Aut
hor, film-maker, co-founder of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival Peter Wells (pic left) has written at some length on his blog about the controversey over Witi Ihimaera's The Trowenna Sea:I’ve been trying to put my thoughts in order about The Trowenna Sea. You see, I even resent writing the title as I feel this only adds publicity to a best-selling book. Yet I’m equally unwilling to use Witi Ihimaera’s name, as this appears to ‘make it personal’. My urge to make sense of the situation comes from the fact this book, which was going to be withdrawn, when the plagiarism allegations first came out has not been withdrawn at all. It is now the best selling fiction book by a New Zealander, within New Zealand.
To read Peter Wells' full comments link to his blog here.
3 comments:
Right on Peter.You have summed it up perfectly
In terms of the thrust of the piece, it is hard to find anything to argue with. I also understand that this controversy set the book sales, which until then had been turgid, soaring. Once again, given that the book should have been withdrawn without question under circumstances like these, I believe that Penguin is looking very tarnished. I am sure that they, like Witi Ihimaera, hope that it will indeed blow over. Myself, I suspect it may prove more like rotting fish: long after the corpse has gone, the taint lingers.
Penguin and Witi were both very careful in their wording. In the original press release, Witi said he was going to buy back the remaining warehouse stock and Geoff Walker of Penguin said he would accept returned copies from bookstores. This got interpreted as Witi and Penguin withdrawing the book, which was never the case.
The questions that we - or perhaps the Listener in another of its follow-ups -- should ask Penguin are: how many warehouse copies did Witi buy from Penguin? How many stores returned books? It would be very interesting to know. One still sees The Trowenna Sea in stores everywhere, so I imagine few were returned -- especially as the "bad" (no such thing?) publicity made it a bestseller.
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