Singapore Writer's Festival

I was one of the panel members at the Singapore Writers Festival symposium, The Business of Books, at The Arts House on the 6th and 7th of December. I travelled down by coach on the 6th by Aeroline (which, I must admit, was pretty comfortable) having declined an air ticket by the organisers. (Travelling to KLIA for short hauls is such a pain.) I didn't stay at their official hotel either because I have relatives in Singapore. (And besides I cannot bear to stay in a hotel full of writers. I managed to shock Shan and Saras -- and Saradha -- with the admission that I don't particularly like meeting writers.)

(I know several writers who are now my friends, and they are wonderful people let me assure you. With some people you connect and become friends, with others you don't. When we communicate we communicate as friends, like normal people. Don't you want to know the person behind the book you enjoyed so much, someone asked? No, not really. Orhan Pamuk says that he prefers to read books by dead writers 'so there is no little cloud of jealousy to cloud my admiration'. In my case, I would say 'so there is no little cloud of reality to mitigate my enjoyment' of the writing. Good example, VS Naipaul: I know many who simply can't sit back and enjoy his prose because of all the other things (they think) they know about him. For me it is the song not the singer, all the time. I used to hugely admire Led Zeppelin when in college. There was a reunion concert recently and I would have liked to attend for it would have been interesting to hear what they sound like now after all these years. Would I also have liked to meet one of them personally after the show, if it was at all possible? Not really. I have organised two Literary Festivals for Malaysians to meet the writers. I got a huge buzz, both times, out of seeing people enjoying the events, mixing and mingling with the authors. But, in both cases, I was not particularly interested in meeting any of them besides doing the obligatory handshake routine. Does that make sense?)

But I digress. I attended the Golden Point Awards ceremony on the night of the 5th, their annual literary awards ceremony. It was all very staid and respectable, unlike the elephants and lions we had for our opening ceremony. I prefer not to make any comment on the standards of the winners, though some of the translations on the screen were hilarious -- on par with the 'butterflies fondling' translation during a recent Chinese Opera performance in KL. But congratulations are due to the Singapore National Arts Council for organising the Writer’s Festival in four languages (though I didn't attend any of them). Having done it twice, I know what it would be like to organise something like that. But, of course, they had the backing of the government (which, I am sure, was not necessarily always helpful -- what with committees and all) and, with that, sponsors.

The symposium was run like clockwork, as we have come to expect of any event organised by Singapore, and there was not one 'ugly' Singaporean in sight. (Where did they get that reputation from, I sometimes wonder? In my dealings with them I have always found them extremely warm. Sometimes, I think Malaysians simply have a cultural need to bitch, or else I have met only the wrong (right?) type of Singaporean.) There were some interesting discussions at the symposium (despite there being no alcohol as any symposium, by definition, should) and some that were not. I was on the panel for two sessions -- one on (surprise) independent book publishing and another (again surprise) on organising Literary Festivals. One of the best attended was the one by literary agents and agencies, with many participants taking the opportunity to show off their self published books and one or two trying to sneak in a manuscript. Considering that the participants (around 50 pax) paid SGD 200.00 per day (or SGD 300.00 for two days) to attend the symposium, I guess they were entitled to at least that.

But the session on independent publishing threw up some interesting facts. While bookshops in the region carry tens of thousands of titles from the UK and the US they would, probably, carry less then ten titles each from neighbouring countries. Try looking for Indonesian, Filipino, Thai or Singaporean authors in any of the dozen or so ‘mega’ bookstores in KL. Ditto for Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta or Singapore. So much for 40 years of ASEAN. There is simply no name recognition of writers and, hence, no sales. Why is that so? Is it because regional writers are not glamorous enough?

Don't tell Ayu Utami or Laksmi Pamuntjak that.

How lucrative is it to be a writer in Nigeria?

This is just what Henry Akubuiro wonders in the Sunday Sun and basically arrives at the conclusion that it is not. Why that should be a surprise, we don't know. From an article we read not too long ago in the Independent called Pulped Fiction (in April 2007) the average writer in the UK (if you remove the superstars from the list makes money "insufficient for stale bread for breakfast and a tarpaulin for shelter." Read it here.

Getting on with the story, Henry Akubuiro starts the article by saying, "... More than other artists from the arts, creative writers have brought more joy to Nigeria, with literary giants like Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, to mention a few, winning international renown and prizes, having their bestsellers translated into many foreign languages, and thereby promoting our cultural heritage ... Compared to the Nigerian musician or actor, the Nigerian writer, despite his intellectual edge, is taking the backseat as far as financial fortunes are concerned."

Further down the article he continues, "... Nigerian publishers are not helping matters, too. For most of them, their work stops at the point when the books are rolled out from the press. They do little or none of promoting and marketing their authors. A few of them who attempt doing this only rely on book reviews on newspaper arts pages instead of advertising their books as is the norm in the western world."

And more revealingly, he quotes Hyacinth Obunseh, currently assistant secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and doubles as the CEO of Hybun, a publishing outlet that has published many new Nigerian writers, who says that the reason "our writers (are) not making money (is due) to the fact that publishers themselves are not making money."

His is the conclusion of the pessimist: "Judging from the foregoing, the creative writer in Nigeria is only a few steps removed from becoming an endangered species." This is, indeed, sad considering how Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart has sold 10 million copies worldwide (but is, reportedly, 'banned' from entering this country though it has been used for literature text by several schools for years. Go figure. This is Malaysia. Given this aggressive anti-intellectualism, is it a surprise that no Malaysian University is in the top 200 in the world?)

Full story: http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/features/literari/2007/nov/18/literari-18-11-2007-001.htm

Life after the first fruit

I have always been intrigued by Jeanette Winterson, firstly by her book titles -- Oranges are not the only fruit, Boating for Beginners, Sexing the Cherry, etc -- and secondly by the fact that they are not huge tomes. Still, I have not read her. Sharon would say, that's because I don't like to read women writers. I did think about that. The last women writer I read was Diane Setterfield. I did enjoy The Thirteenth Tale. But do I consider the sex of the author before I set out to read a book? I don't think so. Surely not at the conscious level, though pseudo-Freudians may disagree.

But that's not what this is about. I was reading Jeanette Winterson's article in The Guardian earlier this month. She starts: 'It is impossible to begin at the beginning. Any scientist can tell you what happened in the first three seconds after the Big Bang, but none can say for sure what happened in the three seconds previous ... So it is with fiction.'

We glibly throw about theories on creative writing. Can it be taught, can it be learnt? I belong to the school that says it cannot be taught, but it can be learnt, given the right motivation and environment. Yes, it is about going within and pulling out that illusive rabbit, so to speak. Strangely, you only know what happens after the rabbit is pulled out. The writer will, in all probability, not be able to explain how exactly it happened, or when precisely it did. But it does not matter (except for those trying to learn your 'magic', and the harder they try the more difficult it will be for them). 'The fact is that before something happens there is no knowing what is happening ...' says Jeanette Winterson.

Jeanette Winterson says further on: in The PowerBook (2000), I wrote: "I can change the story. I am the story." This was because I had been thinking about how much better it might be to read ourselves as fictional narratives, instead of as a bloated CV of chronological events. Once we surrender ourselves to the tyranny of facts, it is difficult to re-find freewill.

I often have had people walk into the shop, bellowing pompously, declaring that they 'don't read fiction', as if it is something done by lower beings. I remain silent, but in my mind, I think, 'How sad.'

A short while ago I picked up the latest Orhan Pamuk book in English, Other Colours. Coincidently the first essay in the book, The Implied Author, is also about his life as a novelist. 'In order to be happy, I must have my daily dose of literature,' he writes. 'In this I am no different from ... (a diabetic who needs) an injection everyday (to survive) ... I have sometimes even entertained the thought that I was fully dead and trying to breathe some life back into my corpse with literature.'

