Augmented Reality at Esquire

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(Found via Bettina Tizzy on Twitter.)

To Proust or Not to Proust?

As we've seen before, most of us feel some guilt about books we think we should have read (especially if we want to be considered a well-read person) but actually haven't, and probably won't.

Now Germaine Greer in The Guardian absolves us of the need to read Proust. She says of In Search of Lost Time (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu) :

This lacuna in your cultural development you do not need to fill. On the other hand, if you have read all of , you should be very worried about yourself. As Proust very well knew, reading his work for as long as it takes is temps perdu, time wasted, time that would be better spent visiting a demented relative, meditating, walking the dog or learning ancient Greek.

This greatly annoys Agnes Poirier on the blog :

What exactly is the problem with Proust according to Greer? It's too long, apparently, therefore too expensive to acquire, and impossible to read in the bath. Here is literary criticism of the highest nature.

I've not read it. Am daunted by the length. (7 volumes!!!) Would like to at least try it. Every time I find one of the volumes in a warehouse sale it's never the first one so I pass.

Mind you, this comic version looks fun!


What have your experiences of Proust been?

Fragments of Laura

Remember all the hoo-ha about Nabokov wanting the manuscript of his half completed last novel burned and then his son finally deciding to publish it? Now The Original of Laura is to be published worldwide on November 17, and an excerpt is up at The Times.

And what's the verdict on the novel? Publisher's Weekly gets in the first review and notes that :

This very unfinished work reads largely like an outline, full of seeming notes-to-self, references to source material, self-critique, sentence fragments and commentary (“The whole scene was pretty artificial in a fishy theatrical way”). It would be a mistake, in other words, for readers to come to this expecting anything resembling a novel, though the few actual scenes wedged between the notes are unmistakably Nabokovian, with cutting wordplay, piercing description and uneasy-making situations—a character named Hubert H. Hubert molesting a girl, a decaying old man’s strained attempt at perfunctory sex with his younger wife.

It looks then as if it will be of great interest to fans of Nabokov's work, and to scholars, although perhaps not to the general reading public.

Of particular interest is the way Knopf is publishing the book :

... Nabokov’s handwritten index cards are reproduced with a transcription below of each card’s contents, generally less than a paragraph. The scanned index cards (perforated so they can be removed from the book) are what make this book an amazing document; they reveal Nabokov’s neat handwriting (a mix of cursive and print) and his own edits to the text: some lines are blacked out with scribbles, others simply crossed out. Words are inserted, typesetting notes (“no quotes”) and copyedit symbols pepper the writing, and the reverse of many cards bears a wobbly X. Depending on the reader’s eye, the final card in the book is either haunting or the great writer’s final sly wink: it’s a list of synonyms for “efface”—expunge, erase, delete, rub out, wipe out and, finally, obliterate.

Well, Dickens Didn't Do an MA in Creative Writing ...

Are writers born or do they emerge after a year of being 'workshopped' on a creative writing course? There is evidence either way Dickens didn't sit through an MA in the fens, yet the starry alumni graduating from Iowa's Writers' Worshop and the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA hint at the fact that writing fiction is not a given birthright, but a learned art.

Arifa Akbar in The Independent looks at the question of whether authors just need solitutde and to get on with it, or whether a formal course in creative writing actually helps. It is a debate that has come up several times before on this blog - and, as we have seen, there are one size fits all answers.

Storyteller on a Train

While I'm always moaning about reading campaigns in Malaysia never really taking off in any way that neither I nor the readers of this blog can see, I really applaud the National Library for its latest initiative.

The Star today reports that 90 children were taken on a four-hour train ride filled with story-telling, reading and singing of folk songs aboard KTM’s Sinaran Pagi as a prelude to the 1Malaysia Reading Campaign. During the journey from KL to Gemas in Negri Sembilan, the kids were entertained by singer Nurul Huda Abdul Wahab and Japanese children’s story-teller Saki Sasamori who has been resident in Malaysia for the past 15 years.

I hope this isn't a one off experiment ... it would be so nice to have to have something like this this continue.

Malaysia's Answer to Harry Potter?

