A year that was

No, I am not going to write about what an absolute annus horribilis the year two-thousand and eight was, enough people are doing that. I am going to confine myself to book matters, though some of the former could creep in.

2008 was a year with no Harry Potter circus; that has run its course. So, there was really no big book to carry the year and give the book industry an artificial high. In fact there were hardly any big books at all, except for Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence, which I thought was one of the best books he has written in a long time, surely one of his most readable. Yes, some will quibble that it does not have the stature of his Midnight's Children (that was more than a quarter of a century ago, please move on). Some will complain about the way he is liberal with historical truths. So was Homer. It is a good story, a fun read.

As for Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, my current plans are to give it a miss -- "the story of two Indias" is such a cliche. Why are Indian writers (apart from Naipaul and Rushdie) not allowed to simply tell a story? But, Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies is still on my list. I am not interested in the rest. It was a pretty slow year for fiction. I am waiting for some translated works of Le Clezio to come out. Meanwhile, I will catch up on the classics.

In other international news, we all know about Borders selling off their stores in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. In UK we have just heard that Euler Hermes has withdrawn credit insurance to their suppliers, which could mean that they will have to pay cash upfront for their merchandise. It appears they are a bit shaky in the US too.

In another story, Bertrams, one of the bigger book wholesalers in the UK, is up for sale after the demise of their parent company, Woolworth. Expect a major shake-up in the book industry next year. But Amazon.com did well over Christmas.

An industry shake-up is surely on the cards now. The book had been commoditised to absurdity, mass market merchants only understands what turns over or, in the bookseller language, "sells through". Books could be beans for all they cared. Perhaps now the real bookshops (indies or otherwise) will return to the fore, and publishers will focus on real books. 

Shelf Awarness puts it succinctly: "Now may be a good time to get back to basics and do business together again if we all want to survive. Mass merchants will likely cut back on book sections at the first signs of under performance ... (but) Bookstores will stay the course. As the restructuring goes forward, we can only hope that publishers will return to their roots and work with booksellers to enhance backlist opportunities and develop new authors."

Which is what we at Silverfish Books have been doing most of 2008: developing new authors. There was no Silverfish New Writing 8. That felt kind of strange, but also a relief. It was fun while it lasted. We decided to stop it when it became a chore. So in 2008 we published three books by individual authors: Tales from the Court by Matthew Thomas (who, ironically, is the only Malaysian writer to 'graduate' from the New Writing series to produce a whole book of un-recycled material), Poems Sacred and Profane by Salleh ben Joned (a reprint of a collectible classic) and Ripples and other stories by Shih-Li Kow, who simply keeps going from strength to strength. We were putting the final touches to her work end of last month when we received an invitation to submit an entry for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region. We thought, if any current Malaysian writer deserves the nomination it is Shih-Li Kow. We have sent off her entry but we hope they will receive it on time considering the year-end holiday season. We are keeping our fingers crossed for her.

It has been a very memorable year.

Happy New Year, 2009.

Dancing on the deck of the Titanic

(Mexican author, Alberto Ruy Sanchez,  told me about an essay he wrote in defence of books titled, The Book is not a Shoe, over lunch some weeks ago, so it is with sincere appreciation to him that I write this.)

So Woolworth has gone bankrupt and Betrams Books, which it owns but is not under administration, is up for sale. I am sure that is not news anymore. The latest news to emerge from the publishing industry is that the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has reported that the book sales for the month of October decreased by 20.1 percent at US$644.5 million and were down by 3.4 percent for the year. 20.1%!? That is almost a disaster considering the incredibly low margins the industry works on. One dares not even think of the December season.

Like Sara Nelson of the Publishers Weekly, many have stopped reading their investment statements and even the business pages of their newspapers or listen to the news on television. It is far too relentlessly gloomy. Sara Nelson writes,"We all knew that publishing would not be spared; that feeling was palpable as early as last summer and certainly by Frankfurt -- when, if one more person compared going to the lavish Bertelsmann party to "dancing on the deck of the Titanic," I would have thrown him in the punch bowl. Still, while the news this week of massive layoffs and downsizing at Random House, Simon & Schuster, Thomas Nelson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was not surprising, it was, like any expected death, still a shock." Yes, there is no reason the publishing industry should be spared. It has been behaving as badly as the rest. Hence, the rub.

The book is a book, not a shoe. Real book people have been saying this for years. But with dollar signs dancing before their eyes everyone -- from contruction magnates to timber tycoons -- jumped into it. Hundreds of corporations with no idea what a book is, employed thousands who had never read one in their entire lives to run mega stores with hundreds of thousands of titles. From reports, Britain publishes close to 200,000 new titles a year, out of which 3000 make it to the main stores, with a handful remaining there for more than three months. What kind of industry is that? If any of the other industries worked on those numbers they would be closed by now.

A book is not a shoe, too, in many European countires which are strong about their heritage and culture thing. The last country to decide that a book was indeed a shoe was Switzerland, that despite valiant efforts by many to protect books as "cultural goods". In France, not too long ago, where retail book discounting is illegal, Amazon.com, which introduced free shipping, was convicted and made to pay a penalty when the booksellers association succesfully argued that 'free shipping' was indeed a discount.

In a recent International Market Comparisons: A Benchmark Study of Profitability by the Booksellers Association of the United Kingdom and Ireland (BA), comparing the market in the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and the USA with the UK, the key findings were that the total UK market growth was one of the lowest, and the use of promotions and discounts created a 'vicious circle'. This despite the UK having a higher per capita book purchase than all markets except the US. In the Netherlands books cannot be sold at a discount until a year after release.

It could be (and has been) argued that the current problems in Britain arose with the demise of the national Net Book Agreement (NBA). The NBA was a British price-fixing agreement between publishers and booksellers which set the prices at which books were to be sold to the public that came into effect on January 1, 1900. Any bookseller who sold a book for less than the agreed price would no longer be supplied by the publisher. (Remember the time when we used to pay much lower fixed prices for our books in Malaysia?) The NBA enabled publishers to subsidise the works of important but less widely-read authors using money from bestsellers.

In August 1994 the Director General of the Office of Fair Trading decided that the Restrictive Practices Court should review the agreement. In March 1997 it was ruled that the Net Book Agreement was against public interest and was ruled illegal. So, what had been in place for a hundred years was dismantled only ten years ago, with nothing to replace it. The result has been chaos, ever since.

And the result? Bookstore chains benefitted. They were large enough to demand massive (and unreasonable) discounts, which the publishers provided by increasing the recommended retail price (RRP) of their books. The public bought bestsellers at reduced prices, but had to pay much more for other excellent books that were less popular. Buyers in smaller countries, without the benefit of volume, ended up paying more for their books. (This is made worse by the 'exclusive rights' agreeements signed between publishers and local distributors, but that is another story.) Large supermarket chains got into the business, mainly offering a limited number of best-selling titles at hugely discounted prices. After one hundred years of holding out as a 'cultural good' the book was finally reduced to a shoe, a throw-away consumer product alongside Kleenex and wipes for babies' bottoms. Many small independent bookshops were severely affected. Borders burst forth into high streets all over the world. (Their demise last year was probably the first sign that all was not well in the book-world.)

In Malaysia we continue to dance on the deck of the Titanic. How else does one explain the number of mega-bookstores in the Klang Valley, more than twice the number -- and retail area -- than in the whole of Singapore?

A matter of religion

(A censored version of this story appeared in the Malay Mail on Thursday, 27th of  November. Don't ask.)

Macintosh users have always lamented the fact that many software developers routinely release Windows versions of their programmes before they write one for  their systems. Case in point, they are still waiting for a Mac version of Chrome, Google's latest browser. This is, naturally, understandable from the point of view of market forces. Latest survey suggest that the Mac has crept up to a 9.5% market share in the US, but much lower worldwide.

But now www.webmonkey.com, a web developer's resource owned by Wired Digital, laments that no one even wants to write a decent virus for the Mac platform on par with the millions that threaten Windows users daily. According to the blogspot, the latest attempt at creating a virus for the Mac, a trojan, is so lame that the user had to be incredibly stupid for it to work at all. Basically, the computer user will have to visit, what else, a porn site, download a video codec, open it, mount the disk image, and launch the application, which will then proceed to create a 'backdoor' for other malicious ware.

