Homozon.com?

Somehow ... a "glitch" has caused sales ratings on Amazon.com to be removed from gay/lesbian themed books. Among them James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. (I found though that Alan Hollingshurst's The Line of Beauty was unaffected at Amazon.com - maybe Booker prize winners are immune!).

The furor about this has been building up since the weekend especially on Twitter and Facebook (which is how I came to hear of this first), with the first people to become aware of it being authors who suddenly found themselves stripped of their ratings. (See also Edward Champion's post here.)

Publisher Mark Probst was one of the first to question what was going on. The answer he got from Amazon was evasive :

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Novels with hetrosexual sex scenes in them, though, seem to be strangely unaffected! Jackie Collins is still ranked and so is Harold Robbins, although many books in the erotica category have also been stripped of ratings.

More comment today at The Guardian.

Update :

A hacker called Weev has claimed credit for creating "the glitch". Amazon is repairing the damage. All our buttons got pushed, hey-ho.

Afterthought :

If it's true that this was a case of hacking, why on earth couldn't Amazon have handled public relations more professionally? At the first sniff of a problem, there should have been a notice posted on the site to the effect that they had been notified about the problem and were working to fix it. Now they need to put some serious effort into damage control.

(Wish I could claim credit for the title of this post but nicked it from a wittier friend!)

Books at the Oscars, Censorship by Astro

Now where would Hollywood be without novelists to dream the dream first?

I'm longing to see Slumdog Millionaire which swept the Oscar's yesterday. It's based (as if you didn't know!) on Vikas Swarup's novel, which was originally called Q&A.

In this interview with Alison Flood, which appeared a few days ago in The Guardian, Swarup describes his reactions to the film and describes how the novel was written.

It was born ... not "from Mumbai's meanest streets" but in "London's rather more genteel Golders Green" while Swarup was working as a diplomat for the Indian high commission in 2003.

His family left to go back to India early, and he had just two months before he returned himself :

After they had gone, I thought: 'Now is the time to write the novel.' But I'm not one of those writers who wants to spend four pages describing a sunrise. There are so many of them in India. I'm a sucker for thrillers and I wanted to write one. I'm much more influenced by Alastair MacLean and James Hadley Chase. I'm no Arundhati Roy."

and knew that he had to complete the novel withing that timeframe because he was due to take up a demanding new post :

He wrote quickly - one productive weekend yielded 20,000 words.

Gulp!

And he struck gold when his agent managed to negotiate a six-figure two-book deal :

I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

Kate Winslet won best actress for her role in The Reader, and Bernhard's Schlink's novel on which it is based is one that made a deep impression on me. (I loved it so much - read it twice - that I am actually afraid of seeing the film.)

I mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the other day. Now, according to Singapore's Straits Times it has encouraged girls to go looking for the book that has the lovely Brad Pitt in it! The Hollywood knock-on effect is great for encouraging reading.

The film Milk was based on The Mayor of Castro by Randy Shilts and is the story of the 70's gay activist Harvey Milk.

I didn't see the Oscar ceremony (forgot! duh!) but was horrified to hear this from Pang, via Facebook, and I reproduce it here at length because this kind of censorship is unacceptable :

I want to thank Astro* for screening this year's Oscars, which gave us the very heartwarming wins by the screenwriter and the lead actor of the movie "Milk". Congratulations too to the movie "Milk", about the first openly gay man elected to public office in California who was then assassinated, for winning Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. The acceptance speeches by screenwriter Justin Lance Black and actor Sean Penn were both moving, bold and timely. They spoke up about the need for equal rights, to love, to share this land, and to be heard. This year, the Oscars celebrated the kind of diversity that the arts is able to champion; it's the kind of diversity that desperately needs championing in a world so overwhelmed by racism, war, and hatred.

This is part of Justin's speech:

"When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope one day I could live my life openly as who I am and then maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married. I wanna I wanna thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk."

And this is Sean's:

"For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone," said Penn.

