Mambo with Foot In Mouth

(Glimpses from behind the lines organising the first KL Litfest, taken from my notebook. This was written July 1 2004)

July has come upon me too fast. I had anticipated a 31st June ...

Went to hotel in city centre today with Usha and Lorna to check over the rooms and facilities for Litfest. There was a seminar (on reading) on at the hotel and met an old teaching friend of mine I hadn't seen for years. Kurnia had been doing her PhD in the US ... but had returned to Malaysia for cancer treatment. She's had operations for tumours in her throat, breast and elsewhere ... but at the moment is in remission and determined to come through it.

Went over to bookshop p.m. with heavy heart. Raman all smiles as if last Friday had never happened, and I managed to get him to sit down and talk about the programme. He's come up with his own version of the thing, though fortunately hasn't changed too much about. All that anger and pain over what has ended up being one or two small changes in the end! The programme is not as I would have wanted it to be, but as a compromise solution it will work okay and save his face, and him turning round at some future point of time and saying I told you so when things go wrong.

Lorna gave him the full blast of her fury for having delayed the programme. I was proud of her.

A very nice Indian woman came in to the shop to volunter her services for the Litfest, a friend of Yolanda's. When we asked what she does for a living she said in a very larconic voice, I'm a professional dilentante. Other people think I should have ambition and do things, she added, so here I am.

The guys from the US Embassy came by for a business chat with Lorna. They are apparently thinking of having a party for Oscar Hijuelos when he comes, with lots of latin music and dancing. I said, I must come. And they said, of course ... and we are also going to invite our friends from the other embassies, particularly those from Latin America. I said, you can invite the Cubans ... oops ... and bit my tongue. Not the C word, they said and laughed.

(Originally written 8/7/04)

Litfest preparations move on. Raman is not saying a lot to me, and maintaining a polite distance. He also doesn't seem to be delegating much to me, which I won't complain about. Today I'm worrying about my Japanese writer, who at the last moment says he wants to run a three-hour haiku workshop which will involve some kind of walkabout to look at nature and scribble stuff on paper. Great, except now I have to find a venue - which involves moving other sessions around. Am also discovering how easily offended some of our local writers are - difficult personalities that will need to be handled carefully.

Tea with Oscar

Animah SMSed me yesterday: "Just read yr star struck piece. I thot yr no 1 wd be oscar playing piano."

Quite so. I'm sorry if I was unfaithful.



Oscar is Oscar Hijuelos and the US Embassy sponsored his presence at the Litfest. The real reason that he came, I'll have you know, was that I prayed extremely hard when I saw the list of possible writers the embassy sent. (So sorry Chang-Rae Lee! Maybe next time, huh?)

I fell in love with Hijuelos when I read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love which won its author the Pulitzer Prize. It has also been made into an excellent film starring Antonio Banderas and (yum!) Armand Assante.

The book is the story of two brothers, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who arrive in New York City from Cuba in 1949, with dreams of becoming mambo stars. To read this book is to be totally transported to the dance-halls and night clubs of 1950's New York. It's also perhaps the sexiest book I've ever read. It positively sizzles with macho appetite. Now sex is hard to write about well (and small wonder there are always plenty of contenders for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award), but Hijuelos is for sure among the best.



So when my prayers were answered, I was thrilled to bits. Just before the Litfest, I was invited to a before breakfast (because of the across-the-world time difference) press conference with Oscar Hijuelos in New York, which was a thrill. He talked about his work and managed our questions (even the more inane ones) graciously. He came across, even at that distance, as a wonderfully warm and very modest man. His wife writer and editor Lori Carlson (described later by someone as "a real babe" - quite rightly) also put in an appearance and gave us a big wave across the world.

The Litfest came and Hijuelos' onstage interview with Karim Raslan. Oscar was fresh off the plane as as jetlagged as hell, but managed valiantly, and it was for sure one of the highlights of the festival.

Now the Litfest was a huge exhausting thing for me - and I could not enjoy the event because I felt the whole weight of it pressing down on my shoulders. I was so grateful then, when the US embassy arranged a tea party several days later for Oscar and Lori at Carcosa Seri Negara (one of Malaysia's loveliest old colonial buildings which used to be the home of the British resident).

It was all a little formal and polite, over starched white table clothes and china cups, finger sandwiches and scones, but Oscar was gracious and read to us from Mr. Ives Christmas (which must be the saddest book I've ever read ...) and from A Simple Habana Melody and answered our questions about the books and the film Mambo Kings, the Broadway musical version of the book which he's involved with at the moment, and about his New York post 9/11. Later he signed books (I had a big stack!) and just hung around chatting informally. (My Aussie friend Iolanda and I were debating US foreign policy with him quietly in a corner away from the ears of "the spy guys" as he called them!)

After the tea, Iolanda asked me if there was anywhere where we could sit and catch up on each other's news, so we headed downstairs to the lounge to see if we could get a drink. We learned that the bar was closed, but used a little friendly persuasion! (Nothing stands between a thirsty Mat Salleh and her g and t.) And who should walk by at that moment but Oscar himself. We ask him if he'd like to join us and to our surprise he accepted a vodka tonic and settled on the couch to chat with us.

And then he saw a white piano in the bay window of the lounge and couldn't resist lifting the lid and playing some really cool jazz ... Just for us of course. (Laughing at myself here, of course.)

So that's the story I dine out on now ...