The death of the American novel?

And, by extension, judging from the amount of white noise generated in the book world by Lee Siegel’s piece in the New York Observer, ‘Where Have All the Mailers Gone?’, one would wonder the same about the anglophone novel. Maybe, death is an exaggeration. How about ‘terminally ill’ or ‘comatose’ then?

Most book people would have, by now, heard of critic Lee Siegel’s declaration of that American novel dead, though, anyone who has read his story will know, that is not exactly what he said. His assertion is: “ ... no one goes to a current novel or story for the ineffable private and public clarity fiction once provided ...” not because they don’t exist but because readers no longer consider them relevant. He says, “Without a doubt, the next male or female Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald is out there somewhere, hard at work,” but does anyone (meaning the public, not individuals) care?

Not surprisingly, most of the storm it has stirred up is in America with writers, critics and readers all taking up positions (or not, which is also one). The rest of the anglophone literary world looks on nervously, wondering nervously if the child is right, if the Emperor indeed has no clothes, that what they have been seeing has all been an illusion. The Daily Telegraph says defiantly, “People have been declaring the death of the novel ever since the first novelist, Petronius, held the first launch party 2,000 years ago, in Rome.” Bravado, wishful thinking, Dutch courage or whistling in the dark? Which is all understandable, of course, considering how scary the alternatives are, particularly to the status quo.

One of my best lecturers in engineering school was one Professor Chin. His advice for solving any problem was simple: “When in doubt, go back to first principles.” In the case of the book, I guess the basic question is, “Why do people read?” It sounds like a dumb question, but it isn’t. Why do people read? Indeed, why do I read? How did I start?

Okay. First, it was the story. Yes, it was always about the stories, and in them I could become whatever I wanted: a pirate, a private investigator, an adventurer, whales fighter, captain of a submarine, become invisible, defeat aliens ... oh God, the list was endless. Then, I discovered stories where one could learn interesting facts, often embedded within fiction, but sometimes outside of it. Still, it was always about the story, even when it was nonfiction. Third, was language, the deceptively simple but beautiful sentences, and turns of phrases, words that came to life. Finally, there were stories I read for what they said about me, about the world, about our condition, for the “ ... ineffable private and public clarity ...”

So, what happened? In the last few years, I have practically stopped reading anglophone writings, especially those from America, United Kingdom and India, except for a few by the ‘usual suspects’. They no longer set me on fire. They have become, largely, predictable and tiring. (Having said that, I admit I enjoyed the technique and inventiveness of Matthew Kneale, David Mitchell and Diana Setterfield.) The genre novels either insult your intelligence, or they are so fat due to padding that you have to skim and scan through them like you are reading a local newspaper. Anyway, they are written for fanboys and fangirls, not for normal people. As for the so called literary novels (yes, the boring, difficult ones), getting past the verbosity and onanistic excesses of the writers is becoming really exhausting, and there isn’t even a good story at the end of it, most of the time. (I end up skimming through them, too, if I don’t give up after ten pages.)

My favourite reads now are translated works. Yes, I can hear the collective groans. “But, so much is lost in translation,” you protest. I agree, but is that necessarily a bad thing, given the current state of the ‘literary’ genre? In translated works, I get to read and enjoy all the best European, South American, Caribbean, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean ... anything that’s available, without the dysentery (much of which, thankfully, is either lost in translation, or not there). In translation, I am able to enjoy pithy stories, well told, and still look at different cultures as they are and not what Hollywood (or anyone else) thinks they should be.

When released, was Hemingway classified as literary? Was Harper Lee considered commercial? So who killed (or is killing) the novel. The writers? Writers write what they feel compelled to write. Whether or not they get published is not in their hands. They are, certainly, no dumber than those from earlier generations. Readers? They read for entertainment. If it is too much work, they’ll weigh the benefit and cost, and switch. Also, they are easily exploited by cynical marketing. The gatekeepers? Driven by the dollar, agents and publishers have steadily reduced the book to FMCGs -- fast moving consumer goods -- no different from shoes. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is there no hope for anglophone fiction, then? One recent good news was the opening of a hundred new independent bookshops in the last two years in the UK. Another one is the refusal of St Martin’s Press to pay Janet Evanovich $50 million for her next four books. Greed has to be stopped somewhere. If more publishers do that, there is a chance that anglophone fiction will become relevant again.

There is only one hope for the anglophone novel (like for everything else): bio-diversity. We could do worse than have more (preferably, small) publishers releasing new writers, and let the readers decide. Since most small publishers are poor, perhaps the money men will go elsewhere and sell sugared water, groceries or something.