However, if you caught the Oscars on Astro, you would have noticed something so bizarre almost to be ironic. The words "gay" and "lesbian" have been censored from both these speeches. For me, this act of censorship defeated the very victory won by these two men. The two moments of silence rang out like the gun shots that killed Harvey Milk.

We live in a time when understanding is needed, when artists need to be bold in addressing the manifold injustices of the world. Hence, such a movie had to be made, such acceptance speeches to be uttered. But by its act of censorship, Astro has sent a message to all Malaysians that gays and lesbians are still shameful things to be censored from the public's ears. As a gay man, I am truly offended. After all these years of contributing to the country through my work, of helping people regardless of their orientation, being proud of who I am and helping others be proud of who they are, I can assure you that the only thing wrong is how much hate gays have to endure simply for the way we love.

What is Astro trying to achieve with the censoring of the words "gay" and "lesbian"? Do they think these words will promote homosexuality? Let me assure you that homosexuality cannot be promoted, it just happens. Just as a person's sexuality becomes apparent to him or her when the hormones kick in in the teen years; you don't need sex promoted to you by the TV, your body does its own promotion.

Meanwhile, words like "terrorist", "rapist" and "murderer" gets passed and nobody gets their panties knotted over how these words might promote terrorism, rapes and murders. On the other hand, words like "gays" and "lesbians" that describe people among us who happen love the same sex get treated like it is a crime to even mention in public. Is Astro promoting hate over love? Just what kind of society does Astro want to be creating? One where people can talk about terrorism but not love?

You want to know what breeds social ills? It is the kind of insecurity and low self esteem that results from such continual shaming through the media, that then leads to machismo, violence, bullying, and other superficial ways with which men employ to compensate for their insecurity.

Does Astro not know that many of its own staff are gay? I won't name them, but trust me, I know many of them (and I congratulate Astro for smartly tapping into such a pool of talents). But is Astro now ashamed of its many talented gay and lesbian staff?

And does Astro not know too that a huge number of its viewers are gay and lesbian? Otherwise, why bother to screen "Brothers & Sisters", "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", "Six Feet Under" and other popular TV series that show how gays and lesbians are not only part of society but play vital roles in shaping that society for the better? Is Astro ashamed of its gay and lesbian viewers? And if this is some national guideline, then Astro needs to question it if it hopes to be fair to its viewers.

Stop censoring the words that describe who I am. I am a Malaysian. I work hard for the right to be here, and I work hard for the right to love, just like everyone else. Thank you.

Pang Khee Teik

If you feel strongly enough about this, please do contact local news papers and you can share your comments with Astro here.

Postscript :

Sir Salman is not at all impressed with the book adaptations ...

Postscript 2 (26/2/08) :

*I'm grateful to Syukran for pointing out that it was STAR and not ASTRO that censored the words, and for providing this link.

Writing Body 2 Body

You are invited to submit pieces to a new anthology Body 2 Body :Writings on Alternative Sexuality in Malaysia, which will be edited by Jerome Kugan and Pang Khee Teik, and published by Matahari Books and launched in August next year.

The entries should depict queer or alternative sexuality in Malaysia, or of Malaysian queers' experience in the world and there is a very broad remit in terms of genre you can write in - fiction, true life accounts, essays, memoir, excerpts from novel or play are all fine, although they do not accept verse. The deadline is Sat 28 Feb, 2009 and entries can be emailed to matahari.books@gmail.com with the heading "Body2Body".

Full submission guidelines can be found here.

All the Lonely People

I asked you a couple of days ago what you are reading and it's only fair I should reciprocate! I have a fair bit of catching up to do here. Here's a start.

The book I've enjoyed most recently is far and away No-one Belongs Here More than You, Miranda July's funny, sad, startling collection of short stories that won the Frank O'Connor last year. You may remember that the book comes with different coloured covers so that you can coordinate your copy with your clothes. I bought mine via Abebooks and got a bright green copy which clashed a bit with my wardrobe. (Just read on Eric's blog that he found copies at MPH Midvalley but he doesn't say what colour.)

