Cattongate: Let book do talking

It isn't a fully blown media brouhaha without the word gate attached to a proper noun. Now we have Cattongate in full swing, which is what gates do… backwards and forwards the reaction storms around the internet.

Cattongate: John Key (L), Eleanor Catton, Sean Plunket (R) Photo: RNZ / AFP

This week, the news came that Eleanor Catton - Man Booker Prize winner, leading New Zealand author and one-time Twitter bestie with Lorde - had said she was uncomfortable being an ambassador for the country because it was dominated by neo-liberal, profit-obsessed and shallow, money-hungry politicians.

Catton, who reportedly made the comments while at the Jaipur Literary Festival in India, also talked about "tall poppy syndrome" and referred to not being awarded New Zealand Book of the Year following her Man Booker win.

Eleanor Catton won "Best Fiction" at the New Zealand Post Book Awards 2014 but missed out on "Book of the Year". Photo: Mark Tantrum / Booksellers NZ

Over at RadioLive, host Sean Plunket heaped oil on the interweb fire. He was outraged, calling her an "ungrateful hua", which he later explained was someone with their "head up [their] arse" and called her a "traitor".

The interweb was duly caught up in the firestorm with even Prime Minister John Key joining in: "It's just a bit sad really that she's mixing politics with some of the other things that she's better-known for", he told 3News.

Metro editor Simon Wilson was one of the more distinct voices, highlighting what he saw as some of the inherent hypocrisy of the debate.

In the end, we thought it would be a good idea to let Catton's award-winning work do some of the talking. Below are nine quotes from The Luminaries. We'll let you apply them to Cattongate and its growing cast of characters:

• "It must have been unpleasant to be discussed as a curiosity, spoken about over breakfast, and between rounds at billiards, as if one's soul were a common property."
• "His temperament was deeply nostalgic, not for for his own past, but for past ages; he was cynical of the present, fearful of the future and profoundly regretful of the world's decay."
• "A woman fallen has no future; a man risen has no past."
• "Her carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. More than a dark horse, she was darkness itself, the cloak of it."
• "A man ought never to trust another man's evaluation of a third man's disposition."
• "He was not surly by temperament, and in fact did not find it difficult to form friendships, nor to allow those friendships to deepen, once they had been formed; he simply preferred to answer to himself. He disliked all burdens of responsibility, most especially when those responsibilities were expected, or enforced - and friendship nearly always devolved into matters of debt, guilt, and expectation."
• "He built his persona as a shield around his person, because he knew very well how little his person could withstand."
• "A man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done - a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem."
• And last but not least: "Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view."

Source for quotes: Goodreads