Is there another Hemingway or Harper Lee out there? I am certain there is. May an independent publisher discover them.

For Saramago, death is only an interval

José de Sousa Saramago died on the 18 of June 2010, but apart from some bloggers, few in the country seemed to know, or care. I didn’t see anything in the newspapers, not even in the ‘books’ section. Jose who? Exactly.

When I read the BBC report on my laptop aloud in the shop, several people said, ‘Oh, no,’ as if I had just announced the death of someone they knew personally. In a way, we all did. Someone suggested we close the shop for the day. Saramago wouldn’t have liked that, I decided, and stayed open.

According to most reports, Saramago died of multiple organ failure after a long illness, although one said that he had breakfast and talked with his wife for a time before he was overcome by ill health and died.

Some regarded Saramago as the best writer in any language when he was alive. Now, his work will continue to live with those of the other all-time greats. I thought of writing an obituary, but then I said, “Will a writer like Saramago ever die? Wouldn’t it be better for him to be read, not mourned?” Below is an introduction to one of the greatest 20th century writers.

Saramago was a writer’s writer, an intellectual's writer, a humanist’s writer, a politician’s writer, among other things. When he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1998, he was reported to have said, “I was not born for all this glory.”

Although he was good in school, his family could not afford to keep him there and, at the age of twelve, he was enrolled in a technical school whereupon, after graduation, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. After that he worked as a translator, a journalist and an assistant editor.
He wrote his first novel when he was 25, and it was a flop. Then fifteen years later he started writing again -- mainly poems and plays. International recognition, however, eluded him until 1987 when Balthazar and Blimunda (which he wrote in 1982) was released internationally.

I have stopped reading writers to death (because there are so many wonderful writers and so little time), but I have made an exception of Saramago. His prose was lucid, unpretentious and direct. Despite his long sentences, I never got the feeling that he was difficult to read. He would replace full stops with commas, and didn’t believe in quotation marks (when the speaker changed, he simply capitalised the first letter and got on with it). In the hands of a lesser writer all this would have become tedious, but not with his works. His novels were fast paced and relentless, simultaneously comic and brutal. His were stories of the human condition, about the astounding capacity of man for tenderness or violence.

My first Saramago book was the History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989). Proofreader Raimundo Silva is assigned to correct a book by his publishing house. After much deliberation, he decides to ‘correct’ a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text. So the new version says that the Crusaders did not come to the aid of the Portuguese monarch in taking Lisbon from the Moors, which is contrary to the account in standard textbooks. According to ‘agreed’ history, the 1147 ousting of the Moors from Lisbon was the event that resulted in the formation of the Portuguese nation. He questions the nature of history and its relationship to truth and reality. In the end the reader is left wondering if the proofreader’s transgression resulted in a more accurate version of what really happened. As Malaysians, we are all too aware of how history can and is being changed, albeit with much less finesse than Raimundo Silva.

My attraction to Saramago has always been the universality of his writings -- a mark of all great writers. I always felt he was talking to me, the Malaysian. An epidemic of ‘white blindness’ struck the population of a fictitious country in Blindness (arguable his greatest work), leading to mass panic and the collapse of social order, highlighting the repression and ineptness of the government in dealing with the situation. It was so much like home -- a country suffering from 50 years of mass blindness with the blind fumbling as they led the blind ineptly, ruling the blind, abusing the blind, and raping the blind. Despite all that, many still prefer to remain blind, and seek comfort in the condition. No proper nouns are used throughout the book,  and characters are referred to merely as the doctor, the doctor’ wife, girl with dark glasses, and so on.

The sequel to it, Seeing, involving the same people in the same city; a few years on, people begin ‘seeing’ with bizarre results. On polling day, 83% of the votes cast are blank, as the party on the right, the party on the left and the party in the middle look on. Journalists and bureaucrats are bewildered. Citizens carry on with their lives. When asked whom they voted for, the citizens remind them politely that the question is illegal. Then the government goes berserk and becomes increasingly repressive as it looks for the ringleaders, though there are none.

Does all this sound familiar? Is voting meaningless?

Saramago was a member of the Communist Party and an atheist, but that did not stop him from writing The Gospel According to Jesus Christ about a very human Jesus up against a megalomaniac of a God, while the devil tempts him with hedonism. Some have condemned this books as ‘antireligious’ while other have praised it for its ‘philosophical and compelling’ approach to the subject. (He also wrote another book on religion called Cain - the first murderer. The book has just been released.)

Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature one year after he wrote The Tale of the Unknown Island. It is one of those children’s books that are not really for children. It is a slim volume -- about 50 pages -- with illustrations. It is a deceptively simple tale full of metaphors about hope, dreaming, politics and governance. Following is a quote from the book:
"...you have to leave the island in order to see the island that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing."

The Stone Raft deals with a hypothetical situation in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks away from Europe and drifts into the Atlantic. What if the Malay Peninsula were to break off at the Isthmus of Kra and float away, together with Sumatra, into the Indian Ocean? How would history be written?

Translation blues

The most common Malaysian joke about translation is probably tahi suci, a literal rendering of ‘holy shit’ in Bahasa. Whether that was really the part of a cinema subtitle, or is merely another urban legend, is unclear. Another example often cited by cinema aficionados is tembak, tembak for ‘fire, fire’. Apparently, there were no guns involved in the story. (This problem is, by no means, confined to Malay. There are dozens of emails going around about Chinese translations. We were watching a presentation of the Beijing Opera at KLPac once. The organisers had helpfully decided to provide surtitles for the Cantonese illiterate, me included. Somewhere in the middle of the show, when an opera couple was frolicking in a make belief garden, a translation flashed, “... like butterflies fondling in the garden.” It was certainly a good rendering of the Chinese opera (for neophytes like me), but that translation simply took my breath away. I was speechless. “What ... what ... whaaat?”

Among the things we do to pay our rent, is the editing of works already translated from Malay to English. One of the earliest ones we did involved head-hunters in East Malaysia about 150 years ago. In one scene, the characters talk about a tiang belian, the ironwood main pillar of a longhouse, and this was translated as ‘purchased pillar’! Hah, you didn’t know that, did you? One hundred and fifty years ago, headhunters already had kedai runcit in the middle of the jungle selling pillars for longhouses! Then in another scene in the same novel, the hero is confronted by the leader of the hunters who beats and puffs his chest to show off  kejantananya. This was translated as ‘beat his chest and shows off his manhood ...’ Flasher ... flasher!

Do translators even read over their work before submission, or do they not know any better?

Since then, we have insist on having the Malay original with us when we edit. Can you imagine this going into the international market in that form? We pick out dozens of such boo-boos in almost every book. How about this one we came across recently: “... kami cuma ada sepasang anak lembu, satu jantan dan satu betina ...” translated as “... we only have a pair of cow children, one male and one female ...”

I swear, time stood still at that point. Oh my God, it was so bad, it’s good. An Olympic gold medalist? You bet.

Then there is the prose. How is this for starters: ... mengikut tradisi tradisional yang amat berdradisi (repeated about a 150 times throughout the book). That is ‘ ... following traditional traditions that are extremely traditional’. (One might be tempted to think that this is a sure winner at the Olympics of prose until one sees the rest.) I am not a Malay scholar. I admit my knowledge of the language is purely functional, but can anyone out there tell me that this is good Malay prose? How does one edit stuff like that?

Then there are writers who love the ‘bunga-bunga’ stuff. How about this one: “The little clusters of sadness had become an island of sorrow that squeezed her in the narrows of her old age.”

Hahhh?

I can hear some people go, “Isn’t it so-oo beautiful? Like poetry?” Really? Like poetry? I am no poet, but if that isn’t an insult to the form, I don’t know what is. As far as I know, poetry lives on the economy of words, and the preciseness of their usage. This, on the other hand, is built on verbosity, diarrhoea; a writer carried away with his or her cleverness. This is the kind of stuff fifteen-year-old schoolgirls and schoolboys write to impress their friends and teachers. Anyway, does the writer even know what he or she is trying to say? As a reader, I certainly don’t. I could pretend, of course, so as not to look stupid. Read a few hundred of those and see what it does to your sanity.

This is not confined to Malay prose, either. Not too long ago there was a book that compared an earring falling into a cereal bowl to a meteor. One customer said that, when she came across this passage on page 90, she decided she had had enough. Another tossed his book across the room. This author went on to win the Man-Booker Prize for that year. There certainly is no accounting for taste.

So what is good prose? Is it merely a matter of personal taste, then? As a publisher, I have been asked that often. What do I look for in a manuscript? Okay, let me try:

Good prose is one that does not obstruct the flow of the story, nor take the attention away from it, nor bury it under a pile of verbose crap. It is like a good computer operating system: user-friendly, easy to use and elegant. It remains unobtrusively in the background, getting the job of telling a good story without screaming out for attention like an obnoxious five-year-old, “Mummy, mummy, look what I have done. See how clever I am.” Good prose is not about the cleverness of the writer. If the writer is clever, it will show. Every word, every phrase and every sentence will have to satisfy the conditions of necessity and sufficiency to earn its right to remain on the page.

