunters historically have been a very poorly regarded group.

Interested? Hmm, try mortified. I really didn't go looking for this; it found me. And it would have found somebody, sooner or later.

Although, when it became clear that the initial 16?

More & more I'm finding the Arts Foundation's culpable stupidity – irritating. Somebody mentioned 'hurt the?

Didn't the Foundation select their winners long before this storm blew up?

They did, but they seem to have discussed whether or not to revoke it, as in the Herald story from Wednesday:

Ihimaera had told the foundation of the plagiarism claim before it became public and it did generate?

dependent on their standing within the mindsets of a secretive group of rich buggers

Isn't that just the basis of commercial art? And of public funding for the classical/ballet/oils which thrill a socioeconomic group who could easily pay their own way.

And just what kind of 'commercial art' are you thinking of???
All art -even that done for the delectation of an individual?

Ihimaera had told the foundation of the plagiarism claim before it became public and it did generate discussion among the selectors. [Emphasis added}

Errr... you mean the "claim" you went on to publicly admit was, well, correct? Put a million weasels behind a million typewriters, and we have the 'perception?

Yanks have always been into pseudo-royalty because they dont have their own . . .

So they improvise.

Anyway, aren't most royalty pseuds?

And then, he craps all over his literary record, and all over himself.

Maybe we just leave him there.

I'm really good on hangi/umukai too-

A sticky situation just got stickier, methinks....at least allegedly.

"It makes you wonder what the title
of a distinguished professor means in the University of Auckland, if they then say what Witi Ihimaera has done doesn't matter.?

Go Jolisa. Great RNZ interview just now.

Yes, it was. The Listener arrived this morning, with more on this story. The only problem is that it is written by Joanne Black, which won't raise any expectations of fairnesss nor balance. Nevertheless, I wonder what the UoA wil think of the?

Avoiding words like "inadvertent" and "error" might be a start.

Indeed. "Error" is pretty bleeding obvious, and as numerous people have pointed out — not least Auckland University Ph.D. candidate Paul Litterick — there's no "whoopsie, i made an accident" escape clausie in UoA's own rules about plagiarism.

Yes, it?

written by Joanne Black

Why why WHY? Argh.

Caught the last half of the interview thanks to Twitter. Go Jolisa!

It's a damn sight kinder than their own professor emeritus Stead has been over the last twenty four hours.

Yes, but you know, somebodyfromoverseas said it, and when somebodyfromoverseas speaks it always carries more weight.

Asked why Penguin had not picked up the plagiarism during its own publishing processes – using expert advice – she said that for fiction it would be very tough for anybody, unless they were intimate with the author's previous works.

"For us to do that for every?

when somebodyfromoverseas speaks it always carries more weight

*That's* why we know Where You Are Originally From, isn't it?

Asked why Penguin had not picked up the plagiarism during its own publishing processes – using expert advice – she said that for fiction it would be very tough for anybody, unless they were intimate with the author's previous works.

"For us to do that for every title would cost?

*That's* why we know Where You Are Originally From, isn't it?

Actually, no, as soon as peoplefromoverseas move to NZ on anything resembling a permanent basis, they immediately become ordinary local schmucks.

I really really want to give the Arts Foundation the?

And just what kind of 'commercial art' are you thinking of???

Another Unicorn perhaps?

It is tempting to respond to the cover story of the new Listener "Last chance to save humanity", with a 'Cancel your subscription'

Beats the usual "Last chance to save your waistline" surely.

Beats the usual "Last chance to save your waistline" surely.

Even those incredibly helpful stories are always sabotaged by the infallibly persuasive wine and cooking pages. Yum.

The Listener: truly something for everyone.

(Although: no children's department.)

I agree with the young woman from NZUSA on Nine To Noon this morning, who suggested that the response from the University of Auckland could be sending a message of double standards to students.

Indeed — while I've got my bones to pick with NZUSA, I thought Sophia Blair was?

A single semester of sulking with scissors should sort me out.

aaargh the 'Erald angles...

Have I told you that I love you lately?

Oh dear, now Prof. Keith Sorrenson is claiming that Witi snaffled some of his work too.

A sticky situation just got stickier, methinks....at least allegedly.

For an earlier book too, the Matriarch. Which really puts any 'oops, accident, never do it again, promise' lines out of order. That's chopping block?

Also nice to hear give short shift to the idea that Auckland Uni had an out because The Trowenna Sea was not published "under the university's auspices".

I wonder if the university counts novels written by creative faculty towards its research output. Can anyone confirm this?
Because if so, then?

Oh dear, now Prof. Keith Sorrenson is claiming that Witi snaffled some of his work too.

A sticky situation just got stickier, methinks....at least allegedly.

I'm going to have to go to the library, and do some research in places where Google doesn't reach, but I don't think we're talking?

I wonder if the university counts novels written by creative faculty towards its research output. Can anyone confirm this?

It does.

If my recollection is correct on Mark Twain, I wonder how his writing could stand up to the scrutiny of the internet?