But like Winterson he is unable to describe the three seconds before the Big Bang either except that 'we surrender to this mysterious captain who has no idea where he is bound.' Like Ulysses? 'For what is a novel,' he continues further on, 'but a story that fills its sails with these winds ...'

'For thirty years I have spent ten hours in a room, sitting at my desk.' It is a wonderful essay, quite worth the price of admission for the entire book if you, like Pamuk, must have your dose of literature each day in order to be happy.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2204212,00.html

Thai, Arab, Burmese, Kenyan and Japanese reading and writing

The literary pages on the internet in the last fortnight has been about the usual gripe about reading all over again, from all over the world. Here are a few of them. First in Thailand, The Nation reports Publishers and Booksellers Association of Thailand (PUBAT) president Risuan Aramcharoen as saying that, according to a survey conducted by the association in conjunction with the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, the Thai reading habit is to be way behind that of its neighbours. The report says that the Thais read only two books a year while Vietnamese read 60 and Singaporeans 45! (We don't think these are typos because they are mentioned twice in the article and average means every adult, youth and infant!) Where do they come up with these numbers?! If an average Vietnamese reads 60 books then the avid reader in that country should be reading over 200 to 250 books a year! Oh, come on.

A European Union report on reading habits found the Czech's averaged 16 books a year, the highest in Europe and probably in the world. Do Vietnamese and Singaporeans read three to four times more than that? Where the hell does the PUBAT president get his figures from? Bet he doesn't read and has no idea how long it takes to read a book. The same probably applies to the newspaper reporter who wrote the story. How glibly people throw numbers about. http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/10/18/headlines/headlines_30052875.php

Then there was the story about the Arabic writing debate as reported in the New Statesman. In his latest book, Why Are the Arabs Not Free ? Moustapha Safouan brings up the question of the type of Arabic writers should use. Apparently, the disparity between written and spoken Arabic is so great that writers can’t decide which to use. If he were to use the vernacular, it would be all but impossible for him to include sophisticated arguments and deep thoughts. But if he were to use the more formal written language he runs the risk of sounding pompous and rhetorical and, probably, will fail to reach the masses given the high level of illiteracy in the Arab world.

This is an old argument and it is also taking place in every country with a language police. We have heard it before. Some insist that there is only one way Bahasa can be written (though they have done several somersaults and back-flips and u-turns in the past fifty years and will probably continue to do so in the future) and everyone else not caring. Guess who will win? Are people writing in dialect incapable of projecting sophisticated emotions and deep thoughts? This appears like another excuse for keeping writing and reading in the hands of the elite. The inquisition ended in Europe several centuries ago but the debates appear to be still alive in many other parts of the world. http://www.newstatesman.com/200710180049

Then in Burma, 'Scratching poems on cell floors, or making ink from the brick powder of the walls, Burmese writers have managed to continue writing despite imprisonment and censorship,' Aida Edemariam reports in the Guardian

Yes, the feature is corny, mawkishly romantic and melodramatic to the max - but that's simply another example of 'past-colonial' writing for you. (She should sell her story to Hollywood. They love that kind of shit.) We all agree that it is a cruel and repressive regime but there is no need to get all gooey and mushy about it. Still, if you manage to get past all that, there are some interesting (and disturbing) facts in the article.

'International PEN, the global writer's association is currently campaigning for the release of nine writers serving sentences ranging from seven to 21 years. Aung Than and Zeya Aung, who wrote a book of verses called Daung Mann (or The Pride of the Peacock) received sentences of 19 years apiece last June for writing "anti-government poems'. Their printer received 14 years, and their distributor seven.

'The censorship office's 11 guidelines for what cannot be printed still include "anything that might be harmful to national solidarity and unity ... any incorrect ideas which do not accord with the times ... [and] any descriptions which, though factually correct, are unsuitable because of the time or the circumstance of their writing ...' (That sounds awfully familiar for some reason. Was there something like it in Amir's book?)

'Yet the regime has not been able to dent the liveliness of Burma's literary culture. Because of a system of education (that) runs through the monasteries, literacy levels - unlike in many similarly totalitarian states in the developing world - are high. The educational system, which forces the brightest high-school graduates into medicine, is also gender-blind ...’ (Well, that is good news at least.) http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330945136-118740,00.html

Then in Kenya, the debate has shifted to the quality of reading materials, the tired discussion on whether Kenyans read or do not read. Ms Muthoni Garland, a writer turned publisher, believes Kenyans love reading but there is lack of good reading materials from local writers. She says some (local) books are so appalling that few would spend their hard-earned money on them ... "While there are many good oral story-tellers who can captivate and entertain an audience, we are challenged when it comes to writing stories ..." Most publishing companies merely churn out textbooks. http://www.eastandard.net/archives/?mnu=details&id=1143976395&catid=316

And, finally, in Japan literary magazines, the 'home' of pure literature, are at a turning point. 'The magazines are welcoming young novelists as well as writers of entertaining works, and they are also opening up to talented people in other fields, including playwrights, film directors and illustrators ...' the report from Ashahi Simbun says. http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200710200056.html

Obviously we do not live alone in this world.

The tipping point

The comments about the end of the Silverfish New Writing series didn't take long in coming. We have heard that discussions have been taking place on several other blog spots too. Our initial decision was not to make any comment, because no matter what we said there would be people unhappy with it. But we realise that we have some really very good friends out there, those who have supported us through the years, believed in what we were trying to do, and who genuinely don't have a personal agenda. So this explanation is for them. (There will be some who still don't 'get it', but that is a risk we take.)

When we were kids we would go swimming at the 'garrison pool'. What we meant by swimming then, was basically splashing about at the shallow end with the occasional foray towards the deep side, holding on to the side rails. Showing off to the girls (notwithstanding our gawky, skinny torsos) and taking them out for heavily sugared drinks or ais-kacang afterwards was the high point of it all. Sometimes we would watch with a mixture of admiration and envy at some people doing the laps, knowing somehow that was what real swimming was about.

When we published Silverfish New Writing 1 in 2001, we said that it would be fantastic if only one or two writers emerged from it. ('Writers' has become a sensitive word -- so henceforth we shall change that to 'authors'.) We reckoned that if we have about fifteen or twenty authors (what is the tipping point, anyway?) producing good stuff regularly, the whole industry would take on a much healthier glow and, perhaps, even attract international attention.

After seven years and seven books in the SNW series and two other anthologies, not one Malaysian 'lapper' has emerged. (Internationally, we only know of Gary Lamoshi, an American living in Hong Kong, whose novel-in-progress was featured in Collateral Damage, and whose full length novel, Hong Kong on Air, has just been published. We are not counting several others who were already published authors before they started sending their work in for SNW.) Yes, the New Writing series has touched many people in many ways and it has resulted in (if we allowed ourselves to be so immodest) a slight seismic shift in the local literary scene. However, no matter how precious we feel about it, it has not produced the desired result. The SNW series, instead of becoming a means, a stepping-stone leading towards an end, has become an end itself. It is seen as a competition, no matter how many times we emphasise that it is not. That, to us, is a bit sad. Results do count. So, instead of behaving like some of our government and quasi-government departments that carry on doing the same thing despite forty or fifty years of abject failure, we have decided to move on. To use a quote from Dan Quayle: if we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.

We are still, very much, committed to our original vision. The most frequent question we have asked ourselves is, "Why have no 'lappers' emerged from the SNW series?" Are our standards really too high, as some have told us? We think not. If anything, we feel we are no where near the standards we would like to achieve. All we do is to insist on a cetain minimum quality, that's all. Maybe, we cannot simply throw people into the deep end and expect them to start swimming, let alone do the laps. Publishers in this country, especially in the absence of literary agents and such, need to do more. Much more. And that is the philosophy behind our new initiative. This programme is only a year old but we are already coming out with the first book -- three new writers, three different voices, with ten selected stories apiece. The wonderful thing is that, they are all young (in their thirties), they all have full-time galley-slave type day-jobs with absurdly long hours, they are at an advanced stage with their own second book, and they will be the first to admit that they still have a long way to go. And none of them is your 'usual suspect'! For years the media has been asking us about the 'next big thing'. The book, News from Home, should be out at the end of the month. Read it with an open mind and decide.

