Posts by Jolisa
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To be honest, and this might sound wanky, but the only people's opinions who matter on this subject are those who produce creative work of their own and put it out there. Not the critics.
You're right, it does sound a little wanky. But I do see your point. I just think it's a limited one.
Amusingly, several who have expressed their opinions on this very thread are also "those who produce creative work of their own and put it out there." A Venn diagram would be useful here.
And as webweaver pointed out,surely the reader has an interest in this too. E.g. my mum, an avid consumer of historical novels both light and heavy, had been looking forward to getting her hands on this book. Now, not so much. Her opinions surely "matter," if not to the author, then to the publisher's bottom line.
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Very interesting discussion on Radio NZ just now, with some particularly astute questions from Michelle Boag.
I'll be talking to Maggie Barry on Drive Live (Live Drive?) in a few minutes time.
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Lolnui! "People don't appreciate art, do they?" Yep, pretty much like that. Only more NSFW.
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lest the writer risk upsetting the descendants by going overboard with the sexy times.
Mind you, I can't imagine objecting to a portrait of an ancestor of mine that took care to notice how prodigiously physically gifted he was, especially in the trouser department.
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It suddenly occurs that writing historical fiction must be a lot like writing fanfiction
Funny you should say that, Lucy... the analogy did occur to me while reading. Young Hohepa's physical beauty is dwelt on at length (as it were), and what makes it really fanficcy is that some of those parts are told in the first person by Hohepa himself. People swoon when they glimpse him - men, women, white and brown. Especially when he emerges, dripping, from the water, all rippling muscle and ...
Where was I? Oh yes - so there's an argument for a director's cut of the book that focuses entirely on Hohepa as a sort of Chattertonesque dead-too-young beauty and political martyr. But to make that work, I think the character would have to be entirely fictional, lest the writer risk upsetting the descendants by going overboard with the sexy times.
I think he wanted the emotional payoff of the repatriation at the end, hence the actual factual historical character, but I still reckon the book would have worked much, much better had it been "inspired by" rather than "based on" the life of Te Umuroa.
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But there are also some wildly successful novels incorporating historical figures - Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy springs to mind. I thought the way in which she wove in her historical figures - Sassoon, Owens, Robert Graves - was brilliant.
Yep, I liked those too - and agree that fictionalising real people can be done well. But as far as I remember, Barker didn't arrange for any of her real-name characters to - oh, I can't even type this - to sexually abuse a child. That seems out of line, even when Flanagan's characters have been dead for a century and a half.
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Belated response to Islander, whose first comment I inexplicably missed at the time:
I have never struck a contract that didnt include variants of these clauses:
*The author certifies that this is an original work in its entirety.
*Where quotations are made, due acknowledgment is given to the original author and title.[...]How ironic the last paragraph on this page is, then. (I have the feeling that interview was mentioned further upthread but can't find it - apologies for repeating).
Incidentally, in Mark William's "Leaving The Highway" he has a 'quotation' from either one of Witi's stories or one of mine (am away from home and can't check.) It is actually a mishmash of my words and Witi's.
I think I know the bit you mean - is it about the ocean?
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It's called a novel for a reason.
Oh, touché!
My first draft of the review -- back when I thought the main problem with the book was its failure to follow through on the heaving bosoms (brown and white, male and female) with a proper Georgette Heyer style consummation -- contained the phrase "Tell me something I don't know." I read to discover. Facts, perspectives, ideas. New things. Novelty. Novel.
Even a by-the-numbers romance novelist will make sure to tell you something fresh about, oh, I don't know, ferrets or something.
Funnily enough I was reading Richard Flanagan's Wanting concurrently, because it deals with a similar time and place and also confronts the problem of how or whether to include real historical figures. That novel told me things I didn't want to know. He concocts a queasy sexual subplot between two actual historical characters (English man, indigenous child) which seemed to me completely bogus in literary and historical terms. There are jolly good reasons to fictionalise your characters as well as their travails.
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Oh, and David H asked the radical question,
Is Ihimaera's new novel -- plagiarism questions aside -- a good book?
All three drafts of my review waffled a bit on this point, because it's undeniably a heartfelt and ambitious novel, and the story it seeks to tell is a truly fascinating one. And I still have a soft spot for early Witi, being a bit of a sentimentalist myself.
But Nicholas Reid's review in the SST is pretty much spot on.
(That World War I howler is one of several anachronisms that an editor should really have spotted.)
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However, I imagine the expected accuracy of an historical novel featuring real people is higher than for a general work of fiction.
Possibly Ihimaera backed himself into a corner by insisting on historical accuracy - witness his close reliance on historical accounts of major historical events, some of which he pretty much rewrites line by line in his own words. (NB these were not included in my original list of borrowings, since they were rewritten, but they do borrow the structure of the originals).
On the other hand, the degree of "accuracy" fluctuates throughout the book. He rather handily makes Te Umuroa fluent in English, gives him a wife and child he didn't have (according to the record), and sends him places he would not have gone, including to the signing of the Treaty.
I can't speak to the accuracy of the Tasmanian section, but I'm told (by a new Tasmanian friend) that Te Umuroa could not have met Truganini, the famous Tasmanian aborigine, let alone had a conversation with her. Still, it's a nice thing to imagine.
And nor should the standard be exactly the same. For example, I don't think that an author should have to give footnotes or citations throughout a piece of work.
I see what you're saying, Tracy, but I'm not sure that the standard of "not incorporating other people's work without acknowledgement" would be any different whether the work is fiction or non-fiction.
The few recent literary examples that come close to this include the kerfuffle over Ian McEwan's Atonement, where he came out swinging and said, fairly plausibly, that a) he had acknowledged the book and b) it was a few passages, borrowed for the sake of strict authenticity. And then there's Kaavya Viswanathan, who borrowed phrases and words from several different sources. She fared less well.