Demand has been so hot for this local series that Popular Bookstores now takes up to 500 copies of its new releases, as opposed to its usual practice of ordering a maximum of 10 copies per title for each outlet....The first batch ordered always exceeds 4,500 copies, and all will be sold within a month. ... To date, the first book titled Seven Days has sold more than 30,000 copies since its release in 2006 – even at the relatively high price of RM20 per copy. ... The success of the series has stunned everyone from writers and editors to publishers, all of whom thought books with 80,000 to 100,000 characters sprawled over 300 pages without illustrations would never get the attention of young readers.

It was so nice to read about the runaway success of a local Chinese children's author, Khor Ewe Pin, in a piece by Yip Yoke Teng in today's Starmag. This teacher and textbook writers says that he noticed that there seemed to be a literary void for older children reading in Chinese. He studied how Rowling's novels were written ... and it seems that some of the magic dust rubbed off on him too.

Reporting From The Front Line

Sorry for not blogging earlier, I was at a place called Frideswide on the Western Front attending to the casualties and dodging fire in the trenches. And I'm only half joking.

Two of my great loves, poetry and Second Life come together with Oxford University's new virtual simulation which places the work of the war poets (including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Vera Brittain and Siegfried Sassoon) in a three dimensional, immersive environment that you can wander through and participate in. You can watch video, listen to readings of the poetry, read facimilies of documents, and watch video as you visit a training camp, communication trench, a casualty clearing station, and a front-line trench. You can wear (if you care to) the uniform of a soldier or nurse, and of course you can pose for and take pictures. I spent a couple of hours there and still have more to see and listen to.

It's a very relevant journey for me, as both my grandfathers fought in the First World War. One talked about the terrible things he'd seen all the time: the other couldn't bring himself to mention it at all.

One thing that made the experience special for me, last night, was having the opportunity to chat to one of the researchers behind the project who was able to explain how everything had come together. (Thanks Skanda!)

You can read all about the project here on Oxford University's website, and find out how you too can visit the battlefield and check out the possibilities of this new and exciting medium. Why Second Life? As the website explains :

Virtual worlds create opportunities to do things that are impossible in real museums. By simulating parts of the Western Front, the archive can embed an entire exhibition's worth of content within in the space. This can be further enhanced by placing digital versions of real archival materials and narratives along the paths that visitors take. The result is an immersive and personal experience. It's not 'real' but it does offer possibilities for understanding a part of history that is now beyond human memory.

The Allah Controversy and the Confiscated Bibles

Malaysia once more hits the world news for all the wrong reasons :

Malaysian authorities have confiscated more than 15,000 Bibles in recent months because they referred to "God" as "Allah," a translation that has been banned in this Muslim-majority country, Christian church officials said Thursday.

This issue about whether Christians are allowed to refer to God as Allah when they use Malay should have been resolved by the courts, but two years later the case brought by The Roman Catholic Church who say the present ruling it is unconstitutional and discriminates against those worshiping in Malay language (i.e the national language, the medium of education!) is still stuck in preliminary hearings for almost two years.

What They Said About the SWF

Zafar Anjum on the Writer's Connect website argues that although the theme for this year's Singapore Writers' Festival was Undercovers, a better word would have been Chaos - not reflecting the organisation of the event - but the fact that so many of the authors (including Mohd Hanif - left) were writing about the world in turmoil :

Throughout the festival, I was looking for one word or one term that could summarize the essence, the zeitgeist of our times. I looked at the books that were there on display in the Arts House bookstore. I tried to listen to the questions that people posed to their favourite writers. What was the gist, what was the spirit, I tried to figure out. ... Looking at the titles on display, one of the themes that strongly emerges is that of political power, violence and tyranny.

The biggest name at the festival as far as most young Singaporeans and Malaysians are concerned was Neil Gaiman. Tickets for the event proved difficult to get hold of and many fans were disappointed. (Okay, maybe here there was some chaos.) Niki Bruce in The Straits times writes about what happened when The Rock Star Writer took to the stage.

I like this :

He (Gaiman) came up with the theory that 'stuffed author' was a secret Singaporean delicacy, where you take "one graying, older author. Feed him wonderful food until he's completely stuffed, and then slice him up into little pick packages".

There's an account of just what one fan went through to get get ticket and attend the events here.

More about the part of the festival I attended later.

And if I find more responses to the festival on any website (surely there must be more out there???) I will post them below them later.

Postscript :

Damyanti writes about some of the sessions and workshops she attended at the festival here.

