Malaysian Political Imagination and the Novel

While Malaysia is anything but a full-fledged democracy, its relative openness permits a spectrum of debate, which allows for a certain flowering of creativity. ...

... Samarasan, Aw, Tan, and Tei matter because, being from an ethnic minority, they provide a different perspective to Malaysia's divided polity, given that Malaysia's preferential policies benefit the majority, and not minority, communities. Furthermore, these writers provide a local voice looking at the country and its past. This is important, because until recently, fiction about Malaysia or Singapore looked at the region from an outsider's perspective, with the natives offering colourful backdrop ...

Salil Tripathy pens a very important piece on the political imagination and literature of Malaysia and Singapore for the current issue of the Indian literary journal Biblio. You will need to subscribe to the journal to access the full piece.

In the same issue there's also a very nice piece about the litbloggers of Asia by Jai Arjun (who blogs at Jabberwock). Jai very kindly writes about my blog, and also mentions other local bloggers doing a great job - namely Amir, Eric, Glenda. (This article can be read for free but you need to register first).

The Great Unwritten Malaysian Novel

There are more Malaysian writers writing about circa WW2 than there are law-breaking Klang assemblymen.

says Xeus. adding that she thinks WW2:

... a pretty pedestrian subject

before listing several examples of her own of books she would like to see written.

The post that prompted it all, of course is this one of Lydia's and it had us totalling up just how many books had been written by Malaysian writers about the Second World War. Answer, not that many. Sympozium listed four:

1) Tash Aw - he didn’t really focus on or write about the Japanese Occupation, did he? No.
2) Vyvyane Loh, yes, but her book was set in Singapore, as was
3) Noel Barber’s Tanamera.
4) The Rice Mother

to which I added Chong Seck Chim's Once Upon a Time in Malaya.

There will of course be one more when Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain is published next March.

But how much is too much?

No-one ever said to Sarah Waters "Don't write about the Second World war, dear. It's been done to death." (Or I don't think they did!) Waters certainly had a different take on the era, telling the stories of the several Londoners, several of whom are gay (or at least displayed some degree of sexual ambivalence). Waters set her novel in the same period of history as others but puts a new spin on it.

Thank goodness no-one said to Larry McMurtree "Oh no, not another cowboy novel!" when he set out to write Lonesome Dove. Thousands of westerns had been published but this Pulitzer prize winner creates a panoramic sweep of the life of the cowboy.

No-one tells British or American writers "Don't write anymore novels about the war (First or Second)/the aftermath of 9/11/ the holocaust ...".

So why should we lay down conditions for our own authors?

The problem in Malaysia is that there simply aren't enough novels of quality being written. I believe that this is gradually beginning to change. At the same time readers here are hungry for fiction set in the present or near present, and which speaks directly to them.

Finding Lloyd

Have a huge pile of notebooks, the accumulated junk of years of scribbling. I'm slowly ploughing through them, rereading, indexing the entries. There are whole captured moments. I walk in my own shoes at that point in the past. There are patterns which repeat themselves without my realising. I must think about them more. And there's so much I had forgotten and it's good to be reminded about.

Had completely forgotten this encounter:

23/6/97

Met a writer. Was asked to judge a choral speaking contest at Bukit Bintang Girl's School. Chief judge was Lloyd Fernando ("Scorpion Orchid"). He gave me a lift home in his old Volvo. I remembered reading in in Abu's Law association report that he had become a lawyer. But he says he wants to make more time now to get back to writing.

Now this is the bit I find most interesting looking back:

He told me that he was sad that no writer seemed to be chronicalling the changes in Malaysian society, addressing issues. There needs to be a Malaysian Dickens, a Malaysian Vikram Seth.

My thoughts: 1) he was (still is) totally right 2) we're still waiting.