While writing is about being creative, it is also about being aware of what readers and publishers are looking for (without going into silly areas like instant nirvana, instant health or instant wealth -- we will leave that for others), be it fiction or non-fiction. (We are several light-years away from 'art for the sake of art', so let's not even go there.) Apart from tapping into the genius within, it is about developing a writer’s temperament. It is about digging in. And it is about doing the laps. Publishers cannot simply sit back and wait for it to happen. (Unfortunately most will prefer others to do all the hard work). They can make it happen. But for that they need to work very closely with writers, make long-term commitments (not instant wealth), but without stifling individuality or creativity.

Anyway News from Home, which will be published end of this month or early next, is our first report card. We have decided that this is a far more efficient way of developing local writers than the SNW series, though, admittedly, we will have to confine ourselves to the Klang Valley for the moment. Not everyone will make it, many will drop off, some will not be interested in becoming 'lappers', some will do different forms of writing, and many will be happy being 'splashers'. But that is fine. It is the role, nay the duty even, of the schoolteacher to encourage and work with the weakest students in the class. A publisher is only interested in the top of the class. We make no apologies for that.

If we produce just one, two or three 'lappers' a year, we think we will be working towards that elusive tipping point. We are still hopeful.

Or, are we simply kidding ourselves?

Silverfish New Writing 7

This has taken quite a while and we apologise for that. Anyway the editors, Dr Asraf Jamal and Dr Shanti Moorthy have battled it out and produced the final list for inclusion into Silverfish New Writing 7 out of 165 stories we sent them. (We have notified all the successful writers by email, but if perchance you have not received them please check the list below.)

The final list:

1. Departing Ways - Yvonne Tham
2. A Geography Lesson - Chang Shih Yen
3. The Vortex - Helen Yeo
4. Sitting on the Fence - Nurul Ikhlas Abdul Hadi
5. That Smile - Jane Downing
6. The Morning After - Jocelyn Chua Lay Hong
7. The Good Lieutenant - Yusuf Martin Bradley
8. A writers monologue - Parveen Sikkandar
9. The Last Deejay - Peter G. Brown
10. Transactions in Thai - Robert Raymer
11. Only in Malaysia - Robert Raymer
12. Invisible - Saraswathy Manickam
13. The Briefcase - Shalini Akhil
14. TheFirstTime - Kow Shih-Li
15. Check-in - Surya Ramkumar
16. Dog Hot Pot - Wena Poon
17. The Beggar - Viren Swami
18. Beer in Fukuoka - Yeo Wei Wei
19. Layang Layang - Yew Kwang Min

By the way, this will be the last in the Silverfish New Writing series. We have decided to stop here. There will be no Silverfish New Writing 8, nor anymore after that in the foreseeable future. To all those who have contributed in the past, thank you for making the series an unqualified success.

Do women read more?

I have often been asked this question and I have wondered about it. In terms of absolute numbers, more women do visit Silverfish Books compared to men. But when it comes to buying books, though, many of our male customers seem to think nothing about spending several hundred ringgits (up to 2k) on books during a single visit.

Now a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts in America confirms that women are the most avid readers. Typically women read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men, and that the women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.

And, according to surveys conducted in the U.S. and Canada and the gender gap is widest when it comes to fiction. Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market.

The report says that book groups consist almost entirely of women. This we can confirm based on the four book groups that we advice on books for their groups and who purchase their books through us and two others we know. '... and the spate of new literary blogs are also populated mainly by women ...': this I was not aware, because I don’t read blogs, but it could be true in Malaysia too.

Then there are many theories and much psycho-babble that try to explain the gender gap.

'Cognitive psychologists have found that women are more empathetic than men, and possess a greater emotional range -- traits that make fiction more appealing to them.' Ahem.

Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain says: 'At a young age, girls can sit still for much longer periods of time than boys ...' Oh-kaaaaay ...

But this one takes the cake: '...mirror neurons ... behind the eyebrows ... are activated both when we initiate actions and when we watch those same actions in others. Mirror neurons explain why we recoil when seeing others in pain, or salivate when we see other people eating a gourmet meal. Neuroscientists believe that mirror neurons hold the biological key to empathy.

'The research is still in its early stages, but some studies have found that women have more sensitive mirror neurons than men. That might explain why women are drawn to works of fiction, which by definition require the reader to empathize with characters.'

Huh!? That's wierd man!

Okay, let's get back to planet earth. The research also showed that according to Scholastic, 'More boys than girls have read the Harry Potter series and that the books have made more of an impact on boys' reading habits. 61 percent of the boys agreed with the statement 'I didn't read books for fun before reading Harry Potter,' compared with 41 percent of girls.'

Could it be possible, let's take a wild swing here, could it just be possible that the reason men stay away from books is because most books in the current market are primarily not written for them? Chick-lit and 'bodice ripping' romances dominate the fiction market while self-help and cookbooks dominate the non-fiction. So, are women easier to exploit? Or, are men simply not worth the trouble?

(How many times have I heard this: '... my wife will divorce me if she sees all these books I am buying. She says I have too many books.' True, I have heard some women express similar sentiments about their spouses too, but fewer. Much fewer.)

I will tell you a nice Malaysian literary story as a parting shot (and this happened not too long ago): a customer came into the shop and said that she was looking for 50 books to give her husband for his 50th birthday -- could we help her choose some, please? She had asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said books, so she decided to give him 50. Now, is that wonderful or what? Yes, such people do exist in the world.

(Sigh. How I envy him!)

Full story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14175229

Book Reviews

I don't, generally, read book reviews. No, let me straighten that a little bit. I don't, generally, read book reviews in the Malaysian media. (I say that because I am guilty of reading -- or half-reading, because I am too imaptient -- some reviews in certain foreign magazines, not much but some.) Before I am asked why, I would like to ask the question, "How many people actually read reviews and why do they read them?"

Let me diverge. I used to read a lot of music reviews. I, sort of, established a relationship with the reviewer ­-- not personally but you know, through the media. I would follow weekly columns by two of them in particular because they seemed to like the type of music I did and I felt that I could trust their judgment and recommendations. I was not wrong. (Later, I found out that they were both musicians themselves on the side, so they knew what they were talking about.) Then they stopped writing, and I stopped reading music reviews. (Maybe that was my loss, but never mind.)

So one of the reasons people read reviews is to find out the views of critics whose opinions they trust. I read a criticism of a review that appeared in London newspaper recently. The book was The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas. And the criticism of the review: the reviewer gives a synopsis of the plot and what other reviewers think about it but does not say anywhere if she agrees or disagrees, or if she herself liked it. The crime was that she has no opinion of her own. Boy, let us hope the person who posted that story does not read any review in our local media.

How many such reviews have we read in our local newspapers where the reviewer gives the outline of the entire plot, but absolutely no opinion? And then there are those who lift bits and pieces of other reviews (probably, from the internet), stitch them together -- sometimes cleverly, sometimes stupidly -- and pass it off as their own. And then there are those about whom you wonder, "Have they really read the book?" or "Are we talking about the same book here?" Is that also the reason there are so few reviews of local books in our media -- there is no one to read them and there is nothing to lift off from the internet?

How many people do you know who watch a play, go to a movie or read a book, but are still not sure if they like the experience before they read a review about it? It appears as if forming your own opinion is one of the hardest things to do. (Try to get someone to suggest a place for dinner.) Is this a question of lack of self-confidence, perhaps? What if others liked it, and I didn't? Duh!

