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 21st 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..
I regard the calling to writing a book as multi-purpose; having something to say and praying somebody shares your feelings. Bottomline, I am not the only one thinking about whatever I am angry or happy about e.g. where did the petronas fund money go to?
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps to entertain with data, interesting data turned into entertainment. Something like RTM 'infotainment-maniac' by the recently deposed minister but not as bias or badly done.
I had a talk with Patrick Teoh as he came back from singapore tired, haggled and very unTeoh, compared to his films, and he lamented that the singaporeans are really into creative talents building, be it books, multi-media and especially films. The govt. has focussed on literature, albiet politically censored or not 'meet Big MM Lee at OK court', to create good stories for movies to be made. They actually made it to the top 10 finalists in cannes. What riled patrick is that the singaporeans use a lot of malaysian actors or maybe writings for these ventures. They even say that malaysians are more talented. In this respect, we should not look at writing as a goal but part of a process when our ideas emerged and is finally rendered on the media in one form or other for others to enjoy or even hate it. Maybe a 1 minute handphone clip, "jadilah" or good enough. If they don't like, better to be remembered for something than be forgotten for nothing.
Finally, writing is a therapy, it is suprising as we invent plots and characaters in our little minds, even the mundane'james bond' type we eventually realised that we are writing and embedding ourselves into the story. It doesn't seem so but evenually our personality, even our fears and flaws get caught in. When I read my musings I find these revealing. Maybe not to somebody else, it doesn't matter, it is My Way of telling myself the Things I must know.
Writing, if taken a long, good dose, tells us more about ourselves like drawing and if it entertain and interest somebody, well and good. If steven spielberg wants it to be the next Indiana Jones movie, well that's the icing on the cake.
Thanking you all for this therapy session.
Sincere regards, do write, no!, not to me to everyone out there or for our childrens' sake. At least, they will know what malaysian parents were like.
Mustafa Kamal, silverfish first class of 2008.