There was a story making the rounds on the internet a few years ago. (This story has been ascribed to several major computer companies, but I am sure they are apocryphal. But it is a good story).

A man contacted customer support saying that he was having trouble with his new computer. So they both went through an 'idiot's' check-list to eliminate the most commonly occurring problems – have you connected this cable to that, have you installed all the components and so on. After a long and arduous process, the customer insisted that there was still no sign of 'life' on the monitor. Finally there was only one thing left: the support guy asked the customer to check if the computer had been plugged in and switched on. The customer said that he was leaning over to see but was having difficulty spotting it because it was quite dark and there was light coming in from only one window in the room. The rest of the conversation apparently went like this:

"Well, turn on the office light then."

"I can't."

"No? Why not?"

"Because there's a power failure."

"A power... A power failure? Aha, Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"

"Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."

"Good. Go get them, unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."

"Really? Is it that bad?"

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

"Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"

"Tell them you're too f***** stupid to own a computer." (Type this last sentence onto your browser and you can read the whole story online.)

The computer model is not mentioned, but when it comes to stupidity it does not matter which. The Mac versus PC argument is almost a matter of religion. You have to listen to these guys go at one another. Neither side will concede an inch when debating the superiority of their favourite machines, and operating systems.

I am often caught in the middle for I have used both machines, on a daily basis, for over twenty years. I use Macs at home and PCs in the office, and I don't feel I have betrayed any religious ideal. It's like owning a relatively expensive, moderately luxurious sedan for home and leisure use, and a cheaper, hardy pick-up or four-wheel-drive at work. What's wrong with that? My religious beliefs lean, decidedly, towards the Mac, I will admit, but that does not mean I should not acknowledge the superiority of PC for certain tasks, just like that of a utility vehicle over dirt tracks or on construction sites. Yes, PCs have viruses (millions of them), they leak memory, their hard disks get fragmented and they can be a pain, but they cost less and some programmes will not run on Macs.

So what can I say to those whose Mac religion forbids them from using PCs or vice versa? Sorry, that's your loss.

Never let facts get in the way

(A version of this story appered in the Malay Mail on the the 6th of November.)

The French are disputing English accounts of the Battle of Agincourt of 1415. The English version has 6000 men (mainly archers) defeating a French Army of 30,000. Not quite, say the French, backing their argument with historical evidence. They are probably right, but then they are French.

Shakespeare immortalised that battle in 1599 in Henry V; it was too romantic not to. The battle has been described as England's 'finest hour'. But it was the bard who fire up the imagination of the people with his version of the story, truth be damned, and brought new glory to distant history. Shakespeare was no prophet, nor saint, nor historian, nor anything. He was only a storyteller, but helluva good one. He was at the (or was the) epicentre of the English renaissance and, probably, indirectly responsible for 400 years of world domination by his countrymen. Well, like journalists like to say: never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

It is not news that, of all the creatures in the world, we are the strangest. We eat and sleep and breathe and so on like all the rest, but one thing we do that none of the other creatures (are known to) do, is tell stories to one another. We need to tell and listen to stories every waking moment of our lives, be it on the telephone, radio, television, movies, newspapers, magazines, books or at the tea shop. We gossip, blog, report, write, dance, sing, and act out stories. We can never stop even if we try. We can go without a few meals. (During famines they will not have much to eat but they will keep alive by telling one another stories of hope, of spirit, of faith.) Our stories will be true, false, good, bad, exhilarating, depressing, funny, sad, tragic, magic ... anything. Most will be forgotten, but some will stick and become part of our culture, our ethos, our claim to human-ness. (I will leave the 'what, how, where and why' arguments to the anthropologists.)

There was a story in the newspapers not too long ago from India about the Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project. Adam's Bridge (or Rama's Bridge or Rama Sethu) is a shallow chain of limestone shoals between India and Sri Lanka. The Indian government approved the project in 2001, but to date no work has started due to economic, environmental and religious arguments. The government can use all their scientists and argue until they are blue in the face, but they are not going to win the last one. According to the Ramayana, Hanuman and his monkey hoard built it. Period. Some researchers say that Rama was a god worshipped in Babylon and Egypt, and that he is mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, that by the time Valmiki wrote down his version 2500 years ago, his story was already several centuries (if not millenniums) old. Of the over 300 known versions of the Ramayana, Valmiki's is the most popular and the most romantic. What can mere logic do in the face of such a good story, of such a romance?

Storytelling is such a potent force that it is not surprising that forces have existed throughout history to control it. During the Inquisition, the clergy demanded absolute control of the media, and literacy was actually illegal. People were put to death in the most terrible ways if it was found out (or suspected, or rumoured) that they could read. The church controlled the Word and all interpretations of it absolutely. The people of Europe paid a horrifying price for freedom of information. In ancient India, it was the Brahmins, who started of as minstrels singing the praises of their kings, who saw the power in the monopoly of knowledge. The myth of the battle between 300 Spartans against the Persians still influences East-West relationships and dialogue, that people of the East are an inferior people.

It is not surprising that many rich countries 'steal' cultural talent from poorer ones, and not just for tourism promotion. Stories make nations, and nations make stories. They are part of the blood that runs through our veins; they live in our genes; they create our memes. We may not like some of it but the alternatives, of letting one small group decide for everyone, for a one size fits all solution, are frightening.

Let's leave the Middle Ages where we left it, 500 years ago.

Why I like to read fiction

(A version of this story appeared in The Malay Mail on the 30th of October 2008).

I would get people coming into the store and announcing very loudly that they did not read fiction any more, as if it was an for activity simpler minds. I would simply smile without saying anything, but I would think, "How sad. How many non-fiction Nobel Literature laureates do you know?"

Don't get me wrong. I have read, and still read, plenty of non-fiction, and I do have an extensive collection of titles on history, politics, philosophy and theology. The problem with non-fiction is that it is, most of the time, filled with so much of prejudice, bias, personal agendas, half-truths, distortions and omissions. Take history for instance: I will have to read at least six books before I even get an idea of what actually happened (and more, to actually understand). As for politics and theology, one may never know the truth no matter how many books one reads. And then we have just-add-water books masquerading as philosophy (much like Kenny G records in the jazz racks of music stores).

I have come a full circle and I read mostly fiction now. Oh, there are the bummers, of course, and often all that pandering, stereotyping, cliche mongering and bad writing gets to me and, sometimes, I seriously want to invite them for coffee in one of those swanky joints and, like somebody I know would, advise them never to write again. (But, I know I am too chicken for that.) Still, I persist. It is like going through a basket of durians: you are pushed on by a memory of a really good fruit you once ate, you want to rediscover it, you want to feel again that creamy texture, you want to experience that divine bitter sweet taste once more, you are willing to go through an entire basket, through a lot of poor ones, average ones, okay ones, good ones before you finally get to that great one. Yes!

JM Coetzee's 1999 Booker Prize winning novel, Disgrace, is one such literary fruit, one that comes along only a few times every century. Good literature is like good software -- user (readers) will find far more uses (messages) in it than the author intended or even thought possible.

David Lurie is a professor who teaches English Romantic poetry at a university in Cape Town. An affair with one of his students gets him into trouble. It is not a difficult situation, he could have easily got off with an apology, as false as it may be. But he refuses to give in to the prurience and sentimentality of his judges. He is disgraced, loses everything and goes to live with his daughter in a farm. David is arrogant and not very likable. Yet, when he ponders if he should submit himself for castration and live the life of a neutered domestic beast, we can identify with him, as if that is what being human is all about --to live at the level of beasts, rewarded for 'right' behaviour and punished for getting out of line.

Things don't get better at the farm. His daughter is raped and he gets assaulted badly. He is outraged; he sees the perpetrators at a neighbour's party, but his daughter will not allow him to create a ruckus or even confront them. She has to live in that neighbourhood. She prefers to accept the humiliation and get on with her life, albeit in disgrace. She marries her neighbour, who was probably a party to the crime in the first place, for 'protection'. Sounds familiar? Like beasts, we will live in disgrace, for the little crumbs, the little mercies tossed at us.

