Is cute the new cool?

The conversation started like this. An old friend, a thespian (who shall not be named, considering the propensity for name calling and flaming amongst some segments of our society), was in the shop the other day, and we started bellyaching, as it seems the norm these days, about the ‘Malaysian condition’. He mentioned a friend, also a Malaysian (but shall remain nameless), just back from Australia, who asked him to tell her just one thing Malaysians are good at. Though cornered into a position of indignant ire, all he could do was bluster, but he refused to concede defeat. So, the question remains: what is the one thing Malaysians are good at?

When one is confronted with a question like this, one normally assumes he means: “Tell me one thing Malaysians are ‘world class’ at.” At which juncture, one would be tempted to be flippant and say, “Video piracy, fake ‘Lolek’ watches, football fixing, money laundering, and ‘How about that guy who was arrested in America recently with 400,000 credit card details in his laptop?’”

Seriously.

His was a familiar lament: “The theatre is gone. Nobody wants to work hard. Maybe there is no talent anymore.” That isn’t logical, of course. How can talent simply disappear? Is there such a thing as an entire talentless generation? I, certainly, cannot buy that; I work with so a many young people, though I do remember a time when Malaysia had world class sportsmen, world class universities, world class research institutions, and doctors and engineers and lawyers and ... Maybe we still have them, maybe we are only having one of those ‘good old days’ nostalgia trips, to feed our illusion, our maya.

The discussion was going nowhere, so I decided to divert it. “But, what I really cannot understand is this epidemic of cuteness that’s going around. You should read some of the stuff I get. They can’t write, but they want to be cute.”

“So, that’s it then. If you have no talent, be cute,” he said.

We were both being unfair, of course. I do get good manuscripts sometimes, it’s just that the bad ones outnumber them, and can be seriously bad and painful. “It is about the content, darling, not how cute you are,” one is tempted to say, but never does. One only suffers in silence. (I have a hypothesis about this, from my experience: the more cocky and pushy the writer, the less talented he or she is. The quiet shy ones, the painfully self-effacing ones, often surprise.)

Still, I find this cuteness thing a little bizarre. I was at a wedding dinner at a hotel in Subang Jaya recently. You know how they used to have this cheesy “Eye of the Tiger” routine, with burning torches and all, to introduce the first dish? Anyway, the lights went out, the music (not the one mentioned above) started. I waited for the torches to appear with our dinner. But, nothing. The music went on and on, still nothing  happened as far as I could see. Then I noticed that most eyes were on the stage behind me. I turned around, and almost burst out laughing. On stage, two painted cardboard swans were ‘dancing’ slowly towards one another, finally ‘kissing’, sending out a shower of red ‘hearts’. It was so corny, but I am sure many of the rest thought it was cute.

I must be getting old. Wherever I go these days, I seem to be surrounded by cuteness. Hideous fibre-glass pitcher plants, steel hibiscus lampposts, plastic Christmas trees with cotton wool snow … Ever been to a PTA concert where everyone goes, “Oh they are so cute,” and you are thinking, ‘But they are so talentless’? They are, of course, using the word in its original meaning: cuddly, harmless and sexless -- like babies, puppies and kittens. Referring to grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunties and other grownups as cute probably suggests the same thing -- sexless and harmless with a certain weirdness or eccentricity.  I am not used to it but, I guess, it’s the fashion. (Remember when we used to say ‘groovy’ for everything -- ughhh!) But when someone says a guy is ‘so cute’ or refers to a girl as a ‘cute chick’, I feel like, “It is so weird, man!”

Then, there is this Facebook thing, with 500 million people out there trying to ‘out-cute’ one another. Now, that is scary, enough cuteness there to start a pandemic of diabetes, or nausea, or both.

Maybe, thinking of the ‘groovy’ old days is not so bad. It is only nostalgia -- useless, lame, embarrassing, but harmless.

It is that time of the year (and decade) again. So, Happy Holidays. (Avoid the malls if canned holiday jingles drive you crazy.)

How I survived Frankfurt

Having seen the retail fish market that is the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair, I have never been enamoured of them -- book fairs, I mean. They are too big, fussy and noisy for my taste, I have decided. KLAB (The Kuala Lumpur Alternative Book Fair) is my limit -- small, smiley and friendly.
“You have to go to Frankfurt,” I have been told for ten years. Why? “Because it is an experience, because it is the biggest book fair in the world.” But none of that were convincing arguments as far as I was concerned. You probably think this strange. I have been buying books for over half a century (saving tuck-shop cash when I was in school), but the very thought of hundreds of thousands of square metres of books scares the life out of me. That’s why I avoid mega stores whichever city I visit, just as I avoid warehouse sales. I find them too intimidating (and more than a little stupid). My best buys have always been from the little stores in the corner -- some curated, some not. One never knows what one will find there -- I bought a lovely hardback edition of Winnie the Pooh from a little shop with about fifty English language titles in Frankfurt this last trip.

