She's the youngest person
to win the prestigious Man Booker literary prize and now Eleanor Catton
has another accolade to add to the mantle.
Ms
Catton joined 24 others, including former Christchurch mayor Sir Bob
Parker, at an investiture ceremony at Wellington's Government House this
afternoon.
The ceremony is one of six taking place this week and honours those who have made a significant contribution to New Zealand.
Ms Catton, 28, became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.
But she admits it was an honour she didn't know much about when she was told she would receive it late last year.
"I
knew what knighthoods and damehoods were, but I didn’t really know
about the other echelons so I quickly studied up," she says.
It's also a title that'll take some getting used to.
"I'm
very humbled by it. It feels very extraordinary because it's usually
something bestowed upon somebody at a later stage in their life so I
feel like it doesn't quite suit me yet. I'm going to have to sit on it
for about 10 years."
Her second novel The Luminaires,
set in Hokitika in 1866, won her the Man Booker prize in October and
made her the second New Zealander to win the £50,000 award after Keri
Hulme with The Bone People in 1985.
The
part-time creative writing lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology
says today's investiture was far less nerve-wracking than the Man Booker
Prize ceremony.
"It's a far more enjoyable
ceremony because I knew when I was coming in what the outcome was going
to be, because obviously the booker prize you turn up on the night and
you don’t know what the outcome is going to be."
She hopes the accolade could encourage her students, but inspiration "is a tricky thing and you can never put a box around it".
She will continue teaching at MIT for at least the rest of the year, but will soon head off to the UK on a month-long book tour.
Meanwhile, Sir Bob says he almost missed his opportunity to be knighted today.
Following Lianne Dalziel becoming the new mayor of Christchurch, Sir Bob and wife Jo took a holiday to the Cook Islands.
"[Those
who were trying to contact him about the knighthood] couldn't track us
down. I think finally we got an email to say 'you've got about 48 hours
before this thing expires, and we've been trying to find you'", he
recalled.
Finding out he was to be knighted was "a moment to savour forever".
However,
he believes the recognition is for everyone involved in the initial
response following the Canterbury earthquakes and those working toward
the rebuild.
"I think I was one of many people
working in Christchurch and I was just doing my job, and that's what all
of us set out to do. When you're doing that work you don't expect
anything more than to be able to sit down at the end of the day and say
'well, I did my best and I did the right thing'".
Being called Sir "feels a bit odd", but friends and family will probably still call him "mate", he says.
"Or Bob or maybe some things a lot worse than that."
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