Most reviewers I've read don't get that. They can see David's disgrace, but not his daughter's. They are too consumed by their own self-righteousness to even think it possible for anyone not to be outraged. Welcome to the Third World. It feels like an abomination, because that is what it is. That's why it is scary. Some of us have broken out, saying: "We will not take it anymore." But the truth is the majority would prefer to live like neutered domestic beasts, constantly herded and kept in line. They will get (metaphorically, but sometimes actually) raped over and over and over and their advise will still be, "Don't rock the boat." (The word rakyat comes from the Arabic word for a herd of sheep.) We are told constantly about what we can and cannot do, what we can and cannot have, all for our own 'good' because we cannot think for ourselves. And under no circumstances are we allowed to express ourselves.

Coetzee's situations are extreme, but these are story-telling devices, artistic license to make a point. It is not a very large book, only 224 pages. There are many similarities between post apartheid South Africa and Malaysia, except it is not so extreme here. Yet.

Hassle of doing business in KL

I have been having a spot of bother with DBKL recently (for almost two years now , actually). It started in May last year when we were still at the old premises, when two DBKL enforcement officers came into Silverfish Books and demanded to see our Lesen Premis. (Din Merican and Dina Zaman were there at that time and witnessed the whole event.) I told the enforcement officers that I had checked with my lawyers and the company secretary and they comfirmed that bookshops were not on the list of trades that required the said license. They wanted to see an official letter but, of course, I didn't have any. (So, like Kafka, yah? If you don't have a certificate confirming that you are sane, then you are not!) They said they were going to give me a Notis Kesalahan, and I said I was willing to accept one.

Subsequently, I wrote to the licensing department (by AR Registered, so I know they have received the letter) to seek clarification of the clause under which I was being charged. I received no reply. Meanwhile I managed to obtain a copy of the Local By-laws with the help of a lawyer. Neither one of us could find any clause that required bookshops to apply for a Lesen Premis.

On the 26th of November 2007, I received a reminder from DBKL to pay a fine of RM2000.00 or else....

On the 3rd of December 2007 went to see their Legal Officers (at the HQ building in Jalan Raja Laut). The legal officer I met was extremely polite and she explained to me that the UUK Pelesenan Tred Perniagaan & Perindustrian (WPKL) under which Silverfish Books was charged, actually only applied to business dealing with noxious material or were otherwise a danger to the public. As such, she said that bookshops were not on the list.

I came back and wrote them a letter thanking them for the clarification. They wrote back to us, withdrawing the Notis Kesalahan, with a copy to the Director of the Licensing Department with the message: 'Notis ini dibatalkan. Perniagaan tidak termasuk dalam senarai tred yang dilesenkan.'

I thought that was the end of it. Then we moved, and we applied for a new licence for our signboard (as required by the law.) But the Licensing Department refused to accept our application unless we also applied for a Lesen Premis (although we didn't require one). Having no choice we did.

Then we got a letter (dated 4th September 2007, but unsigned and not on the official DBKL letterhead, but looking authentic enough), slipped to us as it were, suggesting (I say this because I do not regard it as an official letter) that our application for the signboard licence (and the Lesen Premis) has been rejected because: 'Premis yang mempunyai tangga tunggal adalah tidak dibenarkan mengikut Undang-undang Kecil Bangunan Seragam 1984' with the letter being copied to the BOMBA, whose ruling it apparenly was.

I went to the legal department of DBKL again. They were again sympethetic and told me to see the legal officer at the licensing department in Kampong Baru. After trudging there, wasting half a day's work, they told me that while the lettter from the Legal Department was valid, they had their own rules!

I have written a letter to the Minister and the Mayor, with copies to the ACA, the Public Complaints Bureau, our MP for Bangsar and to the various newspapers. I don't know if anything will come out of it. But right now I am pessimistic with such impunity, such disregard for the law, despite a letter from their own legal advisors. Even Kafka would have been hard pressed to beat that.

Then there is the question of the 'tangga tunggal', that is buildings with only one staircase. From what I have seen there are no shophouses in KL, up to three storeys high, which have a second staircase or a fire escape. Are they all there illegal? Were they not approved by DBKL? Are all businesses and offices (including government) operating on the first (and upper) floors illegal?

People I tell this story to are, often, more outraged than I am. The audacity is mind numbing. I have received some advice on how this could be 'settled'. But I am old and I am tired. Enough is enough. Can we have the rule of law for a change?

Do you have short stories?

This article, written by Shiv Das, appeared in The Malay Mail on the 23 of September, 2008. It is reproduced here for those who missed it for some reason or other.

This lawyer-cum-writer took his first short story to Silverfish Books two years ago and it worked. Encouraged, he said he had more but it was only two years later that he submitted them.

And even then, they were presented in hand-written form, much to the amusement (or dismay?) of the publisher.

They were fine, said publisher Raman Krishnan, but handwritten? Enter Thomas' wife who came to the rescue and had them typed properly, an act that was duly and gratefully acknowledged at the launch of the book, Tales from the Court and other stories earlier this month.

So point one. If you have something to publish, your best bet may be Silverfish. You could be glad just like Thomas.

Point two: The launch does not have to be fancy. The publisher's store in Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, will do nicely. And if you are one who likes to keep things low key, you can get your best friend to do the launch, as Thomas did.

That friend was Mohamed M Keshavjee, himself a lawyer, working for the Aga Khan, the Ismaili spiritual leader who has dedicated himself to humanitarian health and education programmes and preservation of heritage and environmentally friendly architecture.

Keshavjee flew in from Paris to do the needful. Time and space hadn't prevented him and Thomas from maintaining their abiding friendship of more than 40 years.

Keshavjee has an Afterword rather than Foreword in the book. The two had fashioned their friendship while in London studying law, one at Grey's Inn and the other at Middle Temple.

The book, a compilation of short stories, is set mostly in the Kuala Lumpur of the 50s and brings out the essence of the characters "playing the little games in life, made up of illusions, craftiness, ego, hope and aspirations."

There are also accounts of the author in London in the 60s, all written in an easy yet compelling style.

Point three. If in writing the book, you have a son or daughter who has artistic talent, get him or her to design the cover and other illustrations, like Thomas' son Aaron did.

Point four. If you have a relative, a prodigy of sorts, it is possible to entertain the gathering at the launch. That will be another big plus appreciated by all present. Andrew Sanjay, 11, a grand nephew of Thomas, gave an impromptu rendition of Leonard Bernstein's Tonight, the theme song of the musical, West Side Story.

Already an accomplished singer, he is a member of the KL Children's Choir.

The bottom line. If you have the yen to write and have stories to tell, just do it because chronicling life’s journey and experiences helps preserve our rich Malaysian heritage.

For more information on the book, which sells for RM30, log on to www.silverfishbooks.com

The Malay Mail

Books most abandoned

WRITING: Most Left Behind Books

Why are some books left behind at hotels? Not for lack of space inside the suitcase, I should think, not if you really love the book. But then some, like the BookCrossing people, leave books they like for others to pick up. I will never do that with a book I love. I would rather buy extra copies of books I love to give away to people who would otherwise want to borrow my copy. (I know it does not make sense, but I have a great fear that firstly the book will not come back -- why isn't stealing books a crime punishable by death yet? -- and secondly, if it does get returned it often looks like it just came back from a battlefield -- even if the damage is just a little nick on the cover.) So with all my personal prejudices in place, I'd say that people will only leave books behind if they absolutely hate it, or they are culling, or if they have just acquired a hardback copy (or a first edition). I suffer inconsolably whenever a book of mine leaves home to live with someone else, even for a little while, even if I know she will look after it with extreme care. (Yes, yes, yes, but what about her children with their grubby little hands that were just holding pizza? What if her husband spills coffee? What if, there is a major thunderstorm, and the roof tiles in her house which have not been secured properly come lose, and it leaks, and her house gets flooded, and my book gets wet? Workers are all Indonesians now, you know. What if, what if? It was never easy being a book parent. Now it is getting harder. And no, I am not going to see a doctor about it, thank you very much.)