I ran into a young man at a teh tarik place who I knew had just watched a play the night before and who I also knew was going to write a review about it for a local daily. "So how was the play?" I asked. "Really bad," was his reply, "But don't worry, I will think of something to write." I was worried. When his article came out, it was a 'glowing' review of the play -- the lighting was beautiful, the setting was beautiful, the concept was very interesting, etc, etc. Why didn't he say what he wanted to say? That it stank? (Even some of the actors in the show thought so when I spoke to them later). Was he afraid to hurt some feelings?

That is it, isn't it? We are so afraid of hurting feelings that we have developed non-reviewing into an art form. Some of you older folk might remember the cat fight by the media some years ago. The play was A Mid Summer Night's Dream, a garden play set at Carcosa Seri Negara (which a friend's father calls the kakus -- lavatory in Tamil). It was panned by a critic in one of the newspapers who said that the only thing interesting about the whole night were the toilet taps in the establishment. Boy did that start a savage cat fight. I don't know if blood was shed but I know many people didn't talk to one another for several years after that.

So there you are: you have either 'non-reviews' or personal attacks. Oh yes, there is also one more type: the gushing fan-boy (or fan-girl) review, so terminally cute, enough to give you diabetes or make you puke, or both. But, let us not go there.

I do routinely glance through every book page I come across, though, if only to see what is new. But I am almost always disappointed. Many of the books are neither new nor old enough to be classics. Then the inevitable thought comes up, Where are the local books? No one to read them? No space (or not good enough) even for capsule reviews? A star rating might help. Too sensitive? We are Malaysians, aren't we?

Postscriptum: My congratulations to Daphne Lee on her article in the StarMag on Sunday, 2nd September. That must have taken courage.

Yet another Malaysian in Booker longlist

Yes, yet another Malaysian, Tan Twan Eng, has been long-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize for his first novel The Gift of Rain. Without any reservation, congratulations are in order. This will make it three in three years for this country -- Tash Aw made the long-list in 2005 and won the Whitbread Prize for the best new book, Vyvyane Loh was on the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006.

While basking in the glow of vicarious glory, one cannot help but notice something: all these writers live outside the country. Why? Are Malaysians only able to get anything done when they leave the country? One can't help feeling that there are so many more successful Malaysians outside the country than inside.

How many times have local journalist asked me in the last several years about the next big local writing sensation? I cannot help but feel angry. "The latest local writing sensation? Are you kidding?" I want to say, "They haven't stopped congratulating themselves after that one published short story yet, and it will be ten years soon." Doesn't anyone die of embarrassment when someone asks, You are a writer? So, how many books have you written so far? (But it is also true that several of them are now into other forms of writing.)

That brings me to another point: why do we Malaysians like to congratulate ourselves when there is nothing to congratulate ourselves about? Is it cultural? Whether it is about our football team or leaks in the Parliament (did one Minister actually suggest using plaster ceilings to mitigate leaks?!!!), we seem to be unable to do anything right. Sure, that is not our fault -- we don't play football nor do we repair roof leaks, right? But think again while organising that major celebration for the world's largest ketupat (clap, clap, clap!): why does this cultural trait run through almost everything we do, or am I simply imagining it? Should we (or can we) blame it on our love of the 3-hour-teh tarik talk-a-thon or the16-ringgit-cappuccino yada yada? When we have universities that congratulate themselves for being within the top 200 in the world (when the one in a neighbouring country is in the top 20), I think we should feel embarrassed. The way things are going, Brunei will probably have a Nobel Laureate before we do.

Is the lack of Malaysian writings the fault of our education system, then? Sure. Who hasn't heard of the many disturbing stories about our schools and the teachers? If it is, then how does one explain the writers mentioned above? Did they not attend the same local schools when they were here? Maybe they went overseas for their tertiary education, one might say. That could be it. But then how does that explain the 'failure' of those who come back from overseas after their education? No stimulus? No peers to push them on? It cannot be that we have no talent. The writers mentioned above were born here too.

So what is this Malaysian malaise? Malas?

A short story in newspeak

I was on an Indian Airline's flight to New Delhi when I first heard the word. A lilting female voice asked all passengers to ensure that they take all their belongings with them when they 'deplane'. Did I hear that correctly? On my return flight to Kuala Lumpur another female voice also made the same request. That's when I realised that I was acquiring a whole new vocabulary. I am quite familiar with unique Indianisms like 'miscreants absconding', or meetings gettting 'preponed', or how one took an aspirin when one's head was 'paining', or how one could put his or her bags into a car's 'dickey'. But I thought 'deplane' was almost stratoscopically brilliant. The economy and precision of the word excited me.

English is finally becoming more precise, and concise, as it should. Why didn't we think of this before? If one could 'deplane', then we could do the opposite: 'enplane', and the other parts of speech like 'deplaning' and 'enplaning' would, logically, follow.

But why stop there. If we apply the same rules to a car we can have 'encar', 'encarred', 'encarring', 'decar', 'decarred', and 'decarring' (note the two 'r's). And when we go to a bank we can 'enbank' or 'debank' money and we could do it in the past and the continuous tense.

Let me illustrate this with a short story:

"Where is the miscreant?" I asked Sergeant Ishak.

"In the toilet, sir."

"You let him go in there alone?" I tried hard not to make it sound like an admonishment but didn't quite succeed.

"He wanted to do number two, sir!" the Sergeant protested, the pitch of his voice rising a notch, like it did every time he whined. "But don't worry sir, I have locked the door." He smiled, obviously pleased with himself.

"Open that door. Now." I suppose I must have raised my voice a little, if not shouted, judging from the way Sergeant Ishak jumped up instantly, fumbled with the big bundle of keys hooked to his belt and finally opened the door with trembling hands.

The window was ajar. The miscreant had absconded.

"Quick. Get to the car. I know where he's headed."

We ran towards my car because we had no time to summon a squad car. "You drive," I said to Sergeant Ishak, tossing him the ignition keys and encarring on the passenger side. Ishak was the better driver.

The traffic was crazy, but he knew his way. He went through this back alley, and that side alley and through all sorts of housing roads, before enhighwaying towards the airport. Ishak got us to the airport in twenty minutes. I wished he had been quicker. But I could not complain.

"You park the car and look for me at the check-in counter," I shouted over my pounding heart, opening the door and decarring in one quick motion. I cannot let that bastard get away. I knew that there was a flight to Mumbai scheduled to leave in half an hour. I had to catch him before he enplaned or there would be all sorts of problems if I ordered the plane not to derunway. I raced through the departure lounge almost colliding into a train of trolleys, ran into an old man with a red beard on his way to his umrah judging from his clothes, and almost squashed a child that got between my legs, all the while looking around for signs of the miscreant. I was breathless and panting when I got to the information counter.

"Can I help you, sir?" Yes, it was true. They have trained them to be polite.

"Flight AI 216 to Mumbai ... which gate are they enplaning?" I gasped and spluttered.

"C24, sir. But the flight left fifteen minutes ago. It was preponed by half an hour.

"What? How can they ...?"

"I can't answer that, sir. The flight has already left."

I was still sitting on the bench, head on my hands, swearing under my breath, when Ishak sauntered up to me unhurriedly half an hour later. It infuriated me endlessly, but I knew he never walked quickly lest his pants got wrinkled.

"What took you so long?"

"Hee, hee ..." he simpered, with that obligatory scratch of the hair on the back of his neck. "Saya pi' minum." He had gone for a drink. Then he put on his serious face. "Did you catch him, sir?"

I was so angry, all I did was mumble.

"Prepone, sir? Did you say prepone? There is a prepone kiosk on the way to the carpark. I saw it on the way in."