Quietness

... quietness seems to be the trademark of Guat Eng’s collection of short stories. The click of the computer. The brush of a lace handkerchief against the skin. The ‘soft scrabbling noise and the small chirrup at the window’. Her characters – especially the women – are thoughtful and composed. Thoughtful in their concern for others and thoughtful in that they reflect, ponder and slowly masticate what they take in with eyes and ears. And in the quiet of their own heads, they suture together the disparate snatches of information from their imperfect worlds. Though what they learn or guess at may be shocking and deplorable – the unspoken incest in the story ‘Seventh Uncle’ and ‘Two Pretty Men’, child abuse in ‘The Old House’, infidelity in ‘Almost the Worst Thing’ – they keep these discoveries close to their breasts. And as suddenly as these realizations rise to rage, sadness sways and smothers all. No confrontations. No noise. ... Guat Eng’s fiction captures a cultural suppression that continues to hold true.

There's an excellent piece by SH Lim on the work of Malaysia's first woman novelist in English, Chuah Guat Eng, in Time Out KL October edition. Do go read.

More about Guat on this blog here and her blog is here.

Preeta's Rightful Share

I want to tell you about my friend Kandan. Full name Kandan A/L Palanivel. Twenty years old. Handsome bastard. Of course we men don’t stare at each other and think who’s handsome, who’s ugly, of course not. I’m just saying only. If you had seen him, you also would have said the same thing. We all—me and Kandan and one whole group of fellers—used to lepak at one bhaiyyi coffee shop near KL Sentral there, and even the stylish college girls, the ones from rich-rich families, talking with hell of an American slang and all, used to come and sit with us on Saturday afternoons. Giggling, blinking their big eyes at him like he was God. Even if I strip naked also nobody will look at me like that, I tell you. Fooyoh, terror lah that feller, six feet tall, big shoulders, hair like a TV model, and dunno from where he got brown eyes, almost like mat salleh like that. Next to him Hrithik Roshan also will lose. But he was just a simple boy from Rawang, laborer’s son, never gone anywhere. Cannot even speak English properly.

Okay, go and read the rest of Preeta Samarasan's short story A Rightful Share at online magazine Guernica.

Farish in the Madrasahs

Congratulations to Farish Noor who this week launches his new book Qur'an and Cricket : Travels Through the Madrasahs of Asia and Other Stories at Silverfish.

Catch the event at 7.00pm on Friday, 6th November, 2009 at Silverfish Books, 58-1 Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 448 449 37 Email: info@silverfishbooks.com. Admission: Free

Here is the blurb :

Farish A Noor, academic, activist, traveller extraordinaire, visits, lives and interviews students (and others) in 'jihad factory' madrasahs (Islamic seminaries) from Patani to Pakistan and from Kashmir to Cairo, and comes away dazed and confused. In attempting to make sense of it all, he ends up confronting his own demons and nightmares.

and a taster from the book :

However, in the course of the same research I have also visited some rather dodgy institutions that can hardly be called madrasahs. Once in Pakistan I had to interview some students while in the corner of the room played a videotape of the gruesome murder and decapitation of the American journalist Daniel Pearl. The boys I was speaking to were between seven to ten years of age, and were smiling and laughing -- while others lay asleep. I tried to look away as long as I could, resisting the urge to puke.

Farish is one of my favourite writers. I really value his intelligence, his calm rationality and careful research.

Silverfish was kind enough to send me a copy, and I am really looking forward to reading it.

Au Reveals All!

Au, hero of Katz Tales, speaks. As Au’s language is too sophisticated for some audiences, he allows his personal servant Ellen Whyte to write the columns and the book in her own way.

However, as a rare treat, Au types his own message for Bibliobuli :

Helo reederz. i dont do intervoows ewesualy but as Sharon sends homidge often i haf graceeousli agreed to tak two yoo. And too tipe it myself. There is no need to fank me; just send a rost chikkin.

Sharon aksed me to shair my eksperiences as a faymus kat. Wel, what kan i say? i have always been a top kat so i am used to kontinual adorasyun.

Anyone hoo nos me, howevver, wil tel yoo i am a verry low-key kat. i have just too devoted servants, wun male and wun feemale. They make shure the big grey boks in the kitshun is stakked with treets and the kat biscuit barrel is all ways ful. Wen they perform reely wel i alow them to squizle my chin or play a game. Sum strikter kats wud say i spoil them but what kan i say, i am a just a verry kind kat by nature.

