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"I think it is always a shame when people don’t stand up for what it is that they really believe. And I do think the problem we face in New Zealand is that we are reluctant to express firm beliefs in anything."
--Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton, New Zealand's author of Man-Booker prize- winning novel the Luminaries, has been at the Jaipur Literature Festival and gave an interview to Indian publication, Live Mint.
It is a deep and thoughtful interview, such that we never see in this country, even in 'serious' publications like the Listener.
The only reflection of this in the media here (as if to confirm and underline her every word about the NZ cultural and political environment) has been to hone in on her criticism of New Zealand.
--Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton, New Zealand's author of Man-Booker prize- winning novel the Luminaries, has been at the Jaipur Literature Festival and gave an interview to Indian publication, Live Mint.
It is a deep and thoughtful interview, such that we never see in this country, even in 'serious' publications like the Listener.
The only reflection of this in the media here (as if to confirm and underline her every word about the NZ cultural and political environment) has been to hone in on her criticism of New Zealand.
Winning
author lets rip at Kiwi attitudes and political direction
Our import from Wall Street and the Empire, PM John Key has weighed in with his own comments.
John
Key says he is disappointed at Eleanor Catton's lack of respect for
his Government after she publicly dissed his colleagues at a literary
festival in India.
What could be more natural from the head of a government that rules on behalf of anti-intellectual philistines?
I have little doubt that Eleanor Catton will now become an object of hate of "mainstream" New Zealanders in a world where there is a chasm between truth and lies, between common sense and propaganda in service of the Empire.
Why not read what is not available to New Zealanders,
(unless they make the effort to look) - what Eleanor Catton ACTUALLY said, unreported in the New Zealand media
Eleanor
Catton: In the last year, I’ve struggled with my identity as a New
Zealand writer
Catton
speaks about her suspicions of writers who go back and forth between
different forms and her attempts to shield from fame
Jaipur:
Eleanor Catton, who won the Man Booker Prize 2013 for her debut novel
The Luminaries, has shielded herself from a very persistent media at
the Jaipur Literary Festival these past few days, preferring instead,
during her time off from duties at the lit fest, to fulfil a lifelong
dream—go on an elephant ride.
On Saturday, she finally succumbed
and agreed to meet a select few media people. Joking about her work,
she says, “Someone said I must have been an Indian in my past life
because I’ve written a book about gold and astrology.”
Catton,
who cares deeply about her craft, speaks about her suspicions of
writers who go back and forth between different forms, her anger with
New Zealand for taking ownership of a very individual achievement,
and her attempts to shield herself from the seduction of fame.
Edited
excerpts from the interview:
On reading
I’m not at all writing at
the moment. The hardest thing (about travelling to literary
festivals) is not to have the time to read. Reading so precedes
writing, you have to read for so long before any kind of writing even
starts to glimmer. That’s always the thing I crave the most at the
end of any tour. I can’t wait to get home, sit in my room, put my
feet up and just read for a couple of week.
On being a
ground-breaking author
It has to be intentional actually; it’s
really important if you are going to be experimenting in some way to
do it consciously and for a reason. There’s nothing worse than a
novel that is experimental where the writer doesn’t know why they
are experimenting. Experimentation and form and content always comes
about because the writer is curious about something, grappling with
something, trying to ask questions that they themselves don’t know
the answers to. That’s always been my approach to it, I guess.
I
made myself a pact a few years ago that I would never write a book
about a writer trying to write a book and I would also never write a
book that resembled anything I had written before, to try to keep
pushing myself onto new territories.
I was thinking a lot about
science fiction actually. It seemed like the natural successor to
historical fiction except in the future, but I don’t know if I’m
quite brave enough to go there.
On never writing poetry
I’ve got
another pact. My boyfriend is a poet and we’ve got a pact between
us that I would never write poetry and he would never write fiction.
A dilution can happen when a writer is working in too many different
forms. I see the writing life so much as an apprenticeship to a
craft, and I think it takes a lifetime and you can’t diversify too
much.
I think non-fiction and fiction have a great deal in common.
But fiction and poetry are extremely different. I am often quite
suspicious of writers who deal in different forms, especially when it
is fiction and poetry.
On her creative winter
It’s a wonderful
relief (not to have a book to work on at present). It’s really
important to feel passionate and driven about what it is you are
working on. I never really understood people who say they have
writer’s block. It seems to me that the natural remedy to that
would be to keep reading. There just isn’t an idea there, but no
need to be stressed about that. There’s this seasonal nature to
inspiration that we have to harvest. There’s the winter and then
the spring, and then wait for the summer for it all to ripen. I’m
quite happy in my creative winter.
On inspirations
Inspiration from
reading precedes all else. The experience of reading for me is very
much an experience of loving the experience and wanting so much to
figure out how it works. And usually the ideas of novels are born
there. Not actually in reading fiction, but in reading philosophy,
which is where the ideas for fiction for me come from. My brain is
working to try and think about how I can make what I’m reading live
in a fictional context rather than in a context of non-fiction, so
I’m making that translation. Inspiration happens often in reading
imaginatively. How could I appropriate this, improve upon it, take it
to a different context.