I stared at him in disbelief. I was speechless. For a while I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or kill him on the spot. Then I laughed. "Oh, what the hell," I said, "Where is this free phone? Might as well use it to call home. I don't have much credit left in my mobile."

I saw an ATM on the way to the kiosk and I thought I'd debank some money. The office would have embanked all the salary cheques by now. I will tell my wife not to cook anything tonight. I will take the family out for an expensive Italian dinner. The kids will love that. They love pasta. I cannot let that bastard ruin my day.

(Feel free to continue this story below, but remember to use 'newspeak'.)

Reading - the good news

After reading about Victoria 'Posh Spice' Beckham's infamous bimboesque pronouncements about how she has never read anything in her entire life, some of us must have though, quite resignedly, "So it is true, the world as we know it is coming to an end," though we always suspected that being dumb was cooler than being smart. And then what more with news of country after country after country reporting declines in readership? (Oh no, not Malaysia, of course! While others may require statistics and surveys to come up with figures, we have the sublime skills to pluck them out of the air. Viola! Was it two books per person per year the last time? I cannot wait for the a new announcement that says it is four, and then sixteen, and then thirty two ...)

But, apparently, all is not lost. Reading is not dying. A study done by the University of Manchester, Trajectories of time spent reading as a primary activity: a comparison of the Netherlands, Norway, France, UK and USA since the 1970s, which focussed 'on reading printed material as a primary activity, and excluding that conducted for the purposes of work or education' indicates that the reverse is actually the truth.

According to the report: '(In Britain the) average time women spent reading a book jumped from two minutes a day in 1975 to eight minutes in 2000. Men's reading time rose from three to five minutes a day.' Still lower than for television, but 'hey'!

As for other countries in the study, the increase was similar in Norway but in French it went up from 10 minutes a day up to 18. Wahhhh! Dey de champion. There was a slight decline in the Netherlands from 13 minutes to 12 (in 1995), while in the US the increase was from five to seven minutes.

Quoting one of the researchers, Dale Southerton, from Manchester's school of social sciences, a BBC report says: "there was a popular perception that people were reading less but all reading had gone up, reading books had gone up the most - and there were 17% more people reading them".

Here is some academic gobbledygook about how the study was conducted (according to the abstract which you can find on the internet): "(The study) examines four commonly held assumptions: that time spent reading has declined in all countries; that book reading has declined to a greater extent than it has for magazines and newspapers; that reading is increasingly concentrated in a small minority of the populations in all countries; and, that there is cross-national convergence of consumer behaviour in the practice of reading."

(Did you understand that? Good, because I didn't. What the hell is 'cross-national convergence' of consumer behaviour?)

Still this (also from the abstract) is interesting: "Generic trends of increased book and declining magazine and newspaper readership mask the differential impact of global consumer cultures in national contexts." Go figure.

Full story: http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/staff/Dale_Southerton/reading.htm
and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6285740.stm

Then in another report from India (where else), The Times of India reports that, "Young Indian authors with their contemporary plots and ideas are fast becoming the favourites of readers across age groups …" and "The sale of books in the Indian segment has increased by 30 to 40 per cent in the past four or five years ..."

Other quotes from the report:

"The good news is that it is the youth who is displaying a keener interest in Indian authors ..."

"Out of every 10 books sold on a given day, four are by Indian authors ..." (Have you been to a Malaysian mega bookstore lately, or seen their - highly suspect - bestseller list?)

"Indians are now talking of serious issues tastefully and people are flocking to take a read ..."

"I prefer Indian authors simply because I can relate to the subjects, places, events and most importantly to their characters ..."

Full story: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lucknow_Times/Indians_are_the_write_choice_baby_/articleshow/2189502.cms

Translation trauma

In a recent column in the NST, Translations help broaden our horizons, on Saturday, June 23rd, Dato' Johan Jaafar, wrote about the paucity of translated works in this country when compared to Thailand or Indonesia. He does not say it outright, he is too polite, but the implications are clear: that there is a direct relationship between parochialism amongst Malaysians (simply listen to some of the things our politicians say) and our lack of reading and access to the world. We have become one with the proverbial katak. Literature and writings broaden horizons. That is given. No arguments there. In fact, what is embarrassing is that we should be it in this day. (Hello, look at the calendar, it says 2007.)

Two recent translations into Malay were Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and Jostein Gardner's Sophie's World, both by ITNM. While they are most welcome, they only managed to highlight the problem. I went into their website to find out more about the translators. It says on the website, 'The Malaysian National Institute of Translation (Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia or ITNM) is a limited company established by the government of Malaysia on 14 September 1993. Its share capital is wholly owned by the Ministry of Finance while its administration is managed by the Ministry of Education.' I looked under their 'eCatalogue' link and found that two (2) books were translated and published in 1995, 26 in 1997, 2 in 1998, 14 in 2003, and 20 in 2004. (I suspect the website has not been updated since then, which is not very surprising.) That would make it 62 books in 11 years (5.6 books a year) - the vast majority of them looked like school textbooks. In comparison, the (undated) paper by Saran Kaur Gill of UKM entitled Language Policy And Planning In Higher Education in Malaysia, says that from 1959 to 1995, a period of 39 years, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, translated 374 books (9.6 books a year). (The national Book Trust of India, established in 1957, does 800 a year.)

Both the figures are obviously not grand - in total less than 600 books have been translated (including 160 Saran Kaur Gill quotes for the various universities) in the last 50 years. (How many million ringgit would that be for each book? Anyone have the figures?) No wonder we are so parochial. And how are we supposed to compete with the world, again?

I would, at this point, like to relate a personal experience. I was at a meeting at Dewan Bahasa once. On the way back I decided to pop into the bookshop to see if they still had a Malay translation of (Nobel laureate) Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali by Latiff Mohidin. They did, four copies. I decided to get two because they were only RM6.00 each. So cheap, I thought. But I was in for a surprise. When I went up to the cashier to pay, she told me that there was a discount on 'old' books and she charged me RM1.80 a copy! This was the translation of one of the most important works in modern world literature, by one of Malaysia's most important poets (and painter), and it was being sold like paper lama! I would have gladly paid RM18.00 or RM24.00 for it. And the sadder story is that you will not find a copy of this book in any of our Malaysian bookshops. Talk about a society that does not value its writers or their books. What national culture are we talking about?

I have said it several times and I have said this to the top brass at Dewan: I would love to stock books by Dewan Bahasa at Silverfish Books, but how do I get hold of them? An American customer made this observation: walk into any bookshop in Kuala Lumpur and you see them filled with imported books from the UK and the US. Where are your local books? At the bottom shelf in the back of the shop, if at all. This is a bizarre country.

Comparisons with other countries are always fraught with danger. But Dato Johan's point out: "In Indonesia, by contrast, there are cases of books launched in London or New York being published simultaneously in Bahasa Indonesia. In fact, on the streets of Jakarta translated books are hawked as aggressively as local pulp fiction."

As for promoting Malaysian literature worldwide in translation … don't even get me started on that.

Full story: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20070623084142/Article/pppull_index_html

Silverfish Books will be eight this month

Silverfish Books will be eight this month, on the 26th of June to be exact. To some of you it might seem like we have been around for ever, but to us it feels like, "Has it really been that long?!"

Many of you will remember our beginnings at Desa Sri Hartamas. That was in 1999, in the pre mega-bookstore era of KL, right after the Asian currency crisis. Crazy. When first established the only other place you could get a decent book in KL was from Skoob. That was the reason for setting it up in the first place. People (at that time) thought a cafe in a bookshop was a novel idea, but all we wanted was a cup of tea (or coffee) while we had a yadda-yadda with our customers.(We still do.)