So it is with a little disdain that I looked at (yes, it is in pictures) this Sky News feature on Books Most Abandoned In Travelodge Inns. Here is the dirt:

• Celebrity books take all the first five spots. The most abandoned book is Meet John Prescott by the former UK Deputy Prime Minister. That is not surprising. We have plenty of Malaysian politicians we would like to forget. Second is comedian Russel Brand's My Booky Wook. Third most left behind book is by another 'political' celebrity, Cherri Blair with Speaking for Myself, about her life from her childhood in working-class Liverpool, to the heart of the British legal system and then, as the wife of the prime minister. Kati Price (Jordan) follows with two books. Why did she even bother? Television host Piers Morgan is next. I guess it is safe to say they all got what they deserved. Leave writing to writers.

• Then comes the surprise. Ian McEvan's On Chesil Beach, which was on last years Booker shortlist, which sold over 100,000 in hardback, is at number six. It is hardly my favourite book, but I will not give my hardback copy away. (It does not say if the books left behind were paperbacks or hardbacks.) What is the problem? Too difficult to read? Boring? Not quite John Grisham? Maybe the next book, also fiction, might give us a clue: Kathy Kelly's Lessons in Heartbreak. From the Amazon.com blurb it sounds like a major tearjerker. Did On Chesil Beach jerk your tears? Not mine, though it did leave me a little dissatisfied. Another work of fiction on the list is Blind Faith by Ben Elton.

• The other two would fall into our 'just add water' classification (if we had such a section). Soak book in 800 mls of water, bring to a simmer on low flame, add sugar (or salt) to taste, allow to cool, and drink a glass before bedtime for a lifetime of warm fuzzy feelings, instant riches, instant health and perfect happiness. Alternatively, admit yourself into the psychiatric ward of the nearest hospital. Number eight: Alvin Hall's You and Your Money -- a personal relationship. Number Ten: Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

Sky News

Why don't boys read?

(A version of this story appeared in the Malay Mail on the 28^th of August)

This question resurfaces every now and then and, lately, has been the subject of much internet stories -- the first one in the Wall Street Journal and the other in the Timesonline. They read texted messages; they read games instruction manuals and football magazines, so it is not like they are illiterate. Publishers in America claim to have found one solution: gross them out. That's right, give them what they want and they will read. So 261 titles aimed at boys was released in 2007, from the gory (Vlad the Impaler: the real Count Dracula, Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo and Mary Tudor: Courageous Queen or Bloody Mary?) to gross (Captain Underpants, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, and The Day My Butt Went Psycho). Says John Hechinger of the WSJ, 'Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys -- many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open Little House on the Prairie. Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate.'

I think of my own reading when I was a kid. By the time I was ten, I had read every Enid Blyton I had set my sights on (I don't know how many, but surely over fifty) after finishing all the bridged and illustrated classics (Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, Ivanhoe, etc, etc). At eleven years old, I added Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne and HG Wells to the menu. From twelve to thirteen, I must have read every Agatha Cristie, Leslie Charteris (The Saint) and Earl Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason) book published. I won't say what I was reading when I was fourteen because I am afraid you might call my mother.

In Malaysia I guess the question would be, 'Why don't people read?' (Before we go further, let me assure you that we did have television when I was young. I'm not that old. In fact, the number of books sold worlwide has increased many fold despite television and the internet.) There is a story I'd like to relate. It was during the early years of Silverfish Books. There was his lady, one of those teacher types with thick black plastic-rimmed glasses and tight hair bun, who came into the shop asking for workbooks, in particular on a Malaysian author whose work had just been added to the Form Five English curriculum. I told her that we didn't sell workbooks. Besides, since the inclusion of this author was recent, there was not likely to be workbooks anywhere.

'Oh dear,' she said. 'Does that mean I will have to read the book?'

Gobsmacked doesn't begin to describe my reaction.

'Malaysians read two books a year'. I have been hearing this for almost ten years, with no other details -- sample size, demography, what kind of questions were asked, what was included, not included, nothing. Frankly, I don't believe the figure. I think the situation is far worse and whoever put out the number is trying not to make us look less bad than we are. (If the number is correct, we should be importing some 50 million books a year. Are we?)

I was at the Dataran Merdeka once, about a year ago, at about six-thirty in the evening. We were early for the show at the Town Hall, so I persuaded my wife to take a walk to the KL City Library on the other side. Of course, it was closed. What was I thinking? That is the absurdity of the situation: the only time people can go to a library is after school or work, but they are closed. It is bad enough we have so few libraries to start with. (When I was growing up in JB, I had three libraries to choose from: the one in school, the town library next to the post office, and the National Library in Singapore.) And, building humungous library in places people have no access to, does not exactly help.

Okay, not every teacher is as bad as the one I described above. Some are worse. But, I would like to propose another survey. How many teachers actually read the books they have to teach? How many read anything apart from what they have to teach? (Include tertiary level.) How many library employees read? How many employees of Dewan Bahasa read?

I hear parents complaining about their children all the time. Sometimes, when I am feeling jahat, I will ask them what type of books they read. It is a lot like the Malay proverb about the crab teaching his son to walk straight. But it is not their fault entirely, not with our education system that makes the Ford Model T assembly line look modern. To read, one has to have some competency in a language, at least the ability to write one's name. And the books must be fun. So, there.

(Psst. The books I was reading at fourteen were so much fun that I had to pass them under the desks in school.)

The Amazon juggernaut

A recent story in iStockAnalyst, Amazon.com to Acquire AbeBooks, sent a chill down my spine. Jeff Bezos wants nothing less than world domination. So, why am I surprised? Looks like everyone wants to dominate the world these days: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Dewan Bandaraya ...

According to the report, Amazon.com, Inc. has announced that, subject to closing conditions, it has reached an agreement to acquire AbeBooks. Those who are familiar with it, AbeBooks is an online marketplace with (reportedly) over 110 million titles, primarily, used, rare and out-of-print books that are listed by thousands of independent booksellers from around the world or, in other words, the only credible online competition for Amazon.com. One will be able to find pretty much any book that has been printed on Abebooks, and buy it if one is willing to pay the price. From our survey, the prices are very reasonable. But the main cost, due to our geographical location, will be the postage. (I still haven't decided if I want to spend USD25.00 -- not including postage -- for a mass-market paperback edition of John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.)

I understand that the operative word in business today is no longer monopoly. It is hegemony -- the little guys can set up all the bookshops they want, but we are going to take a cut from it all ... mwahahahaha.

Both the companies are making the customary 'best experience for customers' noise. Russell Grandinetti, vice president of books for Amazon.com says, "AbeBooks provides a wide range of services to both sellers and customers, and we look forward to working with them to further grow their business ..." Right. And Hannes Blum, chief executive officer of AbeBooks is quoted, "This deal brings together book sellers and book lovers from around the world, and offers both types of customers a great experience ... We are very excited to be joining the Amazon family." Right again.

The report says that AbeBooks will continue to function as a stand-alone operation based in Victoria, British Columbia. Let's see how long that will last.

Meanwhile, Richard Cohen in his Washington Post blog, The Book on the Shelf, laments the death of the book as we know it. He writes, "What Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon's founder, wants more than anything is to do away with the book as we know it." He further says that according to Steven Kessel, one of Amazon's 'top guys' in charge of 'digitizing everything in sight', Bezos once said that 'he couldn't imagine anything more important than reinventing the book ...'

Does Bezos read? I mean seriously read? Does he know what a book is?

Richard Cohen goes on, "The book is warm. The book is handy. The book is handsome to the eye. The book occupies the shelf of the owner and is a reflection of him or her ... The book is always there, to be reached for, to be thumbed and, too often, I admit, to wonder about: Why did I buy this? My bookcase is full of mysteries."

It is at this point that the sitcom laugh track goes, "Aawwww ..."

But yes, I know how it feels. I feel so comfortable in my little room (into which I crawl when I want to be by myself) surrounded by my books I have acquired through the ages ... some are fifty years old ... no, more ... I inherited some from my father, and he got some of those from my grandfather. Bezos wants to replace all that? Surely, there are better things to replace.

(Am I just being over-sentimental here? Did I not feel something similar when my collection of vinyl records became obsolete? Was that the same?)

Richard Cohen further writes, "Bezos will win. Amazon has this device that downloads books. It is called the Kindle, which must be one of those focus group words. Sounds like the German word for children. Sounds like kind. Sounds innocent. Of course, it is not. My friends, book lovers all, have bought Kindles. At first, I was shocked: You? A Kindle? It's like discovering some sort of secret perversion."

Sigh. Are we simply being nostalgic? Soft? Is the Kindle really only a perversion?