Wen the feemale began witing abowt me, i wuz in two mines.

On the wun paw i pweffer to keep a low pwofile becuz it makes it eazier to katch mice. Also, i don like peeple fawning al over me. i no my beauyooti, wit and grasiousness ar a magnet for the rabble, but al that hommage kan git verry tiring verry quikly.

However, the feemale promissed me that her storees wud enshoor a perminent flow of treetz. She also promissed i wud have to make no pershunal apearanses. Plus, she pointed owt that not evriwun nos what it is like to live with sumone as wunderfool as me. This final point perswayded me.

What the feemale had not mensioned wur the foto shoots.

I wuz verry patient wen she tuk my purrtrait for the buk cuvur but i objekt to those kandid pitshures she splashes al over the place withowt eeven asking my permizion. i meen, how wud yoo feel if sumone fotograffed yoo sleepin and eksposed yoor prozpiroos tummy to the nasion? i am not a poleetiseeyon!

But the feemale has been verry good abowt keeping my fans away. Wen they visit i luk at dem and deeside if they ar worthy of an audienze. Okkasionaly, if their hands ar kleen and they ar properli respektful, i wil alow them to stroke me. i beleef wun must enkorage wuns infeerreeors in everry way, eeven if it meenz sum pershunal sakrifice.

Allso, she has kept me properli suplied with treetz. Wich reminds me: i havent had wun in abowt 20 minootes. Before i go and poot in my order, i wud like to say wun thing: buy the buk! Not only is it filed with wunnerful stories al abowt me but 10% of the feemale’s share wil go to help owt kitties hoo ar living withowt the benefit of pershunal servants.

Bye now. I haf too eet a treet.

Katz Tales, Living Under The Velvet Paw is out in bookshops now. Price RM28 ISBN: 978-967-3035-64-9. For a free sneak peak and free sample story, visit http://www.lepak.com/katztalesbook.html

Two Books for Ellen

One of our featured authors at Readings@Seksan last Saturday has not just one but two titles newly released - both of them with different publishers, and both of them blurbed by me! (Professional!)

Ellen Whyte is someone I wanted very much to meet when I read her Katz Tales columns in The Star and realised that she was as feline crazy as me. And anyone doing PR on behalf of our furry friends, in a country where pets are too often neglected and abandoned, can only be a good thing.

I'm really delighted that she now has out Katz Tales : Under the Velvet Paw (anyone who has been owned by a cat will really appreciate the title!)

To quote myself on the back cover :

Ellen Whyte has the uncanny ability to think herself into the mind of a cat, and writes with great charm while managing to imparting a great deal of practical information. Scoop, Au and Target deserve to be Malaysia's first feline superstars.

I think my words may have gone to Au's head, as you will see later.

The second book Ellen has out is a compilation of her Logomania columns for The Star's Mind Our English page.

Logomania : Where Common Phrases Come From and How to Use Them is published by MPH. And to - ahem - quote myself again :

Logomania is a fascinating and very enjoyable exploration of some of the quirkier phrases in the English language and of the historical circumstances and cultural practices that gave rise to them. Ellen Whyte also provides plenty of examples of the expressions in use so you can comfortably slip these new expressions into everyday conversation.

I have learned a lot about my own language that I didn't know before, and remain fascinated about how the words we use are actually artefacts.

Check out some more of her very readable columns here and here.

Her blog is also a very enjoyable read, and she put up a very useful piece after the publishing symposium we attended in Singapore last week on how to put stuff online without giving your content away. (A problem we are both concerned about.)

Now then, just because I feel naughty, thought I'd put up a pic I took of Ellen and a blow-up doll in Singapore last week. Ellen is the one on the left.

Marshall Cavendish Warehouse Sale

Be warned - there's yet another warehouse sale going on! This time it is publishers Marshall Cavendish who are heavily discounting stock - up to 80% off - so this is definitely worth checking out. Click the poster up to full size to see the map.

Readings at a New Seksan's

Our Saturday's Readings@Seksan was quite a different event because of the location - Seksan's beautiful new place 48, Jalan Tenggirri - part personal gallery, part guesthouse ... and completed only the day before, so our event was its christening.

Seksan's spaces are magical, and all the more so for their apparent simplicity and use of recycled and salvaged materials. We were gawping at the distressed wooden doors (from an old school building?), the bare brickwork, the lampshade made of cat food tins (and the others of yoghurt bottles and plastic cake trays), the landscaping with wild plants, and marvelling at how relaxed and happy and creative the place makes you feel.

