As Others See Us

The Literary Saloon, the blog of The Complete Review, and my first port-of-call for information on the literary scene worldwide has picked up the news of the The Star-Popular Readers Choice Awards which were announced last Sunday :

Not our favourite kind of set-up -- readers get to vote, and they get to do so as often as they like (and there's an incentive to vote for the book you think is likely to win, rather than the one you think is best, because voters who 'get it right' are also eligible for prizes ...), and the prize is limited to the ten bestselling titles (in fiction and non-fiction) at the local Popular stores. But at least that leads, for example, Elizabeth Tai to briefly describe what were the 10 bestselling fiction titles last year, in her Guide to the prizes, which gives us some idea of what's popular in Malaysia (and these are, after all, book you probably haven't seen at your local bookstore).

But as Louise Adler notes in The Age (another piece I found via Saloon.com) :

Prizes that attract publicity inevitably also attract criticism ...

But it can't be anything but good if word of local books and authors gets out into the wider world, and if Malaysian readers are encouraged to pick up the books. The award has also put a smile on the faces of the nominated authors I've met spoken to over the past few days, every single one of them saying that they aren't bothered if they win, and are just happy to have been recognised.

And talking of wider attention for our local publishing scene, Wena Poon's Lions in Winter (published here by MPH) is reviewed by Neel Chowdhury in Time magazine.

Kam the Cover Boy!

Kam Raslan is today's cover boy in Starmag, interviewed by Dzireena Mahadzir. The book is doing very well indeed for a locally published work of fiction. (I believe that it has sold about 4,000 copies to date and is still on the best-seller lists.)

The secret of its great sales? According to the publisher (Marshall Cavendish) the blog-coverage has a lot to do with it! Yipee!

But Kam has also worked incredibly hard to promote the book through readings in bookshops and writers' gatherings (the most recent being the readings Bernice organised at No Black Tie last Sunday) and he's about to launch the book in Singapore. (The bookshops down there seem to feel the book belongs in the social anthropology or history section!)

His new website has been brought into being by Reza and Chet, and I'm sure you will agree is excellent. (As I was saying, every author needs web-presence.)

Kam's response in the article to a question about whether non-Malays were equally well able to relate to the book interested me:

... Kam says the book isn’t just popular with the Malays. ... “One of the reasons why non-Malays get annoyed with Malays is because there is actually something very attractive about the Malays – they are graceful and gracious people, very likeable and civilised.

So when non-Malays see Malays acting ugly and aggressively, it’s a double disappointment. So I wanted a character who, in many ways, embodies the very civilised traits and qualities that non-Malays find attractive.”

Still, non-Malays see their own versions of Datuk Hamid, and many have told him so. “There are a lot of Indian and Chinese Hamids too, because back in that time, due to the education system, people had the same values and tastes, regardless of their race.”

It was really nice to see the family photos accompanying the piece.

I think Kam looks like his father (Mohamed Raslan Datuk Abdullah, who was tragically killed in a car accident in 1971), and I love this photo of the brothers together as kids in London 1969. (From left to right, Karim, Johan and Kam.)

Eight Pages of Booknews!

Wah! The Readsmonthly supplement in StarMag has doubled in size this month. What a great Sunday treat for the book addicted! (Next month we demand 12 pages.)

There's a story by Daphne Lee about a remarkable young man called Gerald Chuah who wrote a book about his favourite actor and films when he was feeling down and depressed in his early '20's. In the Eye of the Tiger: Survival Principles from Sylvester Stallone's Life and Films has finally been self-published by Chuah to coincide with the release of Rocky Balboa, the sixth film in the Rocky series.

The article tells how Chuah managed to pass the manuscript to Stallone when he was in Singapore, and how Jackie Stallone (Sylvester's mum) supported the project, even appearing at the launch with Chua. And now famous motivational speaker and author Bob Proctor has offered to publish the book internationally.

But Tan Siow Chin reviews the book in the supplement but seems decidedly underwhelmed by it. And while I'm so glad that Chuah has the courage to believe in his dreams, I'm horrified to think that anyone would put out a self-published book which isn't properly proofread, let alone carefully edited.

