Tangled web of taro

So. Crazy Lars from Denmark got in touch to ask, “Are you there?”

I don’t actually know Lars, you understand, but I use the handle ‘Crazy’ affectionately because right from the start he seemed a decent sort. I think he’d be the first to admit his English isn’t up to much, but it’s way better than my Danish.

So I said, “No, I’m here. Are you there?”

“ok. my name is lars. i has been to samoa 2 yers ago. your novel in observer... i tried to contact yuo, hven i was in auckland for 2 days. are you still living, on the same adress?”

Don’t laugh. I’ve worked for Australians whose spelling and English grammar is worse than that. Some of them are publishers.

Yes, I’m still living, Lars. My novel? In the Observer? Crikey. Big time! Spit it out, what date was it, you Crazy Dane, you?!

“yes. samoa observer. sunday edition. sorry. first time computer user. all other nz adresses fail. your novel about a young maori man... it end hven he meet his fahther inside a bus, the happy bus. dont yoy know, samoa observer printed the one?”

Er, no I didn’t know, Lars. But thanks. I think.

Lars the Crazy Dane, it transpires, is not talking about the UK Observer. More’s the pity. My ego is bruised (punctured perhaps), but still in one piece. And no, he isn’t talking about my novel, either (I’d been having trouble imagining a 91,150-word supplement belly-flopping onto UK doormats). He’s talking about a short story I once wrote, called This Shining World, which does indeed end when Tane, the protagonist, is reunited with his abusive father on a yellow bus. But that, as they say, is another story and, apart from anything else, one that has absolutely nothing to do with Samoa.

I asked Lars exactly when it was reprinted.

“Denmark calling. sunday samoan 24 august 2003. page 16-19. + about the author, how to get the book, full contact adress...”

So. Nice: They even published my address, but neglected to tell me about it. This Shining World is from my short story anthology, ‘The Bumper Book of Lies’, published while I was living in Germany, back in the mid-1990s. It’s not the best New Zealand story I’ve written (it was completed long before I emigrated here), it contains my first tourist impressions of the country, but I think of it as forming a faithful word painting of the time and I stand by it.

So, why the Samoa Observer? And why didn’t they ask me first? Lars the Crazy Dane had a generous suggestion:

“Forgive them. yes i have a copy. i read it ‘inside’ a samoan village. hit me hart.”

I guess it must have hit Lars “hart” for him to contact me out of the blue. I’ve had a website for nearly 10 years now, on and off, and it’s a real rarity to hear from readers. It’s even rarer to hear that a newspaper has decided to reprint one of my stories. So it hit me pretty hart, too.

Where does the Samoa Observer get off, publishing one of my stories and not even sending me a copy? Samoans can’t be big fiction readers; neither have I sold a single extra copy of my book since then, nor have I had any email enquiries that I could trace back to Samoa. Could Lars the Crazy Dane maybe run me off a photocopy of my story? Sadly, he had been distracted by more pressing matters on the other side of the world:

“7… bombs. london inner city. subtrain, busses. today is _9_1_1_ days since world trade terror. 10 + killed. 190+ hospitalised. 150 critical. 6 or 7 bombs, could raise to 8 (G-8). tony blair maybe leaving g8. back to london.”

911 days since 9/11? Er, no it isn’t, Lars. It isn’t even close. But no matter… I needed something trivial to take my mind off it all, so I sought advice.

“Have you ever seen the Samoa Observer?” asked a friend with more than a passing interest in matters writerly. Only the UK paper, I had to admit. “It makes the Devonport Flagstaff look like the Sydney Morning Hurled,” he said.

This made me feel better, for a while. They must be absolutely desperate for content, to reprint an unexpurgated 7800-word short story that has absolutely nothing — and by that I mean nothing — to do with Samoa, along with the author’s contact details and book ordering information.

“Your story would have been the literary highlight of the decade,” my friend assured me. “The least they could do is send you a copy, if they haven't all been used to wrap taro.”

By this stage, that was beginning to seem like a pretty big ‘if’.

I checked out the Samoa Observer website, “the information portal of Samoa”, it seems. “Sehr übersichtlich,” as the Germans might say; there isn’t much to it. And always so reassuring, when the editorial contacts are all Hotmail addresses, don’t you find? A link at the bottom says, “We respect your privacy.” Unless you happen to be a writer whose work they’re stealing, that is; in which case, you’re fair game and they’ll publish your phone number.

I decided to drop them a line:

I understand from a reader in Denmark that the Samoa Observer reprinted my short story This Shining World, on 24 August 2003, on pages 16 to 19 of the Sunday Samoan section. This story was published in the 1996 myty myn collection, ‘The Bumper Book of Lies’. It has also been published on my website. It is protected by international copyright and you require the publisher’s written permission to reprint such material in your publication for commercial purposes. I would appreciate it greatly if you would provide me with written details of who granted you permission to publish this story. As you published my contact details, you have no excuse for not contacting me in advance to ask permission. I wasn’t even sent a copy of the newspaper, and had to find out from a reader in Denmark that the story had been published by you. Please contact me urgently to discuss this matter.
Yours faithfully,
Chris Bell

That was a week ago, and they clearly aren’t about to reply now. It would cost me an arm and a leg to take legal action against them, and anyway: it isn’t about the money, honey. I would have granted instant permission if asked, and probably only for a nominal fee, if any at all. Few of my short stories have made money from the mostly small press magazines in which they’ve been published, but that’s not the point.

The internet: just because you can get it on your computer doesn’t mean it’s free.

I have it on reliable authority that the chaps at the Samoa Observer, while genial, are also unbothered by minor matters such as other people’s intellectual property, and if questioned about it, are almost certain to ignore their complaints.

So, although it makes me feel a bit like a pathetic online shadow of director Terry Gilliam (who bought advertising pages in the trade press to ask US distributors when they were going to screen his film Brazil), here I am, publicly registering my disquiet at this newspaper’s cavalier attitude towards my intellectual property. It is after all, as another learned literary contact has pointed out, called the Observer, not the Pilferer.

Here you go, then, Samoa Observer — named and shamed. That’ll teach you. Unless, of course, Lars the Crazy Dane really is crazy and this is just the smoky bacon of his imagination…

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave!” as Walter Scott famously observed (Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17). I’ll bet he wasn’t reading the Samoa Observer at the time. Does anyone have a spare copy of the Sunday 24 August 2003 issue? I have some taro that needs wrapping.