While I take your point, Twain was far from the only 19th century author who tore out a lot of hair over pirated editions of his work he?

Be interesting to learn more about that incident, see if it's similar.

The little I could find Googling before breakfast suggested that text Sorrenson wrote for the 1966 Te Ara encyclopedia of New Zealand entry about native land tenure had been used, unattributed.

All of this could have been avoided if he'd just put a "RT" in front of each passage.

Aaaaand... brilliant.

The little I could find Googling before breakfast suggested that text Sorrenson wrote for the 1966 Te Ara encyclopedia of New Zealand entry about native land tenure had been used, unattributed.

You get a summary here:

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Whi06Kota-t1-g1-t2.html

Key quote:

The history of the area in question in the two novels?

1.5. WHAT YOU SHOULDN'T DO: PLAGIARISM
It was different in the old days, when there was no such concept as cultural or intellectual "property". Bach and Handel could appropriate themes from?

I wonder what the UoA wil think of the quote from American academic Margaret Soltan, "Pretending it didn't happen is the sort of thing a very provincial university wiill do"

Soltan's been blogging this fairly extensively, and has this to say:

It wasn?t really, as Gracewood graciously claims, Google Books?

Award-winning author and poet Vincent O'Sullivan, an emeritus professor of English at Victoria University, was reluctant to comment directly on the "Witi Ihimaera situation" but said the drugs analogy was fair.

"It's a performance-enhancing technique that works at someone?

Interestingly, you get The Matriarch cited in a University of Canterbury English Dept essay writing guide, written in 1990.

I own this. Odd to realise it might be the origin of my some of my attitudes on the issue.

It also contains an explanation of the origins of the term?

From?

George Harrison was sued for over £3 million for using an old song by the Ronettes ( He's So Fine )...

Not the Ronettes; the Chiffons.

I still think kleptomania is a better analogy than drug cheating.

I read on another thread that it can't be theft, nothing was actually taken, just copied ;)

I read on another thread that it can't be theft, nothing was actually taken, just copied ;)

I'd suggest you tell Karen Walker that you're just "borrowing" the patterns for her next collection. I've always wanted to see what death by high end accessories looks like. :)

Regarding the "drug cheat" analogy, I got the impression from the way the article was worded that the journalist actually put that analogy to O'Sullivan and he agreed – rather than O'Sullivan volunteering it as an analogy.

Ngaire: Fair point, but I still think O'Sullivan had some damn good points?

I think it's more like going to a flash restaurant with a?

I am communicating directly with staff and students on the matter concerning Professor Witi Ihimaera which has received considerable media publicity. Much of the public comment has been ill-informed?

Were a small amount of unattributed material to be discovered in a doctoral thesis, for example, the student would be required to rewrite the thesis with appropriate attribution – precisely the action Professor Ihimaera will be taking of his own volition...

A decision he took several days after the university?

Waiter! There are dark purple spheres in my soup!

Shh! Everyone will want some!

So, I just illuminated the issues for listeners to the ZB network, and will be discussing the story on Checkpoint this evening, on Radio NZ (not sure what time exactly).

And it's official, at least according?

I am communicating directly with staff and students on the matter concerning Professor Witi Ihimaera which has received considerable media publicity. Much of the public comment has been ill-informed and made in ignorance of the facts. This is notwithstanding our explanations to the media of how this matter was handled?

Those pesky media. Just won't listen.

To be fair, it's fucking hard to listen to someone who won't show up and say anything. "No comment" is a perfectly legitimate response to media enquiries, but don't come back afterwards and bitch that your side of the story ("the facts", as McCutcheon?

Were a small amount of unattributed material to be discovered in a doctoral thesis, for example, the student would be required to rewrite the thesis with appropriate attribution – precisely the action Professor Ihimaera will be taking of his own volition...

As Gio said

A decision he took several days?

Jolisa actually explained that dimension quite nicely in this morning's radio interview.

Which still languishes unlinked? Here, then: streaming 5m18, MP3 1.9MB.

Oh, and look, the subsequent discussion featuring Prof Sorrenson, Sophia Blair of NZUSA and Simon Bowden from the Arts Foundation – streaming 21m27, MP3 7.4MB.

It is also being said that different standards would have applied to a student in the same position. These claims are patently untrue.

Judging by those passages we were quoted earlier from the student handbook saying that "inadvertent" was no defense, the Chancellor of Vice is talking through another orifice.?

Retwiti

Word o year?

The book has been withdrawn from sale at considerable financial cost to Professor Ihimaera.

The last phrasing I'd heard was that he was "planning to buy back unsold copies". It was still available at The Warehouse yesterday – Fishpond has it though Whitcoulls and PaperPlus now list as unavailable on?

"planning to buy back unsold copies".

Cynically, I'm wondering if these copies will count towards the Premier Bestsellers, which get gold/silver/bronze stickers on the front cover...

one of New Zealand's master storytellers at the height of his powers

Craig prompted this response yesterday from Margaret Soltan:

The pathetic plagiarist has no faith in his ability to write well. At his core is a deep self-doubt; and the more success the pathetic plagiarist enjoys, the deeper his?