Desa Sri Hartamas was new at that time. Taxi drivers didn't know where it was, a bus came in every hour (or whenever the driver felt like it) and parking was murder. We got tired of constantly answering questions over the phone like, Where is Sri Hartamas, ah?In KL, ah? We decided to move So Bangsar, it was. Only upstairs lot available, so be it. We couldn't afford the predatory rentals of the downstairs lots, anyway.

Then we got into publishing through Silverfish New Writing 1 in 2001, organised the first Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival in 2004, and we have been otherwise keeping ourselves busy - not letting moss grow under our feet and that kind of thing. Business has been okay but not brilliant, what with the book industry in the country intent on defying gravity and all that. But, let's not go there.

We are not having any special anniversary do this year, but we could make Salleh ben Joned's readings from Adam's Dream on Saturday 7th of July at 5.30pm (yes, we have changed the date though Salleh's birthday is on the 4th) at Silverfish Books a double celebration. Hmmm. A few bottles of wine should do it, no?

Goodbye Dato' Cama

Guess it was bound to happen one day. Dato' Zarir Cama, CEO of HSBC Malaysia, will be leaving Kuala Lumpur to take up his next (more senior) posting in London next month. Never thought I would ever feel sad at the departure of a corporate CEO - not quite endearing a specie in my book. But sad I do feel, like everyone else involved in Arts and Literature in the city, at the departure of Dato' Cama, or Zed to all who knew him.

Other corporate bodies have been involved in the arts too, but one cannot help feeling that they were merely trying to impress the overlords, or responding to some form of arm-twisting. But none have been like Zed, who appeared to simply love the arts and literature, who was willing to get down to the ground, who was equally comfortable with presidents and prime ministers as he was with grungy artist types. Perhaps it was a well-calculated corporate strategy. But so what? That is exactly the point, isn't it? Can anyone talk about the Arts in Kuala Lumpur without simultaneously thinking of HSBC?

HSBC sponsored the printing of Silverfish New Writing 5 and 6. Now these two books which carry the bank's logo are going to be around for the next ten, if not twenty years, during which period anyone who picks up the books to read, or borrows them or browses a library will see that logo. Newspapers last for a day, magazines for a week, bill boards a bit longer. But books are forever, and at a fraction of the cost at that. Corporations do underestimate the power of the arts and literature as a corporate strategy.

I asked Zed once how he got into literature. He laughed and said that the question should be how he got into banking. He said he was a Literature graduate and that he majored in TS Eliot. I was shocked into submission. He said TS Eliot had also been a banker, as did PG Wodehouse. Come to think of it, our own Wong Phui Nam was a banker too. Looks like there is something more to be said for bean counters.

Farewell, Zed. Thank you for being a friend of Arts and Literature in Malaysia. Thank you for being our friend. Your four years and seven months in this country has left an indelible mark. (Seems like he's been around forever, doesn't it?) We are sure HSBC for the Arts will continue from where you left off.

And, welcome to Malaysia Ms Irene M Dorner, CEO of HSBC Malaysia.

Wither Malaysian book industry

I was in Singapore on Monday, having lunch with some book industry people when the conversation inevitably turned to, surprise, books. What the hell is going on in Malaysia? Some said there is a warehouse sale every month. Others said there is one almost every other week. There are warehouse sales in Singapore but not like this.

The consensus was that whatever is happening does not bode well for the industry. But it is the industry that is doing it to itself! They are all eating from the same bowl what? And the bowl is only so big (or small).

As described by one of the book dealers during the lunch, "Warehouse sales are like steroid injections." How true. They solve the short-term problem of cash flow ... but the long-term side effects are less predictable. He said, "They can net about 200,000 in a warehouse sale, which will take them three months to make at the shops." I cannot be certain about that, but warehouse sales are about cash flow, or the lack of it. Warehouse sales used to be held once or twice a year for getting rid of old stock, a reasonably healthy situation. "Raman, what do you want me to do with all that old stock?" one CEO of a major book-chain said. True. No one is arguing with that. What the industry is grumbling about is that there is one practically every month (or, according to some, more often even than that), with brand new books being offered at huge discounts as loss leaders to attract customers, and with remaindered books brought in pallet-loads from Singapore, Australia, the UK and the US (in a practice known as dumping which is, probably, illegal in those countries). More than one book buyer has confessed that she would rather wait for the next sale. Besides once they have used up their budget for the month ...

From the conversation around the table one can see that the industry is jittery, very jittery. They know that this cannot go on, yet they are powerless and clueless to stop it. Everyone is accusing the others of spoiling the market. Meanwhile, they all join in the cannibal feast, oblivious of (or blinkering out) the potentially disastrous long-term effects. There could be a spectacular meltdown. (Singapore saw a relatively minor correction in 2000/2001, and in more recent times, Borders has had to exit the UK, unable to take the heat, and Waterstones is also, reportedly, consolidating.) One thing is for sure, Malaysian businesses don't learn from history, and they think it is only the 'other guy' who will fall. But all it takes is for one player to collapse, millions of ringgit worth of books will be returned to the distributors, dumping will take place every where, retail will slump, and ... There are only so many tom yam soup shops that can be set up in any city.

(Strangely, call it wishful thinking if you like, I think the independent niche player, especially those who add value in various ways, who have their loyal band of customers/clients, and who differentiate their products and services, will probably survive provided they stop moping and are quick off their feet. The big chains, for the large part, all sell the exactly same stuff with only superficial - and often sad- attempts at differentiation.)

The customer is obviously happy with the situation, and why not? Cheap books. Enjoy it while it lasts. I believe the next sale will be coming your way soon.

The death of the publisher?

In his story Turning the Page, Jonathan Heawood writes in The Guardian blog: "People used to worry about the death of the author. Now they worry about the demise of the publishers, agents, booksellers and other middlemen who convey books from writers to their readers. These middlemen -- poor souls -- are being placed under considerable pressure in the newly globalised literary economy." The story further reports a debate (with no one offering a readers point-of-view) in with literary agents, publishers and retailers defend their turf and their positions in the food chain. Some of it is quite funny. I mean like publishers claiming "that the brand value of a great publisher is the key to their gatekeeping facility." Seriously. How? By swallowing up all competition? By establishing virtual monopolies? With buckshot publishing? By flooding the market with crap?

Is the book in no danger of being declared obsolete? Again? In the sixties and seventies, debates raged worldwide on the effects of television on reading and books. In the eighties and the nineties the villains were the computer and the internet. Yet more books are published and read today than anytime in history.

Fingers are now being pointed at the likes of Amazon or Google who are uploading millions of searchable texts online. Bloggers, print-on-demand and e-books also stand accused of subverting the art of reading and the cherished 'book'.

One can see how online searchable text, while being a boon to the researcher, will give some publishers a severe migraine. Firstly, why pay for something when you can get it for free. And secondly, let's face it; it is much easier to look for stuff with searchable text than skim and scan a tome. The education and academic market has been dominated by a handful of publishers, a virtual "education market mafia", for too long, and one would think not too many people will be shedding tears on their account over fears of their possible demise.

Bloggers threatening books? Not likely. Some blogs provide news and comments - sometimes alternative (but not necessarily accurate) view points to those expressed in the mainstream newspapers, some are no different from magazine, tabloid, or coffeeshop gossips and some are merely personal ego trips to be taken with a pinch of salt or, better still, ignored. One fails to see how these affect the publishing industry.

The current state of publish-on-demand is no different from vanity publishing. Vanity publishing existed before the computer. Remember Minerva? Now, with the advent of the internet "anyone can publish" and, sadly many who shouldn't, do. The future, of course, is wide open. Say a 'big name' writer - say Margaret Atwood - and publisher decide to go POD, and sell directly to the consumer. Costs could go down (or not). Agents will still feature somewhere. We suppose the retailer will lose a little in the equation. But will he really? The bookshop is the author's storefront, and far more books, except for the next Harry Potter, are bought on impulse whilst browsing through a good bookshop than any other merchandise (barring, maybe, dresses and shoes). So can the author and the publisher survive without the storefront? Nope, POD doesn't look like the death knell of the industry either. Not right now at any rate. On the other hand it looks like a brand new opportunity.