Some might say I set the bar too high. After all, we are only Malaysians.

Banish that thought if you are planning to send me a manuscript.

Why we publish

We have heard it said many times before, that publishing in this country, especially in English, is crazy. Very often, it appears that way. It does sometimes feel like such a monumental waste of time. We have heard this many times before: no one reads in this country. But, having been publishers for ten years now, the converse argument often appears equally valid: no one writes.

Certainly, I am putting myself on the line for some verbal bashing with that . So, let me clarify. One only has to walk into any of the dozen mega bookstores (or any of the frequent warehouse sales) in the country to witness the feeding frenzy. So, Malaysians do buy books, whether they them read or not. But, the fact remains that the vast majority of the books bought are American, British or Australian, that is foreign. Many Malaysians would go as far as to say that they only read imported books because local books are not good,though it is unclear what exactly they mean by it: the design, the paper quality, the cover, the writing, the plot, the way the characters are drawn ... what?

We have said this many many times: if one wants a customer to buy one’s book, one has to give him or her a very good reason to pick it up instead of any of the thousands of other titles in the store -- including all the foreign ones, dating back to Homer and before. As far as book selling goes, Malaysians are totally and completely globalised.

So, on a bookshop shelf, egalitarianism rules; Malaysian books stand at par with imported ones, and a customer has every right to demand to know why he/she should spend hard-earned money on your book and not another. Is it good enough? What do you have to say that is unique? How is the argument presented? Is the writing any good? Will I be embarrassed if I were to take your book out in public? Etc, etc, etc. Life is so-oo difficult.

(We have also had customers ask why local books are so expensive. This book is RM30.00, and it has only 180 pages. That is more than 16 sen a page. How can? How much does it weight? What, 275 gms? That is almost 11sen a gramme, RM110.00 a kilo! That's too much. What is it about? Is there anything about May 13 in it? No? Why not? So what if it is a book on flower arrangement? It is Malaysian, isn’t it? Surely all Malaysian books must have something about the May 13th incident ... it can’t be much good then, can it? We do have all sorts of customers.)

For Malaysian publishing to survive, there has to be a credible book industry. Expect no help from the Government and, certainly, no handouts. Even a level playing field seems too much to ask. A media, less interested in glamour and more in news could be helpful, but don’t hold your breath.

Still, we persist. Why? Firstly, we don’t think Malaysians don’t read. Secondly, we believe Malaysian writers (living in Malaysia) can compete with international writers -- Shih-Li Kow did beat Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro and Whitbread winner Ali Smith to the shortlist of the Frank O'Connor Award -- and Malaysians living abroad, and that too without ‘pandering’ to the Western reader (or the kukumars* amongst us) with the stereotype and the dubiously exotic. (When the Slumdog Millionaire circus came to town, we heard these comments. The first was from a Malaysian who said, "(Sitting in the cinema) I could imagine those mat-sallehs around me going, 'Oh it's so wo-onderful. Isn't is so-oo Indian,' every time AR Rahman's music score came on with another 'wretched-Indian' scene." The next one was from a white expatriate lady from South Africa who found the whole spectacle quite insulting. "This is exactly what they do to Africa all the time," she said.)

Thirdly, we know of many Malaysian readers (unlike those mentioned above) who are quite willing to pay for Malaysian writing, for its unique content, voice and experience. And finally, when we discover (or develop) a writer who is as good as any internationally, who sets a standard for writing and story-telling in the country, we get a major buzz. (That does not mean we don't know how much work the author has put into it.)

But  independent publishing can be a minefield, (unlike large publishing houses which are protected by several layers of anonymity).

Here is an example. One author (self published) who met a Silverfish staff on the street, wanted to know why we published so-and-so. She added that she didn't think Silverfish published 'that sort of thing'. What sort of thing? The answer should have been pretty straight forward: he is a good storyteller, he is entertaining, he is authentic and he is honest. Of course, we could not tell her that because her real question was, "Why are you publishing him, and not me?" Yes, life is so-oo difficult.

Note:
kukumars* -- a derogatory  term used in some parts of India to describe those who used to work as cooks in British households, who learned to wear dresses,  eat with tools, and (generally) refuse to speak any language other than English.