Appropriation absolves all sins

really?
finders keepers, huh?
the final absolution is here...

there does seem to be an element
of technology enabling people...
but just 'cause we can
doesn't mean we should

and analogies to drug cheats
might really be more
grand theft organ...

yrs
the laughing genome

The last phrasing I'd heard was that he was "planning to buy back unsold copies". It was still available at The Warehouse yesterday – Fishpond has it though Whitcoulls and PaperPlus now list as unavailable on their websites. Biblioz has it but very expensive.

I think technically he's buying back?

So Prof I. is seen as making amends – it's not his fault that the distributor is making the recall voluntary. The plus is that he is likely to sell more books due to the publicity and the perceived rarity value. Can ship it again with an errata?

Why do authors like Ihimaera and McEwan have to write books that require research and the use of other people's writing? Had they stuck to writing contemporary fiction they would have done so in their own words and not become plagiarists.

McEwan's novel after Atonement was the contemporary novel Saturday,?

"Guidelines for the Conduct of Research"

Hang on, how is a novel "research"? Indeed, what is the university's standing in any of this? I'm assuming that Prof. I's contract probably allows him to write books in his own time, and that isn't part of the teaching and research he does?

What isn't teaching is research – or publication, really.

Precisely. After Jolisa asked the question here I asked a friend at Victoria, and that's pretty much what he said.

What isn't teaching is research – or publication, really.

So Auckland Uni gets Witi's royalties and pays him a salary in return?

So Auckland Uni gets Witi's royalties and pays him a salary in return?

I shouldn't think. The formula my university works (and I suspect others do the same) is that you can earn up to 10% of your salary from other income sources. Not that there is any way of?

Also, if universities are responsible for their staff's work, can I raise a complaint about the barista at [redacted] who served me a mochachino that?

Whoops ? stuff up. Could happen to any of us. All writers of historical fiction could get caught out.

I see what you're trying to say here, Tania. I imagine that it's possible to make a genuine mistake in your field.

One mistake — or possibly two (if you're terribly?

Auckland Uni gets Witi's royalties and pays him a salary in return?

I have never heard of academic contracts that would garnish book royalties (although very few academic books earn enough royalties for this to be an issue). Most (all?) places in the US do require you to assign patents?

So if you're a university lecturer, your work must be of "academic" standard? You wouldn't be allowed to write a semi-pornographic scurrilous novel, for instance?

It appears that Ihimaera himself asked the university to adjudicate this issue, and the university accepted jurisdiction — and since he is paid to?

Apologies?

What I?m saying here, I think, and as I said on Beattie?s Blog, I am disinclined to join the others who have so quickly rallied to throw stones at a man who?s novel Whanau was the first ever non children?s book I read as a child. (My step-brother won?

And sad that people have been so horrible and unforgiving.

That seems an extraordinarily poor characterisation of the tenor of the conversation in this thread.

Can't say I'm terribly impressed with the "asthetics is the only metre" argument in Scott Hamilton's post either. The Eliot analogy is just so unfit?

(Although I will spoil it by adding that the inclusion of Alan Duff in the story makes me think that it is just as well Witi never became Sir Witi, so there is no opportunity for the headline "One Knight?

Yeh, and I think?

And Peter Carey's . . . Ned Kelly book.

Just subjectively, there are occasional speeches delivered by Carey's characters that struck me at the time of reading True History of the Kelly Gang as rather inadequately masticated slabs of anthropology. For example, Mary Hearn's account of the ritual killing of?

Very much looking forward to reading Banquo's Son. (I had this crazy plan of translating Ophelia Thinks Harder into Italian once, but things fell through. Different author, I know, but it's an intriguing genre.)

(despite being highly opinionated)

But my latest novel is my 23rd published book.

Well, I think that qualifies you for the high opinion :)

He was made a Distinguished Companion in the New Zealand Order of Merit (equivalent to a knighthood in the old honours system) in 2004 for services to literature.[1][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witi_Ihimaera

It is definately a case of "One Knight out Stealing" – well?

George Harrison was sued for over £3 million for using an old song by the Ronettes ( He's So Fine )...

Not the Ronettes; the Chiffons.

But George Harrison's use was more than thinly veiled.

Wouldn't a "I made a mistake. I am sorry. Here is a corrigendum with ALL?

The inclusion of Lee Tamahori by McLeod is just wrong.

Weird innit? Just more of McLeod's prurient fixation with such things.
There's an uncomfortably patronising tone about the piece, as if all creative endeavours by Maori are somehow subsidised by a patronising establishment liberalism. The silly stretched comparison with Alan?

George Harrison was sued for over £3 million for using an old song by the Ronettes ( He's So Fine )...

Not the Ronettes; the Chiffons.

But George Harrison's use was more than thinly veiled.

They made him pay for that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf9IYBTpmxA