Even so, when I received this invitation from Litprom (Society for the promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature), I was cautiously excited. I was prepared to be disappointed, but I was determined to give it my best shot -- whatever that meant. Although airfares and board was paid by the organisers, participants had to bear the cost of shipping their books, which can come to quite a bit when calculated in Euros (for a small publisher like us). Anyway, after I got to Frankfurt, I was told that exhibitors were not allowed to sell books except on the last two days when the fair was open to the public. Even then, a strict ‘no discount’ policy was to be followed. I ended up giving away most of my books because I didn’t want to ship them back.

The facts about the Frankfurter Buchemesse boggle the mind a bit -- started about 600 years ago, over 7,300 exhibitors in 5 humungous halls from 100 countries, some 300,000 trade visitors, 10,000 journalist and hundreds of forums and book events -- but none of that quite begins to give one an idea of the magnitude. “Try not to be overwhelmed”, “sit back and watch the book world go by”, “don’t try to take it all in on your first visit”, are some advice I was given. Still, when one goes in on the first day, it is like being hit by a tsunami. (In the 5 days I was there, I’d say I took in less than 5 percent of the fair, including Jonathan Franzen and Gunter Grass).

Silverfish Books was given a stall with the rest of those in the invitation programme, in Hall 5.0 -- each hall has several levels -- with the Arab countries, Africa and the East Europeans. The floor above us housed the Latin Americans, and next door were most of the Asian countries, including Malaysia. (The Malaysian pavilion in Hall 6.1 was curious, to say the least. Looking like a decorated piece of cheese cake, it appeared to be caught in a conundrum: what  was it promoting, tourism or books? It was so ‘gomen’, it was scary. The first two times I visited it, I quietly walked away because there appeared to be no one interested in talking to visitors. Only on my third visit did I see some friendly faces (from ITNM); I introduced a few friends of mine from Litprom to them and I believe they had a good meeting.) The biggest, Hall 8.0, was mainly occupied by exhibitors from the US, UK and India. (A person who should know said that there were more UK exhibitors in Hall 8.0 than at the London Book Fair. He also dismissed them derisively by saying that they were only interested in selling, not buying.) I visited Hall 8.0 on Friday afternoon and found it surprisingly quiet; maybe all businesses had already been successfully concluded by then.

Frankfurter Buchmesse is the place where one buys and sells rights; that is the raison d’etre of the fair. Though I have received inquiries from over ten countries, from Hungary to Holland (this will be a drawn-out affair), the most important aspect of the fair is how it opens the eyes of those of us stuck in the anglophone book world. Some of the East European and the Latin American stands were stunning (and not in the tourism promotion way), the quality and range of books were quite astounding. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of children’s books from Morocco and Lebanon, coffee table books from Egypt, Ecuador and Rumania, and fiction from Africa and Latin America. One publisher from the Dominican Republic makes his books himself in his house -- he has 64 titles to date and sells them friends, relatives and universities. Another from Venezuela says he was broke for a whole year after a beautiful art-cum-poetry venture, though it didn’t stop him.

The best part of the fair was meeting all those people more passionate and crazier than oneself. And, there are plenty of crazies out there.

The worst part? Well, coming home to humungous North Korean style political posters on the roadside and the blank ink blotch painted on the cover of my Time magazine.

What business do writers think they are in?

I leave for the Frankfurt Book Fair on the 30th of September, hoping to interest the world in some of our wares. This fair, the biggest and the most influential on earth, is more than 500 years old, the first one organised by local booksellers soon after Johannes Gutenberg invented printing in movable letters around 1439 CE. In a sense, the book industry can be forgiven for thinking that it will go on as it is forever, that books as we know it will never die.

Nothing in all the promotional literature for Frankfurt I have received so far suggests that the debate this year is going to be different. It is not whether books will survive, but how they will survive: digitally or in print. In many ways, what happens in Frankfurt may become a non-debate. 7000 exhibitors, from over a 100 countries will meet, talk and worry about the same things they have done for centuries. I have a strong suspicion that the song will remain the same.

But, will it? We’ve heard it before: the television did not kill the radio, and the internet did not kill television, and neither one of them has killed off books.

Books are still, by far, the most influential, if not the most glamorous, cultural medium. Leading writers still attain demigod status in most societies, even in Myanmar and North Korea where they are often sent to jail. Actors and movie stars come and go. They get mentioned in footnotes of history sometimes, but they are seldom elevated to godhood anywhere (apart from India). Dancers are even more ignonimous. Only musicians come close to writers (including poets and playwrights) in their reach towards the gods.

