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.