On New Zealand discrediting its writers
New
Zealand has the misfortune in not having a lot of confidence in the
brains of its citizens. There is a lot of embarassment, a lot of
discrediting that goes on in terms of the local writers. I, for
example, grew up just having a strange belief that New Zealand
writers were automatically less great than writers from Britain and
America, for example. Because we were some colonial backwater, we
weren’t discovered, which I’m hoping will change. The matter of
having this kind of cultural embarrassment about your place in the
world, we really need to actively resist that and be brave. I don’t
think good literature can come about without bravery. The last thing
you want is a whole country of embarrassed writers slinking
around.The good side of New Zealand is that there isn’t all that
kind of shallow literary fame where everyone’s backstabbing each
other. You kind of need a snobbery for those kinds of things to
happen. But I think it is always a shame when people don’t stand up
for what it is that they really believe. And I do think the problem
we face in New Zealand is that we are reluctant to express firm
beliefs in anything. An example would be, I was teaching in class in
Auckland. I made up a statement with manifestoes from all over the
world, different writers who all thought what writing should do or
not do. I was going to give it out to my students and have them write
about the one that spoke to them the most. When I was putting this
document together, I thought, hang on, I don’t have any New Zealand
writers here. And I spent an entire day on the internet trying to
find an aesthetic statement from a New Zealand writer and there was
nothing. Hopefully in the future, we have more people being brave in
that way.
We have this strange cultural phenomenon called “tall
poppy syndrome”; if you stand out, you will be cut down. One
example is that the New Zealand Book Award that follows the
announcement of the Man Booker Prize, in the year The Luminaries won
it, there was this kind of thing that now you’ve won this prize
from overseas, we’re not going to celebrate it here, we’re going
to give the award to somebody else. If you get success overseas then
very often the local population can suddenly be very hard on you. Or
the other problem is that the local population can take ownership of
that success in a way that is strangely proprietal.
So many people
have talked in the media and me directly in ways of 2013 being the
year that New Zealand won the Man Booker Prize. It betrays an
attitude towards individual achievement which is very, uncomfortable.
It has to belong to everybody or the country really doesn’t want to
know about it.
I know I shouldn’t complain too much—I’m in such
an extraordinary position—but at the same time I feel that in the
last year I’ve really struggled with my identity as a New Zealand
writer. I feel uncomfortable being an ambassador for my country when
my country is not doing as much as it could, especially for the
intellectual world. It’s sort of a complicated position to be in.
At the moment, New Zealand, like Australia and Canada, (I dominated
by) these neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very
money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture. They care
about short-term gains. They would destroy the planet in order to be
able to have the life they want. I feel very angry with my
government.
On writing from someone else’s perspective
I don’t
feel like the male perspective is alien to me. I understand what it
would be like to be a man. I suppose from reading a lot of books from
male points of view, I don’t feel like it’s completely foreign to
me.
It’s much more dangerous when a white writer writes from a
non-white perspective than when people write across gender. That’s
much more tricky territory, much more to do with the intentions of
the person doing it. If your intention is to be curious, to enlarge
your sense of the world, that’s a wonderful thing. But if your
intention is to pillage somebody else’s point of view in order to
claim some sort of status from that, is very bad, very immoral. I
would never write a first person narrative from the point of view of
somebody who had an experience that I had not been through. I know
that a lot of writers really disagree with me. New Zealand writer
Llyod Jones, who wrote the novel Mister Pip and was shortlisted for
the Man Booker eight years ago, he very strongly defends his right as
a white male author to go with any perspective that he pleases. I
think everybody needs to have an area where they won’t go,
something that they will respect enough to leave alone. I think there
can be a very colonial aspect to writers who go into other people’s
stories and colonise them, appropriate them. I have a problem with
that.
On shielding herself from fame
I guess there is a certain kind
of expectation now, but one thing that can happen to writers once
their work has been acknowledged in a big way is that they go easy on
themselves, very indulgent. And I am so worried about that; I never
want that to happen. And my way of trying to deal with that is just
not go near writing until all of this noise recedes out of my life
again. When you are on stage, a lot your experiences are things you
are talking about again and again and again and it can be seductive,
you can start thinking you are quite important. You need to remember
that you are not important at all. It’s what you give to your work,
not what the work gives to you.
Eleanor Catton is a TRAITOR, says right-wing broadcaster, Sean Plunkett
I
said it wouldn’t be long before Eleanor would be turned into a hate
figure by the fascists.
Guess
what, Sean fucking Plunkett, intellectuals and university people have
ALWAYS been social critics.
Radio
host Sean Plunket lets rip about Eleanor Catton
Radio
host Sean Plunket has described author Eleanor Catton as an
"ungrateful hua" over comments she made about the New
Zealand government and tall poppy syndrome.
27 January, 2015
Fascist broadcaster, Sean Plunkett
Hear Plunkett's comments HERE
Catton
said she was uncomfortable being seen as an ambassador for New
Zealand which she said was dominated by neo-liberal, profit-obsessed,
shallow and money hungry politicians who do not care about culture.
Plunket
this morning criticised Catton for "bagging" New Zealand
when she had a taxpayer-funded job at a university. Catton is a
lecturer in creative writing at the Manukau Insititute of Technology.
"I
don't see you as an ambassador for our country, I see you as a
traitor," Plunket said.
"I'm
only having a crack at you now because you're being such an
ungrateful hua, Eleanor Catton."
However,
several listeners questioned whether Plunket in fact called her a
"whore"
11:30 AM - 28 Jan 2015 Wellington City, New Zealand, New Zealand
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