Often bordering on the bizarre, these 16 stories of lonely misfits, injured by life, aching for love and acceptance would really hurt to read, but the characters are survivors, buffered by their rich fantasy lives.

The protagonist of Shared Patio longs to write for a magazine advice column and the story is sprinkled with offbeat advice. She builds fantasies around her neighbour which she gets close to fulfilling when he has an epileptic fit on the shared patio one day.

In Swim Team a woman coaches a swimming team comprising old people in her apartment and without the aid of water (although she does provide them with bowls when they need to practice breathing exercises!)

A woman dreams of an erotic encounter with Prince William in Majesty and awake plots how she might meet him.

In The Sister A lonely man is set up on a date with a colleague's sister who never turns up, and turns out never to have existed. Perhaps it doesn't matter in the end.

It's hard to pick a favourite, but Something That Needs Nothing is a love story that broke my heart. This Person is about how we will always go on sabotaging ourselves is as perfect a short short story as they come, and you can read the whole thing here.

I wonder it everyone reading the book will find themselves reflected in this book. Do you feel as lonely, as out of sync with the world, as uncertain, as July's characters?

It's frightening to admit, but I do sometimes. I really do! And if you say yes too, I think I will look at you oddly (as of course you will have to look at me). Maybe this is the great unsayable - we aren't as together as we'd like the world to think we are.

But when you look at Miranda July, who successful, young and beautiful, everything her characters are not, you wonder how the hell she channels these voices!

I feel like turning the book over and beginning it all over again. This is a collection that is staying on my writing desk to stir up my slothful own muse.

Here's a video from a really fun literary event organised around the book by Strangers in Seattle, and you can hear the author reading excerpts that are bound to have you rushing out for the book.

Just make sure you coordinate clothes and handbag and shoes.

Turning Up the Air Con

Went with Animah and Sham to see Air Con, Shanon Shah's first full length play at KLPAC at the weekend. Although I don't usually write about theatre on this blog, this play is very special to me because I feel part of the FIRSTWoRKS family, and because I have seen parts of the play at different stages of development at performed readings.

In the programme notes Shanon says that one of the starting points for the play was the news that a mak nyah (transvestite) had been found brutally murdered and dumped in a monsoon drain, and nobody came to claim the body:

... no family, no friends, no anybody. nobody at all seemed to care that a mak nyah had been killed. Simply because of what she was - abnormal, a misfit, an aberration.

This story connected with Shanon's memories of his school life in Kedah, and a memorable incident of a visit from a police officer who told the boys at assembly that they were absolutely forbidden to visit the sex workers who hung out at the railway station :

Apparently an adventurous hostel border had been clobbered with the stiletto of one of the mak nyah sex workers because he had refused to remunerate her for services rendered.

After a Mak Nyah sex worker is found beaten to death near the railway station in the play, the administration of a nearby boys boarding school decide to take action - a sort of reeducation camp is planned for all the boys who are a bit ... effeminate, in order to toughen them up so they don't, presumably, become mak nyahs themselves.

(This kind of round of 'em up and make long speeches about morality at 'em for hours and hours to make sure they behave exactly as we want 'em is a fairly common here. Even judges get subjected to them. Blaming victims is pretty common too.)

Having taught for three and a half years in a boys boarding school very like the one depicted in the play, I felt that Shanon's depiction of the school and teachers was very good indeed - these were convincing characters, coming to terms with their own sexuality, getting bullied, coping with personal problems, making and falling out of friendships and love. And this was a completely believable scenario.

Amerul Affendi and Zahril Adzim played senior prefects Chep and Burn, and Ryan Lee Baskaran and Nick Davis as Asif and William, the younger boys who become prefects were very good indeed. But there wasn't a single weak point in the casting.

The murdered sex worker, played by Dara Othman has no identity when the play opens, but gradually assumes a voice, and then name (Aiswarya Roberts - for a couple of very famous actresses), and then a form, becoming in the end a fully-fleshed and endearing character.

