Tale of two laureates

OPINION: They make an oddly assailed pair, two of the nation's newest Arts Foundation laureates, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

We have a writer who appropriated the words of others, and a songwriter deprived of his own words.

Witi Ihimaera, whose historical novel The Trowenna Sea contained at least 16 uncredited passages of other people's writing, was found out by a Listener reviewer Jolisa Gracewood.

Confronted with the evidence, he issued an apology, albeit for careless oversight rather than plagiarism. It's not that he either slyly or inadvertently used the material, see, it's just that due credit wasn't given.

A corrected new edition will come out next year and Ihimaera is buying back unsold stock of the flawed original; a measure he says has undertaken to preserve the mana and integrity of the novel. Weirdly, this regathering of the book may make the first edition more collectable, in the eyes of some.

That Ihimaera writes well is not in issue. His work, none moreso than the loved Whale Rider, has been widely embraced, and understandably so. So he is a real writer – it's not that he's been faking it.

But the most charitable possible view is that he has been far less scrupulous than he should have been about work that he has cut-and-pasted as he fashions his own story.

He must now undergo a period of discomfort as his earlier work is scrutinised for similar uncredited appropriations.

Many will now say that the Arts Foundation of New Zealand should at the very least have waited its patience and at least postponed his laureate award and the $50,000 that goes with it, until such inquiry is done. That it didn't must be taken as not only an assessment that his body of work justifies the award regardless, but an act of confidence in what the final assessments will be.

Ihimaera quite forlornly pointed out that the uncredited material made up no more than 0.4 per cent of the novel. But that is more than enough, when you're describing poison.

Meanwhile, former Invercargill lad Chris Knox has also been named a laureate and this time not a voice could be raised in protest.

The fabulously inventive songwriter-cartoonist-critic has suffered a major stroke and now faces a long and, to some extent probably only partial, recovery.

Already his progress, and those signs that he's still in there all right, have heartened the many who love him, admire him, or at least hold him in exasperated affection.

A double album of his own songs has been recorded by other New Zealand artists and the proceeds will go to help his recovery. That may be seen as a worthy-enough cause in itself, though the calibre of his work is such that the quality of the material alone makes Stroke a potentially significant album for its own sake.

One friend, Russell Brown, recently reported that when Knox was wheeled into hospital, though his speech had deserted him, he was humming a tune and concluded: "So know this about Chris Knox: deprived of speech, he sang without words." And, with his left hand, he's already drawing.

You do get the impression that we still haven't heard the last from one of the city's most creative sons.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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