Please, tell me that it is.

iStockAnalyst

The Wasington Post

Two good things

It is beginning to get a little down beat living in this city these days, what with exploding maidens, disappearing doctors and PIs, astonishing incompetence, and unbelievable hubris. It is almost as if the Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times' is haunting us. It did arouse my baser instincts in the beginning but I don't feel that way anymore. To paraphrase one expat who came into the shop recently: "What's going on here? There are so many major issues all over the world and people here are only interested on who did what to whom." I had to concede that this is a bizarre country.

However, I am elated by two bits of pretty exciting news (for me at any rate) that came my way in the last week. The first is the publication of the book Tales from the Court by Matthew Thomas. (I'll come to the next one later.) So, what's so exciting about it, you may ask? Another writer, another book. Only that Matthew Thomas is sixty-two years old and has never written creatively before (except for legal briefs). His short story appeared in Silverfish New Writing 5. As far as I know, he is the only Silverfish New Writer from Malaysia, out of more than 150, to have come up with his own volume of short stories in English (I am not counting those who have recycled their previously published stories), and ironically it has to happen after we decided to end the series.

I didn't know that he had never written before when he asked me if I liked his story in SNW5. He asked if he could send me some more. I said, sure. I had almost given him up as 'another one of those' when he sent me his manuscript some two years later. I was delighted. Later when I found out that he had just finished writing them whilst engaged in his full-time legal practice, and that these were not stories he had written years ago, I was gobsmacked. He was certainly not going to spend the next ten years congratulating himself and milking the glory from the one short story in SNW5. And Matthew is no one-hit-wonder. He is already working on his next book.

As Mohamed M Keshavjee, his very good friend, says in the afterword to the book, 'In this book, all ... characters talk to us. The author captures the very essence of their being ... and their little games in life ...' In Tales from the Court are little anecdotes of little people, much like in the works of RK Narayan or Jorge Amado, and not grand narratives. This is a book by Malaysians for Malaysians. Matthew refuses to pander.

Tales from the Court is the second book in Silverfish Books' Malaysian Literature in English series. And Malaysian literature, it is. This is what we hope to be doing from now on: complete books by Malaysian authors. Currently we have six more in our line-up. Yes, we are not prolific. We prefer to take our time, work with authors and produce books they can live with, and we can live with. How many more Matthew Thomases are there out there? Please raise your right hand and step forward. We need more of you.

Our aims are modest -- about a dozen or more Malaysian authors producing good books consistently should boost the industry. Win prizes? Why not? A Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region is certainly not inconceivable. The Booker? Okay, I am going to let fly on something that I have kept bottled up for a while now:

Page 90, Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005.

'Bomnabhai's wife's earlobes, lengthened with the weight of South African diamonds, so great, so heavy, that one day, from one ear, an earring ripped through, a meteor disappearing with a bloody clonk into her bowl of srikhand.'

Earring? Meteor? If ever there was a schoolgirl simile ... Okay, give her an 'A' for her composition ... clever Form Five schoolgirl ... but a Man Booker? What were they thinking? Is this the epitome of English prose today? (I can imagine the cattiness in the room after the results were announced and she went up to receive her prize ...)

There is more. The book is full of it -- silly similes and stereotypes. (Is there some kind of competition going on, about who can come up with the silliest?)

Anyone surprised why I cannot read books like this anymore? VS Naipaul got it right: '... Indian Writers in English (IWE's) are responsible for creating a body of literature in exile mainly written by writers and read by readers living abroad ...' Yes I know, European and American readers like this shit, it confirms their stereotype and ignorance, and writers make a lot of money. But, again ... a Man Booker? If anyone wrote that at a Silverfish Writing Programme, I will tell them to 'go and take a shower'. (BTW, a customer told us that this book is in the chick-lit section in one major bookshop. Padan muka.)

Gosh, I am making myself all depressed again.

So, while we look forward to rubbishing this year's winner let's go on to the next good thing that happened to me recently. I got my Malaysian International Passport renewed in one hour and fifty-five minutes. Yes, you read that right. They promise a two-hour service with the new kiosks at Pusat Bandar Damansara. I had to test it. It works. Oh boy, does it work. Finally, something in this country works as promised. No form filling, nothing. One passport photo, photocopy of IC, original IC, old passport, two minutes in front of the touch-screen kiosk, and collect your new passport two hours later. Guess what? No queues.

Cool.

The Kindle conundrum

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore ... Forty percent of the people in the US read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

This is Steve Jobs' comment when asked about the e-reader in general, and the Amazon Kindle in particular. But then Steve Jobs is noted for making comments like that and then coming up with a device that blows the competition out of the water. Think iPhone, talking about which the latest 3G model had just sold one million in the first three days. In contrast according to a Bloomberg report, James Mitchell, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York, estimates that the Kindle sold between 25,000 to 50,000 units in the first three months of it launch. (Jeff Bezos himself refused to divulge any numbers, Steve Jobs was happy to.)

For many, the Kindle is dead -- say the last rites and get it over with. For others, the jury is still out yet, though they are beginning to sound more and more like cheerleaders still moping about on the bleaches about the referee's controversial penalty decision, refusing to leave the stadium, long after the game is over and all the spectators have gone home. Or hedge fund managers trying to talk-up the price of Amazon stock so they can cash out quickly.

In a story posted on Seekingalpha.com titled Amazon's Kindle Numbers: All Fluff, Zero Substance, Preshant Cherukuri writes: "It is very obvious that Amazon's Kindle is a huge flop. In six months of travelling, I am yet to see a single person on any bus, train or plane with a Kindle in their hands. Contrast that with the iPod or iPhone or even the Sansa, where people can actually be seen using them everywhere."

He adds: "... I still have not understood why anyone would pay US$350 for a device that needs to be powered up all the time to be in use, just to read a book which otherwise costs US$15 on an average. And its not like the e-book is free on Kindle: you have to shell out an
average of US$10 per book."

This is a view not uncommonly expressed. I can't understand it either. I have no intention of buying an iPhone (I do not use mobiles) but I can see how it could be useful. For one thing, the iPhone is merely a fully-fledged computer masquerading as a mobile phone. (Has AT&T not caught on yet?) You can watch DVD quality movies, television shows, listen to music, play games (Wired Magazine says the other gaming platforms better watch out), surf the net, do word processing, spreadsheets, and emails in a device that fits into your shirt pocket. And ... read books, newspapers and magazines? (Apple also reported that it recorded 10 million software downloads for the iPhone, also in the first three days of the launch.) Doesn't give Kindle much of a chance, does it? I have not seen one, but from photographs it does not look like it will fit into a pocket easily.

Then, PC Pro says that author Nick Hornby writes on his blog: "Attempting to sell people something for GBP400 that merely enables them to read something that they won't buy at one hundredth of the price seems to me a thankless task ..." He says a member of staff at Borders
told him that. He asserts they are so expensive that even multi-millionaire stars don't want them, and says that his local bookstore is "piled high" with Iliad eBook readers.

Then there are the cheerleaders. The Bloomberg report mentioned above says: "Donald Graham, chief executive officer of Washington Post Co., travels almost every week and says he hardly ever leaves home without his Kindle digital book reader from Amazon.com Inc."

And that: "By 2010, Amazon may get 3 percent, or US$741 million, of revenue from sales of the paperback-sized reader and digital books, according to Citigroup Inc. analyst Mark Mahaney, a Kindle user. That's up from this year's 0.3 percent, or US$60 million ..." Someone even says, "It's reasonable to assume books will go the way of music or the DVD at some point, with the majority being sold digitally ..."

Ahem.

A more recent report in The Independent says that Waterstone's is to launch its own e-Reader. Borders UK launched one in May. Waterstone's, which is part of HMV Group, is thought to have signed a deal with Sony.

For more related stories in cyberspace read Kindle seen as transitional technologi in Business Week and Is a Kindle to books as an iPod is to tunes? in the San Fransico Chronicle. Talk about wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, Gregory Lamb of the Christian Science Monitor reports that "As Microsoft backs away from digitizing old texts, some worry that a single company could privatize world knowledge.” That is, Google. "Should a single company be left in charge of putting all of the world’s books online?" he asks. The story is about concerns of Google becoming the new evil empire. But what is interesting is that Google CEO, Dr Eric Schmidt, sits on the Board of Apple.