The Air Con of the title, incidentally, is a play on the word airconditioning (some units of which are being fixed in the prefects room by local contractor, Ah Kok, a character who adds humour and counterpoint to the play) and also a certain sexual practice which will probably now lead to a local shortage of Hacks.

"Did you enjoy the play?" someone asked me afterwards. Enjoy, I'm not sure is the right word. sure parts of it were very funny and I laughed along with the rest of the audience. But I also came away feeling quite traumatised. It is a powerful play and my emotions took a bit of a battering.

Sadly the run was all too short, but I do hope it gets staged again. and now that Shanon has found his feet as a playwright, he continues to take a little time out from being a famous pop star.

Congrats to all the FIRSTWoRKS crew, especially Jo, Suzie and Zalfian.

(More about the play on The Star website.)

Passionate Poet from Straightlaced Singapore

Oh, okay. I could resist lifting Ishaan Tharoor's headline from his article about Cyril Wong in Time magazine (Asia edition):

It is one of the more delicious workings of karma that Singapore, which criminalizes homosexuality, should have as its leading young poet an openly gay man. But while Cyril Wong relishes waving "a purple flag" in socially conservative faces, his work expands beyond simple sexuality — being "just a gay poet," as he puts it — to embrace themes of love, alienation and human relationships of all kinds. His latest volume of verse, Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light , is due to be published this month, hopefully to burnish further the international reputation that the previous five collections have established for him.

Wong, 30, burst onto the scene in 2000, with Squatting Quietly. It was, like many debut collections, a document of rebellion — in this case, against the values of his Christian, middle-class Chinese upbringing, and the social alienation that his sexuality entailed. Much of the latter had been brought into stark relief during 2 1/2 years of national military service, during which, he jokes, he was "too campy in the camp." His natural levity masks the loneliness and vulnerability he felt in the barracks. But ultimately it was poetry, rather than humor, that gave Wong a means of working through the frustrations driving him, at times, to a suicidal state of mind. "It helped me wash my dirty linen in public," he says.

You can read the rest of the article here.

The soft launch of Cyril's Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light will be held at The Arts House at 8p.m. tomorrow.

Moral Question

Fans ponder Rowling's revelation.

Pic courtesy of ImageGenerator.

Best Gay Read

Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin's six-volume chronicle of gay and straight life in San Francisco, was hailed yesterday as Britain's favourite lesbian or gay novel in the Big Gay Read, the Guardian reports. Maupin will collect his award at Manchester's Queer Up North festival.

Tales first appeared as a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976 and then became a highly acclaimed smash-hit miniseries on PBS in 1994. More Tales of the City and a novel, Night City followed. (Do visit the Tales of the City website to find out more about Maupin and his works.)

I haven't read the book, but realised as I read the synopsis that I'd seen the excellent film based on it by accident (as all my TV viewing tend to be!) on Astro. Time, methinks, to buy the book.

Second prize went to Sarah Walters for Tipping the Velvet. She who was also placed fifth for Fingersmith.

Related Posts:

The Big Gay Read(21/8/05)
The Transgendered Reading List (23/11/05)

Brokeback Mountain

Was so happy to see Brokeback Mountain bagging Golden Globes yesterday. Went to see it the night before I flew back with my sister and brother-in-law. As you know, I'm always heart in mouth about films based on books I've loved. And as you also know if you've read me for a while, Annie Proulx sits on my shoulder when I write and Brokeback Mountain is a favourite of mine. So I had plenty of reason to be scared ...

But the film is as close to perfect as the film of a book can be. Fleshed out the experience of the page. Visually stunning, perfectly cast and as grittily unsentimental as the book.

So erm ... why isn't it on in the cinema in Malaysia? Was it officially banned? Are the cinemas censoring themselves just in case there's an outcry about a "gay love story" (if you want to reduce this soul-touching heartbreak of a film to such a trite little phrase)?

Never mind I suppose there's always the pirates ...

And the book of course, Close Range, with Brokeback and other Wyoming stories.