Ditto the ebook.


So is this the end of publishing as we know it? One thinks not. The Guardian story says that Stephen Page of Faber admitted during one of the debates that "these discussions have something of the air of a phoney war." A bit difficult to cry for HarperCollins and Random House, one should think, now that they - poor souls - are facing competition from even bigger online mafia ... I mean monopolies. Maybe one day the digital era will level the playing field enough for books to become objects of value again instead of commodities.

Full report: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_heawood/2007/04/authors_of_their_own_death.html

Why we will not be selling Harry Potter 7

The circus has started again. But we will not be part of it. Not this time. We wanted to opt out the last time as well, but Joyce came in and said, "Please, please, please …" and we succumbed.

We received a set of non-disclosure forms a few weeks ago, which got promptlythrown into the waste-paper basket. Basically, we had to promise not to sellthe book until the actual date for worldwide release. That is really not that bad. What riles is the shear capitalist exploitation of it. The last time wehad to order a minimum quantity, at a reduced discount and on non-returnablebasis. (Is that the worst face of capitalism, or what? If something sells well, raise the price.)

And all that for what? With the big stores all offering a 20% discount on the book we had to follow suit. The operating cost of an average bookstore is approximately 20%. And after we gave away another 20% in discount, we were actually selling the book at a substantial loss. Why do that? (In the US and UK the discount was 50%. Go figure. The book industry is bizarre. Bookstores, especially the mega ones, have been defying gravity for far too long. The music industry does not sell newly released, best-selling CDs at 50% discount, does it? No wonder Borders is losing money, and has to pull out of UK.)

Harry Potter makes no sense to booksellers. The only ones who make money are the publishers, distributors and Ms Rowling. Everyone else loses money. (Bloomsbury's profits were down 75% in 2006 because it was a non-HP year.)

Last time around, mountains of HP 6 were remaindered all over the world within six months of its release. ACMA Books was selling a Harry Potter 5 & 6 set (both hardbacks) for MYR20.00. In total we (a few friends) bought over twenty sets to give away as presents. Our advice: if you must have HP7, don't be so kiasu. Wait for a while and you will be able to buy it at a substantially lower cost. Kiasu-ness costs money, a lot of money. And if the past few HPs are anything to go by, save the money for another book and/or give yourself a treat at a fancy restaurant. You will enjoy yourself more.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the cheek and charm of HP 1 & 2. The blending together of an Enid Blyton adventure (complete with afternoon English tea and crumpets), a dollop of Narnia and a pinch of Tolkein, was really quite charming. Then with HP 3 things started getting weird - okay, flying cars I can take, but the travel-in-time-and-raise-the-dead bit was quite a bit beyond Ms Rowling's limited talents, I thought. Don't even ask about HP 4, 5 & 6. It has been panned enough.

Read HP 1 & 2. They are still the best by far.

KLILF 2007: Reflections of a long distance truck driver

KLILF 2007 is finally over. I was feeling like a truck driver after his last delivery at the end of a 7000-mile journey with no co-driver, only an attendant, as I sat alone in the Kopi Thiam staring into the kopi-o-kow. "At least the customers are happy." And I don't have a 7000-mile drive back.

The second one will be easier, they all said. After all you have already organised one. The sponsors will be queuing up.

Six weeks before the event I get a call, "Is it true that the Lit Fest has been cancelled?" Four weeks before the event we have thirty participants and zero sponsors. Only the registration fees paid up. There was no coverage in any of the media. I am wondering if we will have enough money to print fliers. Posters? Too late for that. We must push ahead. "Don't worry, it will fall in place." Right.

Quite a few weeks worth of sleep has already been lost.

Then we get the first cheque. Not much, but it will have to be enough. Enough gas to get the truck to the destination if we coasts downhill and get down and push it in the flat areas. The media launch is held at the cost of used shoelaces. The event is part-sponsored (and rescued) by Dato' Shahrizat. (She has no idea how desperate we were. Rumours were running around that we had raised millions.) The media came in numbers for the launch, but all they were interested in was the news about the 800 non-virgin schoolgirls. (What can you say? Malaysian journalism.)

Then stories started appearing in some newspapers. More participants inquired and signed up. On the 14th of March we still had only 80 registrations. "Don't worry Malaysians are always late." Try telling that to the truck driver who hasn't slept at all for three months.

15th of March: the phones will not stop ringing, and the emails boxes fill up. One hundred people registered. Then with the help of Rose, another sponsorship cheque is received, ten days before date of delivery. Phew!

Then the badgering starts: goody, goody, goody ... now that you have more and you won't have push the truck, can we have the two elephants ... please, please, please ... and lions ... how about the lions ... four lions at least ... surely there cannot be a show without lions ... all we have now are dogs ... and while you are at it can you pick up the performing Prussian cats ... please, please, please, please, please ...

I cannot believe my ears: "You want me to drive back 6800 miles to pick up your pet Prussian cats in time for the show next week? Where have you been all these months?" I want to kill somebody, and so does my attendant. She wants to do it with flying chopsticks. But we decides that it will have to wait until after our work is done. I simply say that there is no more room in the truck, which is also true. "Why don't you drive back and pick them up? I will deliver them, once you get them for me. I am a little bit busy right now, not that you would have noticed."

Sulk. Sulk is a four-letter word. So is work. And talk. Especially talk.

The truck driver looks at the clouds in his black coffee as he stirs. He wishes he was smoking something.

Censorship

From The Independent:

In another related article, in conjunction with the announcement of special hardback editions of Banned Books by The Independent, Censorship: Still a burning issue Boyd Tonkin asks if the 'thought police will ever learn. Sorry, no sign of it in this country. The good news is that everybody else is in the same boat. The bad new is that everybody else is in the same boat. Earlier his week Amir Muhammad's Apa Khabar Orang Kampong was 'banned', Amir's second movie to suffer that fate. In a telephone conversation, he was not sure if he was looking forward to a hatrick.

Tonkin quotes Bernard Shaw: ' ... assassination is the ultimate form of censorship.' Alexander Litvinenko found out how true that was, as did Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, and author/journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot in the lift of her Moscow apartment. And everyone knows the Orhan Pamuk story.

'Censorship is as old as civilisation itself - and the drive to suppress as strong today as ever.' In the case of Amir's movie, what is being suppressed? The opinions expressed by people interviewed by him? That there are such people as Muslim Communists - no matter how bizarre that sounds? Is the 'official' version of our history really that fragile? Was the decision to ban the movie taken even before it was viewed? After all, two cops from the Brickfields Police Station did cover Amir's talk on the making of AKOK at Silverfish Books some in October 2006. (They were polite, they asked permission.)

Chin Peng has been banned from entering the country. The ban still stands. He is probably the most banned person in the country. He is so banned that uttering his name was almost a crime for a very long time. But the English edition of his book sold 7000 copies, almost a Malaysian record, outsold perhaps only by Shanon Ahmad's Shit. I don't know how the Chinese edition did. Would that many people have watched Amir's movie? Sorry, you lose again.

Back to the article in The Independent: There are some wonderful quotes there, which you use on your blogs to impress your friends, and try and influence people. Also see a list of books that have offended someone in power or other in the past.

Full report: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article2294384.ece

Libraries and Bookshops

I read two interesting stories this week. My interest was not so much what was in the stories as what was not.

The first one: 'I like my libraries stable, durable, serene. I am looking for adventure in the books, rather than in the building,' says Germaine Greer in The Guardian in a story titled Flashy libraries? I prefer to get my adventure out of the books not the building, and that if there was a lovable word for her it would be 'library'.