Hmmm. It is getting interestinger and interestinger.

It was 20 years ago today ...

We wish we could sing that (20 years ago today, that is), but no ... we turned nine on the 25th of June. Yes, that's right. We are now into out tenth year. We let the milestone pass more in sober reflection rather than in celebration though. To be honest, we are still trying to wrap our heads around it.

What does nine years mean? That it has been a good fight and we are still around? Or, 'Oh my God, has it really been that long?' Or, is that all? Feels like we have been at it forever? Actually, it feels like all of that, at the same time.

We opened for business in Desa Sri Hartamas on the 25th of June 1999. At that time there were no mega bookstore in KL (MPH Mid-Valley only opened about nine month later). The scene was pretty bleak. There was, of course, Skoob Books -- the only bookstore that could provide us with the type of books we wanted then. The concept for Silverfish Books was pretty simple. We wanted a bookstore with the types of books we personally would want to read, with places to sit and browse through our selection without having to balance them precariously on tiny little horizontal surfaces available in between bookshelves, and possible have some coffee as we sorted them and decided which to buy. It was not based on any bookshop we knew (except maybe one in Melbourne we liked, that had played classical music at low volumes for ambience -- not muzak, not extra loud pasar malam 'One, Two, Three o'clock, Four o'clock, Lock'), it was just something we wanted. But, people have told us that Silverfish Books is like this or that bookshop in other parts of the world, and we'd go, "Oh?" (Two of the best compliments: a gentleman who came in for the first time said, "Oh, this is a real bookshop," and another said "This looks just like a bookshop in India." Wahhh!!! We were really flattered by the second comment. If you have ever been to a bookshop in India, you will understand.)

But book retail in KL is, of course, crazy. 'Dah-lah, we started in the middle of a recession, then mega stores started opening up all over like nobody's business, in a city where no one reads, with thousands upon thousands of imported books (while Singapore was going through a period of consolidation). This is a bizarre country.

We started publishing in 2001 with Silverfish New Writing 1. There was a real buzz around that one. We decided to make a go for it (against the advice 'publishing in Malaysia got no future-lah') in mid-September 2001, sent out the emails end-September requesting for submissions by end-October. We received 200 stories. Amir Muhammad volunteered to do the selection and editing, a whole host of people volunteered to proof it, to do the illustration, to design the cover and everything, and the book was out before Christmas. (There must be a record in there somewhere.) To date it is our favourite.

The rest, like they say, is history. To date we have published 29 titles of which 25 are still in print. Have we made a difference, a dent? We think so but, of course, we could be accused of being a little precious. It will be for others to decide. We have stopped doing the Silverfish New Writing series, as you know, but that's because we want to move-on to the next level. We want to focus on book-length prose from now on. (We already have six authors with previously unpublished books lined up, and they all live in the country.)

Then we have organised two International Literary Festivals -- in 2004 and in 2007 -- with writers from a dozen different countries. It was exciting, it was stressful, it was a little audacious, it was niggly, but ultimately, we have been told, it was fun. (Sometimes, we are too tired to notice).

So, how has the first nine years been? We have been flattered and flamed and called all sorts of names, but we guess, okay-lah. At least, we have not been ignored.

Here we are now, entertain us

Book critics are getting all angsty again. Michael Saler writes in a The Times Literary Supplement story The rise of fan fiction and comic book culture explores the industry from 'book-burning and prohibition to Pulitzer Prizes and prestige'.

One of the lines in the report says: 'If culture is often war by other means, we are finally witnessing a truce in one longstanding conflict: that between so-called elite and mass cultures.' I suppose Silverfish Books would be compared to 'Japanese soldiers fighting the Second World War long after it ended'.

So are we, in Silverfish Books, snobs? I guess we are and will be perceived as such. But we are willing to live with that. I have nothing against genre fiction, really -- I was weaned on them -- but somehow find most of them not quite satisfying anymore, after having read a bit. I mean, it's a bit difficult having caramel coated popcorn for lunch (I could, when I was a kid) after you have tried banana leaf rice. But if you have never had anything but popcorn for lunch, I guess you will not miss anything.

Which brings us to the question: what industry are we in? Not food for sure.

Let's go back to basics -- which I do whenever I have an issue to deal with. Let us imagine living in caves fifty thousand years ago. The first need would be food. We would have got that from the nuts, fruits, roots, stems, seeds, leaves, and the occasional rabbit or squirrel or wild boar. Then we would need to reproduce; hence some wild sex. After this would come communication, or story telling. This would have been absolutely essential to keep us alive, especially good story telling. Can you imagine coming home after an encounter with a tiger and not telling everyone about it? Or, I mean, the difference between, "Oh, I saw a tiger on the way home," and, "There is a bloody tiger, big as a house, out there and it is eating people! I just escape being eaten!" said with the lots of dramatic and, appropriate, special effects to communicate the danger (although you actually saw the event from a safe distance from the top of the hill). Then, came entertainment.

Fast forward to the 21^st century. Food is aplenty, we fornicate ourselves silly and security is seldom an issue. So, what else is there? Entertainment. Never before in our entire history have people demanded so much entertainment every time, all the time. It is one long continuous bop till you drop fun-fest. Food is entertainment. Shopping is entertainment. Sex is entertainment. And dressing. And talking. And everything. Even colleges advertise as if their courses are all entertainment. We, fucking, blow our minds to find ways to entertain ourselves, maxing out at every bloody opportunity, which is all the time. Since the end of the Second World War, the most rapidly growing industry has been entertainment -- from the radio, to television to computers to everything. Remember the 90s anthem, Smells like Teen Spirit?

Here we are now, entertain us,
I feel stupid and contagious.

So, what industry is the book in? (Let's leave out the educational and academic books for the moment -- they are going to be taken over by the internet and e-readers soon, anyway.) Surprise! Entertainment. If in the past, storytelling has been part of entertainment, or entertainment has always had storytelling as a part of it, now storytelling is all entertainment. And books are about story telling. Books compete directly with music, movies, television, shopping malls, mamak shops and even telephone calls, it appears. Write it well and it will be read. Write it badly and people will not, no matter what the critics say. Storytelling is about communicating information, 'the tiger' in the case above and the danger associated with it.

So, Silverfish Books is an insufferably snobbish bookstore. We are only interested in books we (and our friends) like, and they generally tend to be good stories well told. We don't really bother too much about genre. Love in the Times of Cholera is a romance after all..

Times on line

Is the Malaysian malaise contagious?

We are all quite familiar with the Malaysian malaise -- from electric hibiscus (is that a nice name for a rock and roll band, or what?) and steel bunga mangga to instant nirvana and grotesquely fake Rococo furniture. (Jonathan Kent called this a-laugh-a-minute country. Another American couple thought we were simply bizarre.)

I was telling Anna that if I could invent a pill for writers -- you know like blue ones for prose, or pink for poetry, and so on -- I would be rich in no time. "No effort required, simply take one or two in the morning and two before retiring at night, and become a writer in no time, and claim your very own fifteen minutes of fame. For the Nobel Prize increase dosage to eight a day, but continuous usage may be required for at least six weeks. Maximum dosage: twelve a day. Proven side effects include stark raving madness, but that will qualify you to become a member of parliament." And while we are at it we could work on a pill for our footballers. "No training required. Take two in the morning and two at night for an Olympic medal. Guaranteed." Actually, I can think of pills for almost anything, though we probably have to beware of imitations. We are Malaysians after all. (I have absolutely no idea how we can possibly come up with a pill to cure our government officials of that dreaded electric hibiscus disease, though.)

You all have heard this before from this crabby uncle -- why are Malaysian's living overseas able to achieve so much more than those at home, be they writers or dancers or musicians or anything, why do we spend 3.5 million a month on a Philharmonic Orchestra comprising of (Mainly) foreigner mucisians for (mainly) foreigner audience, when that 42 million a year could be used to promote music education in a 1000 schools or build 100 mini KLPacs. (Can you imagine where the country would be now, in the ten years we have been wasting our time with The Malaysian Phil? God knows, I am not xenophobic.)

Anna, who has been in this country for 15 years, will be going to London for a bit before coming back. She hopes to do some work -- that is writing -- while she is there. She says she feels so lazy when she is here!