The Transgender Reading List

Talking about sex-change operations (le topic de jour at the moment, innit?) thought I should chuck a little fiction into the debate. After all, what have we to lose but a little of our time? What have we to gain but compassion and understanding?

I picked up this list, written by Timothy Hulsey, on Amazon and think it is as good a place to start as any.

The Marvelous Land of Oz by Frank Baum

As far as I know, this 1904 children's novel is the first in American literature to feature a transgendered protagonist. (And yes, she does undergo an "operation" of sorts near the end.)

Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris

Transgendered travel writer Jan Morris writes about an imaginary destination where her status as woman (or "Dirleddy") is never questioned. Her memoir Conundrum is deservedly famous.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Personally, I don't think very highly of Stone Butch Blues. But every time I let a transgendered friend borrow the novel from me, I have to buy another copy. (Funny how that works.)

Trumpet by Jackie Kay

Not nearly as good as Diane Middlebrook's biography Suits Me which covers the true events on which the novel was based.

Myra Breckinridge/Myron by Gore Vidal

Vidal is overrated as a "serious" novelist, but his comic novels can be quite good. Both Myra and Myron, though unrealistic, feature a very prominent transgendered character.

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

More an exploration of shifting sexuality than a "how-to" book, Virginia Woolf's Orlando is still a great transgender novel.

The only one of the above I've already read is Orlando, so I have some catching up to do. (Think I'll start with the Jackie Kay. But then hey, I love Jan Morris' travel books and didn't know she'd written fiction ...)

The novel that I would add to the list would be Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex - a girl who discovers at puberty that she is in fact a hermaphrodite, and has a tough decision about to make about which gender to choose. Really superb writing as well as an excellent story.

I know only one transexual - an American internet friend whose story has greatly moved me. His decision to become a woman was a serious and long considered one. (I quickly realised that this is not something that anyone does without the deepest conviction.) John detailed every stage of his journey to become a Jennifer, and for sure there's a book in there if she can be persuaded to write it.

Because really wouldn't all of us like to slip behind the scenes and know how it feels to belong to the other sex? Ah well, at least fiction allows us that privilege vicariously!

Harry Potter Gay?

Oh dear, political incorrectness lands this children's writer in a shitload of trouble!

Postscript

The author puts his side.

The Big Gay Read

The search is on for Britain's favourite gay novel reports the Guardian.

Here's a list of some of the best gay fiction:

The Long Firm Jake Arnott

Around the Houses Amanda Boulter

A Home at the End of the World Michael Cunningham

Crocodile Soup Julia Darling

Calendar Girl Stella Duffy

Hallucinating Foucault Patricia Duncker

Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides

Rough Music Patrick Gale

Carol Patricia Highsmith

The Line of Beauty Alan Hollingworth

Trumpet Jackie Kay

Tales of the City Armistead Maupin

At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O'Neill

The Monkey's Mask Dorothy Porter

Brokeback Mountain Annie Proulx

Desert of the Heart Jane Rule

Funny Boy Shyam Selvadurai

Story of the Night Colm Tobin

Tipping the Velvet Sarah Waters

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Jeannette Winterson

Pretty good fiction by anyone's standards. One or two of these I've mentioned elsewhere as being particular favourites: At Swim, Two Boys, Brokeback Mountain and In The Line Of Beauty. Add to the list Middlesex and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. The rest are yet to be discovered, shall we say.

How many have you read and what did you like best?

At Swim, One Ambassador

Last night there was a farewell for Dan (HE Mr Daniel Mulhall to give him full respectful title!), the Irish Ambassador and his wife, Greta at Silverfish before they head back to Dublin.

Dan has been a wonderful ambassador not only for the country, but also for literature in general and Irish literature in particular and James Joyce's Ulysses in particularest of all. I thank him sincerely for all the help and support he gave us for the Litfest.

A farewell for a word lover has to be a bookish one, so there were readings of poetry and prose from several.

But the piece I loved most was this poem that Dan read out right at the beginning of the gathering. This charming poem, translated from the Celtic by Robin Flowers, was written more than a thousand years ago by an unknown Irish Monk, in the margins of a copy of St Paul's Epistles. The poet sees himself as a student pursuing knowledge in much the same way that his cat Pangur Ban (which means White Cat), pursued mice.