Even if my favourite when I was growing up was 'library' (I cannot remember what my favourite was then, to be honest), it was a word that was used often. There was a school library, of course, not big but interesting with lots of books donated by USIS at that time. Do they still do that? Then there was the Johore Bahru town library, a 15-minute bicycle ride from where I lived, next to the post office. It a simple boxy two-storey structure, packed with books. Whoever stacked the shelves knew how to buy them. Then every weekend we would drive into Singapore to use the National Library on Stamford Road. We were all card carrying members - my parents, my three siblings (the youngest was less than ten at that time) and me. And every weekend we would come back with at least two books apiece - they had a Tamil section for my mum.

I am going to tell you a story of Gay and Peter. (I may have told it before, but I think it is worth repeating.) When Gay married Peter and moved to Malaysia in the early seventies, they lived in a plantation in Teluk Anson. She says boredom almost killed her. Then she heard of the Kuala Lumpur library and became a member. The KL library at that time had a simple arrangement. Periodically (I cannot remember if it was weekly, fortnightly or monthly), the library would send Gay a selection of books (according to a list of preferences provided by her) locked inside a wooden box, by train. Gay would, on its arrival in Teluk Anson, pick out about twelve books that interested her, return some of the earlier ones, lock the box and return it to the Kuala Lumpur library by the return train.

This over 30 years ago and you may well ask, "What happened?" Well what happened, indeed. The last I heard the Johor Bahru library has been moved out of the city - to some place quite inaccessible, I would assume. The National Library on Jalan Tun Razak is a fine example. What were they thinking?! After spending millions, the book collection is sad, it is completely inaccessible, the wide open spaces inside the building could be converted to skating rinks and the roof into ski slopes. The Kuala Lumpur library at Dataran is an imposing structure, but was told it is open only during office hours, the last time I tried to get in. What is the point?

Going back to Germain Greer, 'I am looking for adventure in the books, rather than in the building.' What's wrong with a library in a rented bungalow, a shophouse or a even a mall. We are MallAsia, after all. (Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

Then the second story: In a story called World class marketing Neal Hoskins writes in The Guardian weblog: 'Foreign titles tend to get hidden away in bookshops, but I think their relatively exotic provenance could be a real selling point.'

Jees! How completely opposite to the situation in Malaysia, is that? Here it would read: 'Malaysian titles tend to get hidden away in bookshops, but I think their relatively exotic provenance could be a real selling point.'

An American couple that used to visit Silverfish Books often (they are back in the US now) used to be amazed at what a bizarre country this is. We have humungous bookstores all over Klang Valley (eight, the last I counted, Singapore has only two) in a country that, the government acknowledges, does not read, choker-block with books from the US and the UK. Malaysian titles, if stocked at all, would be in a bottom shelf, at the back of the store.

(They would also ask me why Malaysian newspapers don't review local book? I shall not go there, nanti merajuk pula with me - for my 'big mouth' - as I suspect at least one of them (or a group within) already is. Yes, this is a bizarre country.)

Write if you must, only if you absolutely must

Read an interesting story in The Australian by Jenny Sinclair. Okay, I can hear some of you saying already, "Yeah, yeah, yeah ... heard it all before." Absolutely true, but I like her beginning and her ending.

Beginning: 'EVERYWHERE I turn, it seems, I see advertisements for writing courses, writing workshops, writing weekends, writing holidays. All of them promise to help participants polish their prose and carve out their characters ...'

Ending: '... It's not writing that should be encouraged but reading, widely and voraciously, reading the classics, reading the modern masters. That, if my university lecturers are right, is what will bring out the real writers among us. Magazine editors, publishers and writing competitions are groaning under the output of all those writing courses and I want to say stop. Stop if you can. And if you can't stop, write.'

Like in all stories different people will take away different parts from it to call their own. Here are some vignettes.

'What they (the multiplicity of courses) do is provide toolboxes, and with those toolboxes the vaguely talented often turn out the equivalent of high school carpentry projects: a procession of by-the-numbers breakfast trays and carved wooden animals.'

'Writing is not a good in itself that everyone should be encouraged to attempt, such as cycling to work or eating more broccoli ... Training and encouragement will not bring out the real writers. The threat of not writing will.'

And then I got cancer. Death threatened ... I had an epiphany: it didn't matter to me if I was any good as long as I wrote.

I know what you are thinking: "Wah, so drama ..." Nevermind. Read the article at: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21105051-5001986,00.html

Self-Publishing using Print On Demand Technology

by Wena Poon

Last year, I had the great satisfaction of self-publishing my sci fi novel, Biophilia, and retailing it worldwide through Amazon.com.

The entire process only took a month or two, from first submission to retail on Amazon, because it is completely automated. Anyone who is Web savvy can do it.

Best of all, it only required a relatively modest personal investment of US$500 for the entire process.

There are many companies who offer self-publishing services today. The company I used was BookSurge.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com. I chose BookSurge because I have had good experiences with Amazon and hoped that their subsidiary would also deliver quality service. I was quite happy with the result.

Book Surge offers print on demand (POD) technology. POD means that the book is not printed until someone clicks to buy it online.

To start, have your completed manuscript ready in MS Word format.

You open an account with BookSurge with a credit card. You will get your own username, login, and personal account page. You can pick your book font, book cover template, upload your own cover art, and upload your MS Word manuscript. After a week or two, the company will email you proofs. You go through an automated online correction process, and approve the final proof online.

You will then receive a few complimentary printed copies of your book and then have the pleasure of seeing it available on Amazon.com.

The advantages of this type of publishing are many.

I was able to share my work with friends around the world because it is available on Amazon.

I make 25% royalty from all Amazon sales, and the royalty is paid monthly by direct bank deposit.

The paperback I produced is extremely high quality by self-publishing standards. It looks no different from a "real book" available in a bookstore.

I grew up in Singapore in the 1980's and even as a teenager wrote many novels which I couldn't get published locally. Even today, Singapore writers find it hard to publish their work because of the small number of publishers.

If you have many completed manuscripts sitting around and do not want to wait years for Random House or some agent to call, try POD self-publishing. It is the fastest way to get a nicely packaged product into the hands of your eager friends and family.

If nothing else, the wider readership you attain will help your writing through invaluable reader feedback. Good luck and do try it!

Wena Poon is a Singaporean writer living in San Francisco, California. Her fiction and poetry has been anthologized by Penguin, Silverfish New Writing, Landmark Books, and other publishers in Asia and Australia. She is writing and self-publishing a sequel to Biophilia, her first POD book.

Censorship at Amazon?

After the infamous Google censorship ‘deal’ with China, it's now Amazon.com's turn.

An old regular customer visited me on Friday and told me an interesting story. He said he tried to order RO Winstedt's A History of Malaya from Amazon.com and was told that the book could not be delivered to a Malaysian address. He told me to try it for myself.

I already have my own copy of the book, but that night when I got home I tried to order the book from Amazon.com. They had 2 used copies at USD16.00 each published by Merican and Sons in 1986. I went through the motions of ordering the book. After I had put in the delivery address I got this window with a message in bold red:

*** We're sorry. This item can't be shipped to the country you selected. You can enter a different shipping address above, or you can remove the item from your order by changing its quantity to 0, then clicking
the Update button. ***


Rather interesting I thought, and does raise all sorts of questions. Is Amazon.com practising selective self-censorship, or are they working on 'instructions'. If so, from whom? Can we have a full list of the books that cannot be shipped to Malaysia? Where can we view it? How many other 'dodgy' countries do Amazon have on their list?

I have read RO Winstedt's A History of Malaya several times and although I do not agree with many of his conclusions and his somewhat condescending views, I cannot see reason why it should be banned in Malaysia. (This book was first published as Part 1, Volume X111 in March 1935 by the Malayan Branch of
the Royal Asiatic Society.)


See image of Amazon.com Checkout page.