I was shocked.

"No, it's not so shocking. So many of my expatriate friends tell me the same thing. Being here makes them lazy," she said. "When they first come here, they like the sun so much, they spend all their time in the swimming pool. Then they get fed up, and try to look for other things, but there is nothing ... or they say there is nothing ... everything is so sensitive ... except shopping ..."

"Yes, yes, yes ... but why do you become lazy? Is it the weather, or is there something in the drinking water, or is it the air, or ..."

"I don't know ... except that when I am in London I will have plenty of time to write. When I was in Singapore, I used to help out in the National Museum like many other expatriate wives -- they gave us six months training -- but here they are not interested in us ... I had so much to do in Singapore."

I felt something there, because I remember a time when expatriates were quite active in the drama circles -- I mean in the production, acting, directing, music, lighting and so on. (We didn't learn all that living in a vacuum, you know.) Now, the only place we seem to find expatriates in are expensive coffee places, supermarkets or upmarket shopping malls. Still, Anna's answer was not entirely satisfactory.

"But that still does not explain why one becomes lazy when one comes here."

"Well, here everyone is satisfied with small things. If they go for pottery classes, they are happy if they can make a little pot for themselves. They are not interested in finding out more, in improving further, for excellence. There were many pottery classes before. Now, most of them are shut. When it comes to shopping they want the best, they don't mind spending twenty bucks on a cup of coffee, or a few hundred on a dress so they can look good. But they do nothing to improve themselves. They write a small story, they are happy. They make a small film, they are happy. Direct a bad play, and they are happy."

She went on and I kept trying to pull her back. "Yes, but what makes expatriates become like the locals?"

She tried to explain, but she couldn't put her finger on it, not to my satisfaction in any case. Anna has promised to write me an essay on the subject (which I shall post on this column as soon as I get it). But in the mean time one wonders what other expatriates out there think about this? And, are we really in serious danger of finding electric hibiscuses in Piccadilly Circus?

In praise of alterity

The Kuala Lumpur Alternative Bookfest earlier this month was a nice experience. No, seriously. It was small, cozy, friendly and, most of all, I liked the buzz. There was no fear of it becoming another orgy of commercial bookselling -- it was not large enough to be noticed by the 'big boys'. With not a textbook in sight, not one workbook, not one management book, nor one 'teach-others-how-to-live-their-lives' book, it was a breath of fresh air. Most of the books were Malaysian, in Malay and in English, though there were some books from Indonesia and Singapore, which was good given the way our bookshops are overflowing with imported books. It was nice to see book social groups participating. There was also a 'free books' booth, a book charity, apart from indie and self publishers. (Silverfish Books paid for one of the tables that was used to sell books for charity, and supplied the books as well.)

Congratulations to the organisers. Hope you will do this regularly. I am sure there are other publishers who should have been there. Maya Press comes to mind. I understand the necessity to stop somewhere, or this could end up like any other fair. What is alternative? Alternative to what? Sometimes it is easier to define what we don't want, than what we want. I wouldn't want a book fair selling mainly school textbooks and workbooks like the recent KL International Book Fair, so that is one. That was easy. Secondly, it would be nice to be a place that featured only Malaysian books so we don’t get swamped with imported books. How about books from the other ASEAN countries, then? It is nice to have them around. No? Let us leave that out for the moment and stick to local books. Non-fiction books are fine but do I really want to go to a fair with tables full of books on management, self-help and recycled 'wisdom'? Ultimately, it is up to the organisers to decide. For me, I like the mix of the first KLAB -- eclectic but not high-brow, and fun.

I attended only one session, the one by Sisters In Islam on book censorship, Wacana on book banning. Pretty good turnout, I thought. On the panel were V. Gayathry (Centre for Independent Journalism), Astora Jabat (former Chief Editor of Al-Islam and columnist on Islamic affairs in Utusan Malaysia)
, Norhayati Kaprawi (Sisters In Islam) 
 and a phantom representative from Home Ministry. (He was not visible to anyone, nor did he say anything.) The debate went along pretty much predictable lines (we have all heard it before -- they went to the ministry, spoke to some furniture and came back disappointed, how dare that chair tell me what I should read!) but I liked Astora Jabat's presentation on censorship within Islam -- seemed pretty much about power. The poster and the postcard SIS organized for the event was nice.

So will the issue of book banning ever go away? I think not. We will probably have to wait for a gomen baru, lor.

Australia-Asian Literary Award

I am not a great fan of book prizes. But then, I am not a great fan of prizes of any sort. (Huzir say that no one is, until they win one themselves.) However, when I received the following notice it caught my eye for some reason. It was not the prize money -- AUD$110,000 is nothing to scoff at. It seemed a bit more straight forward, unlike the circus act the Man Booker Asia turned out to be. (This could also become one, if they are not careful.)

Asia (for the Award) includes these countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong (China), Macau (China), Tibet (China), India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, New Zealand, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor Leste (East Timor) and Vietnam. (West Asia still not included. Why?)
You can read the rules and get the entry forms here.
The closing date is 31^st May 2008. (The media statement is reproduced below.)

PREMIER;
MINISTERFOR CULTURE AND THE ARTS
JOINTMEDIA STATEMENT

16/4/08

Australia and Asia's richest literary award launched.

The richest literary award in Australia and Asia has been launched by Premier Alan Carpenter.

Mr Carpenter said the inaugural Western Australian Premier's Australia-Asia Literary Award, worth $110,000, had the power to excite and expand the State's cultural horizons.

"This is a very exciting award that will re-ignite the importance and profile of literature in WA," Mr Carpenter said.

"A prize of this value will draw the best to WA and help fulfil our vision of providing new opportunities for Western Australians."

Culture and Arts Minister Sheila McHale said the award was part of the Carpenter Government's exciting $73million 'Ignite!' package, the biggest single State Government arts funding injection designed to transform literature, dance, theatre, music and visual arts.

"As part of our dynamic 'Ignite!' initiative, the literary award recognises the importance literature plays in our lives," Ms McHale said.

"WA is no longer a small player in the Australia-Asia region and the award will further expand cultural boundaries."

The Minister said the award is open to any book-length work of literary fiction published in print or electronically - something recognising the increasing predominance of electronic media, such as online and mobile phone formats.

The judging panel will consist of three renowned authors and literary experts drawn from some of the nominating countries. They include Pakistani born and multi-award winning author, Kamila Shamsie, author of 'Kartography' and 'Broken Verses' and Sri Lankan born, Hong Kong based columnist and founder of the 'Asia Literary Review', Nury Vittachi.

"This award is a fabulous vote of confidence which I know will kick-start a writing revolution," Mr Vittachi said.

"By embracing the area in which we live, and opening up this award outside Australia, we recognize the rich cultural heritage of Asia and the links our countries can create, on more than an economic basis."

The $110,000 prize makes the award the richest in the nation. Where the winning entry has been translated into English, the author will receive $88,000 and the translator $22,000.

The award is open to works written by an author resident in Australia or Asia, or which are primarily set in Australia or an Asian country. Works must have been either written in, or translated into English and published in the preceding year.

Entries for the award are now open and will close on May 31, 2008. Forms can be downloaded from the Department of Culture and the Arts website http://www.dca.wa.gov.au

Media contacts: Premier's office: Guy Houston 9222 9475 or 0411 742 692

Culture and the Arts Minister's office: Andrew Smith 9213 6900 or 0408 176 839

You can subscribe to have media releases emailed automatically from the Government's website: http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au

Book review by a guest writer

Review of Latif Kamaluddin's Lazy Lamas and Voodoo Genitalia, Prayala, 2006

by

Guest Writer: Shankaran Nambiar

Latif Kamaluddin's Lazy Lamas and Voodoo Genitalia is an exciting and provocative collection of poems that attempts to tease and disturb the reader. With this volume, Kamaluddin effortlessly establishes himself as the most outstanding poet in Malaysia who attempts to explore the limits of language and the mystical edges of religion.