Pangur Ban

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

I chose an extract from At Swim Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill, a gay love story set in Ireland shortly before the Easter uprisings. I knew that Dan hasn't got round to reading it yet, and that when he does, he will be blown away by the prose style. O'Neill takes the language of Joyce and just runs with it. Who couldn't love a writer who can craft a sentence like "A carillon of coins chinkled in his pocket."?

If you want a taste of the book, you can read the first chapter of the book here.

I think O'Neill is very much a "writer's writer" - just look at how he plays tricks with "point of view", moving inside the main character's head, and then out again, in alternating paragraphs.

The Ascent of Brokeback

It's a rare treat to be read to once you've left childhood.

Last night a group of friends came over to to my house for supper and to hear Jaeson Iskandar's performed reading of Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx's long short story about two cowboys who meet while shepherding in the mountains and begin a relationship which lasts a lifetime. Arguably the most moving of all gay love stories; never mentioning the word love, scarcely allowing the main characters to acknowledge their homosexuality. The language is gritty, even austere which makes the story it carries even more poignant. (And I'm reminded yet again that Proulx is my favourite writer, and in a thousand lifetimes I would never be able to approach her prose style. *Sigh*)



And Jaeson read it so beautifully: it seemed that the voices of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist spoke through him as he brought out every nuance of emotion in an performance as restrained as it was heartfelt. And goodness, his Wyoming accent never flagged.

This is a performance looking for a wider audience, which I hope Jaeson finds.

Just as I hope that he will soon be performing his own words again. It’s been a while since the performance of his monologues I’m not Talking to My Mother & Other Stories, Blood and Love Songs at Actor’s Studio. I've seen his writing and I know it sings.

And it was a great night for friendships - these folks brought together from different corners of my life, and hitting it off as if they'd always known each other. The conversation went on to almost one a.m. and still everyone was reluctant to move.



Jaes

Worst Prophet

"If a homosexual author should come anywhere near the [Man Booker] short-list, someone will make sure he gets no further on the grounds of friviloity, or narrowness of experience. ('I thought the women were just unconvincing.')"*

This particular piece of idiocy, written by critic Phillip Hensher, appeared in a preview of the prize in The Independent a day before Alan Hollinghurst was announced winner. Someone might have told him that gay writer Paul Bailey has been shortlisted twice. And what is there about gay that makes your experience of life "narrow"? Presumably he's saying that a gay writer cannot produce a book which appeals to a hetrosexual audience. Well , he's wrong, and if we needed further evidence of it Hollinghurst's In The Line of Beauty more than adequately provides it.

Set against the backdrop of the 1980's, the "Thatcher Years" of boom and bust, the novel tells the story of a Nick Guest. Fresh from Oxford, he goes to live with the Fedden family in their grand house in London as a friend of "the children". (Gerald Fedden is a conservative MP, a rising star in Thatcher's government.) Nick is a born free-loader and social climber with an appetite for sex and cocaine and the finer things of life. Nick's sexual relationships begin with Leo, a working-class black man. Later, he becomes involved with Wani a beautiful millionaire of Lebanese extraction.

The novel is very much a comedy of manners, elegantly written and substantial. It has an "old-fashioned" feel to it (Do I detect the influence of Henry James?). It explores the social values of the period, particularly towards homosexuality and social class. And it's very carefully observed and funny.

There is a lot of sex in the book - and graphically described, though never gratuitious. (Hollinghurst is one the gifted minority of writers - homosexual or not - who actually writes sex well.) But this being the '80's, the shadow of AIDS hangs over the novel.

The characters (of both sexes!) are wonderfully realised. I felt a lot of sympathy with Nick - enjoyed his subversiveness, especially in the scene when he dances (high on coke) with Thatcher at the Fedden's wedding anniversary celebration. Many of the scenes take place during social occasions (often the kind of parties the likes of you and I would never get invited to!) and Hollinghurst ably juggles a large cast of characters on stage at the same time.