Some form of writing has been in existence since the dawn of civilization. Before that it is reasonable to assume that all communication existed only orally, with stories told, possibly, in grunts and groans. Musicians came in and started telling their stories in songs, giving them some sort of permanence. (Many of these songs are sung even today.) Cave paintings and stone tablets gave us the phrase “cast in stone”. The Gutenberg press made it possible to mass-produce writings for everyone to read (and to kill one another in pogroms as a result, in some cases).

Still, “Why is Indie OK for Musicians and Filmmakers…But Not for Writers?” asks Amy Edelman, who believes that self-published books deserve more attention from readers and retailers, in an article in Publishing Perpectives. Is that really true? She mentions movies like Hurt Locker and indie bands like The Shins winning tons of praise. Then she goes on to mention the success of indie books like Tolstoy’s War & Peace to Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So, what’s her point, one is tempted to ask. Well, her point is she is trying to sell her service called IndieReader, the submission fee for which is USD149.00 per title for review and inclusion into the database. The money (less USD25.00) will be refunded if the book is not accepted. IndieReader wants to be the home for good quality self-published books. What it amounts to is that services like IndieReader will become the new gatekeepers – perhaps, they would prefer the word curators -- in the book industry who will decide what people read. Amy Edelman wants to be the one to discover the next War and Peace.

The book industry in moving along like it used to, business as usual, as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Frankfurt will be a fair for publishers and the gatekeepers -- readers will only be allowed in on the last two days. (Seems like no one asks them anything.) But that’s okay; businessmen need a place to meet and talk shop.

Maybe, there is nothing big happening to be too concerned. Maybe, there is. There was a time when newspapers ruled. Now, they are struggling to survive, let alone remain relevant.  (I get my news off the net.) Several magazines have disappeared, while others are discovering a whole new delivery system and experience, thanks to devices like the tablet. Will books be next? Will bestseller books become indistinguishable from blockbuster movies and video games? Will traditional books not be relevant anymore? Will all discussions due to take place in Frankfurt be, ultimately, futile due to events taking place outside the sphere of influence of the industry? Something they have no control of? Something they do not have the vision to see? The industry thinks it is immune to change, but, methinks there is a brave new world out there.

It is a scary thought, at least in the short term. And Amy Edelman is right: Times are a changing. But, not necessarily in the way she thinks.

Publishing Perspectives

Frankfurt Book Fair

Like everything else in life, no matter how long one has to prepare for something, there will always be a last minute rush. Maybe the problem is that we take on too much, or maybe that is the nature of things. I am now rushing for Frankfurt, though I have little idea what I’m rushing for -- all I need to do is to get on the plane on the 30th of September. But no, I need to make a good enough impression, I must not let the side down, the side being Malaysia.

That is the main reason I have not done it earlier, participate in the Frankfurt Book Fair, that is. People (in the industry) have been telling me for almost ten years now (ever since I started publishing) that I should go to Frankfurt -- it will be an experience, it will be interesting, you will not regret it, etc, etc, they assured me. I suppose they would have been correct, except that I felt I didn’t have anything to show, apart from a few collections of uneven short stories. Sure, it was groundbreaking; sure, it unearthed some talent, and I suppose many people would have attended the fair with less. Unfortunately, (or fortunately), I felt that I could (or would) participate in such events only with a fairly respectable list -- the book industry jargon for a catalogue. Anything less would have been too malu-fying, too embarrassing. (Maybe, I’m too sensitive.)

I will be taking with me books by seven authors that I feel are of international standard. (I have several more manuscripts that would fall into this category, unfortunately, I have not had the time to work on them.) I dare say, they are better, much better, then many out there. But then we are third world, right? We need to be twice as good even to be noticed. That is the barrier, the reality we have to face. Can the natives even write? Can they even read? Did they not just come down from the trees very recently? Or, when they discover the natives can write: why are all the characters so happy? Everyone knows how miserable their lives are. Women lead terrible lives, all native fathers rape their daughters, and uncles their boys. No, this cannot be authentic, this not how natives live. Asian women are not like that. Have they not seen that Suzie Wong movie? Slumdog Millionaire? Thank God, we know better. (Unfortunately, these sentiments are also expressed by many ‘natives’ who think they are not like the rest of us.)

The barrier faced by authentic ‘native’ authors in the international marketplace is quite daunting. One can only try, without selling out to the stereotype, the cliche, the market. Silverfish is committed to developing Malaysia’s own literature (albeit, in English), our own canon, our own stories, our own history. We are committed to producing books we can live with, maintain our dignity and not cringe in shame at its very mention a few years from now.

Frankfurt will have participants from over a hundred countries. Surely, not all will be blinkered? We live in hope.