Among the other reviews: Dina Zaman's I Am Muslim is reviewed by Farish Noor, Amirul B. Ruslan reviews Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski (and whilst I don't think the book sounds like my cup of tea, am impressed with the 17 year old reviewer! Keep writing, kid!); Ooi Si Min reviews No Dram of Mercy - Sybil Kathigesu's memoir detailing how she gave medical aid to both civilians and members of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army; and (surprise surprise!) Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil talks about her reading, reveals herself to be a Hanif Kureishi fan (me too!) and reviews very nicely Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb. My dear friend Kaykay seems now to be writing under his real name as Krishna Kumar, and reviews Hannibal Rising.

And there's much much more!

*(The book is also included in Faces of Courage which was until recently a "restricted" book).

Reviewing the Reviewers

Raman writes about book reviewing and links to a very interesting article on DailyIndia.com.

Now, I'm not sure whether he was just summarising the Indian article or talking about the Malaysian situation or both together when he writes:

Everyone is a critic. There is no formal training school for writing literary reviews. No formal standards. But we know all about that. We can clearly see from some of the reviews in our newspapers, that often the writer has not even read the book, or else what goes for a review is merely a synopsis of the story. The prerequisite of reading a book before doing a review is also probably one reason for the lack of local book reviews in our local papers, it being easier to source a review of a foreign book using Google.

A bigger question has to be ... where are the reviews in the first place? Of the daily English newspapers only the Star seem to have reviews at all. There's an overview of a whole miscellany of books on Fridays and then a page or two of reviews in Starmag on a Sunday. (Fei wrote to tell me that there is quite a lot more in the Chinese language dailies, which is interesting!)

One of the biggest problems is that there simply aren't enough reviewers. I'm drowing in a kind of guilt here - I need to get some reviews finished and sent out and I'm being much too slow about it (though one of my reviews appears this Sunday, so that's something at least). The first challenge is to increase the size of the reviewing pool. (Not so long ago Starmag put out a plea for reviewers, but i don't think they got an enormous response.)

The lack of space for reviews, the lack of reviewers, means that most books the public would be interested in reading about, just don't get publicised. Not good when we are trying to create a reading public, hey?

The greatest casualties though, are of course local writers. How often does a book by a local writer get properly and critically reviewed? How can a writing community grow where there isn't proper feedback on a writer's work? (Again I feel guilty here ... must make more of an effort! But should that effort be mine alone?)

Can anyone be a critic? Do reviewers need specific training? As Raman says, there is no formal training for reviewing. Not even for those whose reviews appear in the New York Times or The Guardian. Reviewers tend have come in as journalists from other sections of the newspaper. The best reviewers, though, tend to be other writers.

Whatever the reviewers' backgrounds, they need to know what they are talking about, which means that they do need to be enthiastic readers and have sufficient understanding of what the writer is trying to do, as well as be able to place the book in its wider context.

Reviewing, of course, has to be something of a labour of love. I poke my bookloving friends to have a go and they always reply "No time, lah." It takes far longer to write a good review than an article of equivalent length, because real thought has to be poured into it. (And of course, the book has to be read first! It's a busman's holiday if you love the book, but a total drag if you don't!)

Raman does local reviewers a disservice by hiding behind vague generalities when he takes a pot-shot at all of them without pointing to specific pages and specific reviews. I enjoy the fiction reviews in Starmag (when they appear!) and find them well-written ... And in honesty I try to do the best job that I can when I write a review, even if I feel I fall way short of the standard set by the best book pages overseas.

What I'm trying to say in this post is that reviewing is important, particularly of local books, and that perhaps we have a collective responsibility towards making sure books are reviewed.

Raman puts up short reviews on his website, but I wonder if he would ever consider putting his words out for a much larger audience by writing for the papers? His reviews would be ones I'd like to read! ("No time," he'll say. And it's true that one person shouldn't be expected to wear too many hats. All the same ... )

Meanwhile, on the subject of reviewing, New York Times book review editor Sam Tanenhaus answers readers questions about his work.

His mission statement?:

... to publish lively, informed, provocative criticism on the widest-possible range of books and also to provide a kind of snapshot of the literary culture as it exists in our particular moment through profiles, essays and reported articles. There are many, many books published each year - hundreds stream into my office in the course of a week. Our job is to tell you which ones we think matter most, and why, and to direct your attention to authors and critics who have interesting things to say, particularly if they have original ways of saying them. At a time when the printed word is being stampeded by the rush of competing "media," we're here to remind you that books matter too - that reading, as John Updike's invented novelist Henry Bech says, can be the best part of a person's life. There's no plaque on the wall. But there is a framed photo of Kurt Cobain.