Yep, Hollinghurst deserved the prize for sure.

*Ouch! Didn't realise tat the time of posting that this article was actually supposed to be ironic!

Saturday Perambulations

MPH Writer's Circle met yesterday morning at the 1 Utama store. Oon Yeoh was facilitating and the talk was about book distribution and marketing. Donald Kee a senior marketing executive spoke and then, an executive from international publisher John Wiley and Sons. No real surprises in what they said and in fact an underlining of the message from previous sessions - you need to get out there and promote your book if you want sales. Some good advice to would-be writers was given, although neither were really able to field questions on marketing fiction convincingly. Local author Chong Sheau Ching chipped in with an account of how she struggled to distribute and market her book Stories for My Mother, which eventually went on to be a best-seller, and Azizi Ali spoke again with his usual charming blend of arrogance and self-deprecating humour. ("I'm a lousy writer but I'm too successful to quit.")

Most interesting nugget of information to emerge from today is that there is a market for locally written kids books. I know a number of people who want to write for children but aren't sure where to begin, and it would be great to find ways of bringing them together for a dialogue. I also see a course or workshops emerging from this - though I am as much in need of training as anyone else. (Am for sure handicapped too by not having kids!)

There's a nice feeling of "we're all in this together" about the Writer's Circle now that we are getting to know each other, and there's a great deal of useful networking after the sessions.

A quick lunch at Delicious - lamb shank pie and frostie iced lemon tea (double yum!) - and the off to Darling Muse Gallery for an afternoon of readings. Had to support my friend Rohayat X who is bravely launching publications in Malay. His first book Wilayah Kutu is an anthology of men's writing "from the fringes".

I knew that the whole thing would be in Malay and I wouldn't be able to follow too well, but what the heck, friends should support each other.

(My Malay is actually quite serviceable in most everyday situations, but it's hard to listen for long, and I'm thrown by any kind of dialect apart from Perak!)

Saifullizan Tahir "a landscape architect by day" read first. He seemed a little afraid of his audience and read very quickly without looking at us. A friend read (v. well!) for Nizam Zakaria. I understood a little more of this story picking up the words Madam Kwan's - KLCC - Gloria Jean's - gay tak gay. (At which point my friend Caving Liz leant across me and said "Isn't there a word for 'gay' in Malay?"). The audience loved Nizam's piece and there were roars of laughter. Jerome read poetry as beautifully in Malay as he does in English. I had no problem following Rohayat X's story - at least until the brain got tired - but once again it went down extremely well with the audience. Fahmi Fadil "actor and activist" went next, and right at the end of the afternoon Doji (?) strolled in and read his piece.

A lesson underlined by today's events both at MPH and Darling Muse: everything worth doing has to start somewhere and with someone. You may not be the best at what you do - you may even feel a bit of a fraud at first for setting yourself up as an expert - but you may be the only one trying to start things up in a particular area. In the end you have to have faith in yourself and just leap. I am sure that Rohayat's publishing venture will be a success and I like what he wrote in an e-mail "The day Neohikayat is put out of business by competition from publishing houses set up by bands of young Malay writers with actual talent, is the day when I'll know I have done my job. There is no shame in having your life ended by the hands of your own child (or monster, if you prefer the Frankenstein imagery), if that is a signal that you have to make way for a world that has outgrown your usefulness for it."

There was also a reading by performance artist Ray Langenbach. I did not understand it at all even though it was in English - something about Plato and The Cave and people being chained to the wall. Also did not understand why Ray had to wear a bright pink sundress for the piece. Maybe the glasses of La Bodega sponsored wine did not help comprehension.

An American guy called Ioannis Gatsiounis whom I'd met at the Litfest when he wanted to do a reading for us (I set up an open-mike thingy in the bar). He warned us in advance "There's quite a bit of subtlety in this story ..." . He's a very nice guy though, and I had a long chat with him afterwards and will invite him along when our critiquing group meets.