His "Cosmic Interview" raises the question of "why when and how/ did the individual/ self experience separation/ from the Universal Self". Only to be answered with a terse, "... if I know". This is followed by some blank space, framed by the line "END OF INTERVIEW." This poem is at once an exploration in religion in its most mystical sense, as well as a play of space and silence. Kamaluddin could have noted that the interview had ended immediately after the answer to the question was delivered, rather he chose to permit space to pervade between the answer and his declaration that the interview had ended. This serves only to highlight the silence that follows something for which no ready answer can be given. In this sense, Kamaluddin equates space (with no words) with silence.

This play of space as silence finds expression in an untitled poem of his where on one side of the page one finds the lines "god/must/be /liberated" juxtaposed against the lines "man/must/be/ re-created". Both of these lines, arranged as columns, are separated by a wide gap, or a breadth of space, that denotes the divide between man and God. Reading this poem, it is clear that Kamaluddin does more than seek to stress the unbridgeable gap between man and God. He also points out that God is a linguistic contraption of which we must be freed, and in so doing we take upon ourselves the task of liberating God from our preconceptions of Him, however we may conceive of Him. This process of "liberating god" or our linguistic understanding of God, Kamaluddin declares, results in man being re-created. But that, indeed, is a long process that in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions could take lifetimes of effort. It is an effort that needs great patience; and if we do not have the patience to wait without any demand, it could be akin to the feeling of constipation. And that explains why Kamaluddin rather irreverently announces at the close: "LET US ALL THEN GET CONSTIPATED."

We have come to be accustomed to waiting for actions that are result-oriented. Waiting in the spiritual sense is quite the opposite; it is a waiting that calls for the attitude "Thy will be done". Such waiting consequently implies waiting outside the boundaries of time. Kamaluddin’s concern with waiting of that nature comes to the fore again in his "Memogramme". He notes that "You are/dead now/and/I/ am unavailable/" and then goes on to ask, "so/where does/that leave/longing?" The context that he poses here is one where Nietzsche's God is dead and the seeker is unavailable. In a situation such as this what does longing mean, if one can at all long for the Divine under such circumstances? The irony that Kamaluddin hints at is mischievous when one notes that the title of this poem suggests the common memo that is circulated in offices, which requires results of a tangible form, not some longing that needs divine fervour. Again, a memo cannot function in the presence of the death of a person and the absence of another, a distinction that is absolutely at odds with a religious life.

Kamaluddin's untitled 'box' poem appears, at first sight, like word play. It seems to be the careful arrangement of words that takes the form of a square. The line on top reads, "every body has" and it turns down in clockwise direction to go on to "a box no one", leading on to "goes there", finally ending with "no one knows". If read in the natural sequence of a square, it would read: "every body has/a box no one/ goes there/ no one knows." One could, and is tempted to, read differently. Perhaps Kamaluddin is suggesting that everyone has a 'box', to which no one goes, and of which no one knows. If the reader were to take the trouble to develop the right metaphors, this poem can elicit tremendous insights; and in this sense he wants us to take a more intellectual posture towards his poems. Whatever it is that one takes a 'box' to suggest, at its core it is empty. And one cannot but fail to note that the "void" is a theme that recurs in his poetry in different ways, as the absence of person, as the death of God, as a concept that begs to be stripped of its linguistic trappings.

As can only be fitting for a collection of poems that is religious in a rebellious fashion and which invites linguistic de- and re-construction, Kamaluddin's last poem, entitled "Finalaudit", has just three lines, "going/ going/ gone". And these three words, which are so reminiscent of the Buddhist exhort to go beyond the temporal world, seem to be hiss reminder that urges us to go beyond the apparent as suggested by language and grammar.

In this volume Kamaluddin, perhaps, expresses concerns that should be central to one's life: to explore the foundation of time and space, to delve into solidity and embrace the void, to explore the interplay of word and silence; and more than anything else, to seek liberation from the strictures of language, grammar, form and sound. Kamaluddin in his slim and shocking volume, extends a formidable invitation to the reader.

(Silverfish Books will be giving away free copies of this book to anyone who comes to the bookshop and is interested -- please ask for one. Since we have only limited copies, it will have to be on a, strictly, first come first served basis. We will not take reservations or bookings.)

Does every book count?

Edward Russell-Walling writes in Publishers Weekly, in a story called Every book counts that while '... the giants slug it out, huge tracts of territory are won or lost ... nipping between the tanks and the shell-bursts are nimble squads of guerrillas, partisans and secessionists -- the independents.' He is, of course, writing about the publishing industry, not the retail end. The latter is another story. (There too, the independents who after being clobbered for decades by the 800-pound gorillas are now resurgent in a small way. The fact is, the 'war of the worlds' scenario between the King Kongs is also taking its toll: Borders might be looking for a buyer and Barnes and Noble has been mentioned as the possible one -- though it lost money last quarter. Be ready on Ebay when the bidding starts. In the same breath, Waterstone's continues to reduce in size. What's going to happen to book retail in Malaysia? You guess.)

There are reports of bloodshed on the publishing front as well -- the 5.6% drop in sales and earnings of Random House last year -- but the story is not about that.

The story says that in UK the independents are those not one of the 'Big Four (Hachette, Random House, HarperCollins and Penguin) or the Not-Quite-So-Big Three (Pan Macmillan, Bloomsbury and Simon & Schuster).' The Independent Publishers' Guild in the UK is said to have 460 members and a GBP 500 million turnover with the numbers increasing, with the cost of entry getting lower and lower. (Theoretically, anyone with a computer can become an independent publisher.)

The wonderful thing about being independent is that you can choose to publish anything you want -- they can be as exclusive and precious to the max, or as leze faire as they want and publish anything that will sell.

"The bigger you are, the more you're affected by the market. If you're small, you make your own success," Tim Hely Hutchinson, CEO of UK Hachette Livre UK is quoted as saying.

Big publishers have to spread there risks across the whole spectrum of the market. Ironically, in that process they avoid risks and stick to safe territory, publishing books on tried and tested subjects and authors. While independents can almost live, if not on fresh air and sunshine, on very low profits while they wait for one big-one to lift them out, large players need to be constantly on their toes, seeking to maximise profits not only for shareholders' returns but also to pay massive staff costs and other overheads. Not surprisingly, independents also have more fun.

Atlantic Books managing director Toby Mundy says: "It irritates (the big publishers) that most of the best publishing people are outside the conglomerate sector ..."

So are the more interesting books published by independents? Every year during the Booker silly season, commentators will take pains to point out the number of independents on the shortlist. Perhaps, there will come a time when we will be more surprised when major publishers get on the list.

Does it make a difference to the book buyer? The answer to this type of questions is always an irritating 'yes and no'. If, as a normal book buyer, I am looking for a particular author, or title, the answer is no. I would not care who the publisher is -- though the quality of production, cover design and price could decide which imprint I choose. Most book buyers will fall into this category. This is the 'sugared water' end of the industry which the big boys operate in. (And many independents, too.)

However, if as a book lover, I want to try something new, I would allow an imprint to influence me somewhat (unless something comes highly recommended.) These are some of my personal prejudices and knee-jerk reactions (possibly misinformed): Faber: hmmm ... I wonder what this is like ... sounds interesting. I will risk it. Ditto Cannongate, Harvill, Serpent’s Tail, Saki Books, and several others. Vintage and Picador ... mmm ... maybe. Harper Collins: rice and sugar merchants, not worth the bother unless it is for a specific author I am looking for. Penguin: good for classics, otherwise 'boring'. And so on. So, as a book lover, imprints do make a difference, though quite small.

How about as a bookstore owner? As a book buyer for Silverfish Books, all the prejudices above do apply. My buying is about 70% based on imprints and 30% on authors and titles. (For those who are not familiar with us, we don't stock best-sellers, self-help and management. So there.)

I have often wondered how much an author thinks of which imprint he (or she) would like to be published by. But I suspect that these are merely short-lived fantasies. I mean you might think how wonderful it would be to be published by Faber (for example). But reality has a way of putting an end to those type of dreams pretty quickly for most new writers. (The established authors, naturally, will have more choices.) You grab the one that makes you the best (or any) offer although, logically, an independent publisher specialising in a specific genre would be your best bet, for not only will they know how to present and develop you, they will give you a longer shelf life. The big boys will give you three months, if that, and if you don't make it in that period, you die. You're remaindered.

(I do not mention any of the Malaysian imprints for obvious reasons: self-preservation.)

Publisher's Weekly