Update:

Really enjoyed Alex Tang's post about reviewing ... which incorporates a review about a reviewer!

Also worth a read is this horror story on the Guardian blog about a reviewer who reviewed a non-existent book!

Have Pen - Will Subvert

My article in Starmag today:

Romesh Gunasekera doesn’t believe in pigeon-holing, nor does he write to an agenda.

IDENTITY is never a one dimensional thing,” says author Romesh Gunasekera, neatly sidestepping my question about whether he sees himself as a British or a Sri Lankan writer. His novels and short stories are set in both places and he clearly relishes the ability to move between worlds without being pigeonholed himself.

(British Council Malaysia brought the writer to Malaysia recently; he gave a reading from a selection of his works at the Silverfish bookshop in Kuala Lumpur.)

His second novel, Reef, a lyrical story about memory and imagination, put Gunasekera firmly on the international literary map. The novel was nominated for the 1994 Booker prize, and while he says it was wonderful that it was shortlisted, he claims that it was “kind of ideal not to have won because the one or two first time writers who did win with the first book tended not to have written after that.”

At fewer than 200 pages, Reef is an unusually short novel in an age where fiction writers seem obliged to turn out complex and lengthy tomes. Says Gunasekera with characteristic humility, “I didn’t think I had the right to demand someone read a long novel by a writer they didn’t know.”

It is impossible of course to write about Sri Lanka without reference to the atrocities that have been part of its recent troubled history. I ask him whether he felt he had a duty as a writer to make sense of the violence.

“I’m not writing to an agenda, but writing stories that interest me,” he says. “But I also have to write to understand the world I live in and the fact that the world is getting more violent.”

In his earlier works, that violence tends to occur outside of the frame of the story, but its effect and reverberations are felt by the characters in the foreground. It’s his third novel, Heaven’s Edge, set in a dystopian fictional country, which deals with the subject more directly. It “explores the whole idea of violence, how it comes into our lives and how man has to come to terms with it”.

Gunasekera says ideas for the next novel are germinating even as he writes the current one. “I already know the books I intend to write if I live long enough,” he says. But he finds it hard to talk about the process that he goes through when writing fiction because it’s been different for each book.

“One thing I’ve learned is I don’t know how to do it. I do know roughly how long it’ll take me, which is longer than I think. I have a rough idea of how much of my life will go into it. Otherwise, when you start any book you are always a novice.

“If you write the kind of books I tend to write, which don’t conform to a genre, you start with nothing and you have to invent the way to do it each time. People always talk about giving birth to novels, and I think that there is a similarity. Afterwards you tend to forget what’s involved, how difficult, frustrating and painful it is.”

It’s vitally important for him that the book feels alive to his readers and totally engages them. The key to making this happen is a great deal of revision.

“Unless you are making a Jackson Pollock (the American abstract artist famous for his ‘drip and splash style’), which is fine in terms of self-expression, creating different worlds does involve rewriting. I’d happily continue rewriting for many more years except that some time it must come to an end.”

Gunasekera’s first book, Monkfish Moon, established his credentials as a writer of short fiction at a time when it was relatively rare for writers to bring out a collection as a first book, and although he says that he would love to bring out another, it not be commercially viable.

Indeed, the short story has been declared so seriously endangered in Britain that a campaign to save it from extinction has been instigated. But Gunasekera sees the tide beginning to turn with the awarding of an annual short story prize, and with the growth of e-zines (online magazines) and the increasing popularity of the short-short story. He firmly believes the short story is still the best form for the novice writer to tackle.

I tell him that I read that he’d once warned that fiction can be dangerous because it “opens up things that probably shouldn’t be opened up” and ask him what he meant by that. It’s a theme he warms to.

“Literature should be subversive. When you read a book, you become the story. You can imagine it exactly how you like and no one can tell you you’re right or wrong. External authority has no place – and this is why in a repressive regime fiction is banned and fiction writers are persecuted.”

And that is probably the most powerful argument for our need to read good books!