The guesthouse will be open soon for bookings, and I reckon it would be a perfect place for a writing retreat.

I was a bit worried about our audience finding us, but we really did have a bumper crowd on Saturday. If I had any problem at all it was in trying to decide how we should use the space around the pool - terraces, patios and dining area. Which way should we face, where should the audience be? There was sun and rain to factor in too, because we got extremes of both that afternoon. I'm not sure I got it right.

Anyway, here are the stars of the afternoon :

Seksan himself requested that Tan May Lee read first, because he so wanted to hear the story about the Muslim lesbian women. The piece which appears in the Body2Body collection is sizzling hot and beautifully written and she read a very moving passage from it.

May Lee, incidentally, works for MPH and is the editor of Quill magazine, and she was kind enough to bring along some free copies for us.


Ellen Whyte read us an extract from her new book Katz Tales : Living Under the Velvet Paw - a great story which very nicely illustrates the duplicitous ways of cats. I think all cat lovers in the audience could really relate to it. (More about Ellen coming up in another post!)


I've blogged about Haslina Usman's mission to make sure that the works of her late father, former laureate Usman Awang, are not forgotten and I was so happy to have her at Readings. she roped me into reading the English version of a poem of his very powerful poem (Bunga Popi) about poppies :

From blood, from pus that
rots in the soil
from skeletons that have lost
their lives
the result of war maniacs
who kill love,
the red flowers bloom beautifully,
requesting to be adored.

(More about the poem here.) I also read an extract from the very dramatic last chapter of Scattered Bones (the English translation of Tulang2 Berserahkan) while Haslina read a piece from Turunnya Sebuah Bendera (The Flag Comes Down?).

Next year Haslina is organising a restaging of her father's classic play Uda dan Dara (described as the Malay Romeo and Juliet) and I hope to invite her back then.

This young lady is Afi Momo - a science student by day and a poet every other minute. She made her debut at the 4th KL Poetry Slam and has performed in various events around KL and also in Singapore at the Lit Up Festival. She has published her own chapbook Paper Raper, and read us five poems from it. my favourite was entitled how to be A Pair of High Heels.

Her friends came along to support her and to pass out some copies of a group poetry zine. I was most impressed by their work and plan to invite the other members of Kata.Mata to appear next month.


Here's children's author Rebecca Loke with her son Ethan, who inspired her new book Great-Grandma's Hair Loss Remedy. Ethan read for his mum and was quite superb. (And hair or no hair, I reckon this young man is going to be breaking some hearts before long!)


Julya Oui is a freelance scriptwriter who also writes short stories, novels and poetry. she's been publsihed in various anthologies and magazines, and has a short horror story collection out soon. She also blogs here.

She read us a short horror story and the weather decided to provide the sound effects, giving us peels of thunder and flashes of lightning to accompany the words. (This of course gave new meaning to the expression, flash fiction!).

She also read us a piece from her story Friends Of Everyone which is in the Body2Body collection.

Finally, Moja Amin and Izza Izelan (both education students at University Teknologi MARA) took to the mic to give us a taste of a play that the group they belong to (Ethos! Society) have in production. It was a short dialogue debating the nature of love.

You can read more about the play here, and I was quite amazed to discover that one of my beautiful nieces, Wan Nadrah Yusoff, plays one of the leads. Small world. (And I have no excuse not to go to see it now!)

Before and after the event and during the break there was a lot of selling going on - we had a veritable arty pasar malam.

Yvonne Foong had recruited a whole team of young friends to help her sell tee-shirts, Steven V-L Lee's beautiful photographic books which he had donated, tee -shirts, her own book, and cupcakes. All to raise funds for the operation to save her sight.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan donated a whole pile of new books that people could help themselves to for free.

Thanks a lot to everyone who came and everyone who read. Biggest thanks too to Seksan for letting us launch the wonderful space. Thanks to Haslina for baking us a very special kueh lapis! Thanks too to Saras for helping to clear up. And again to Shahril Nizam for the blog poster.

I thank Tommy Ng for all the photos above except for the one of Haslina and myself which I stole from Azwan's Facebook page. (Do check out the rest here.) There are more lovely photos of the event showing more of the audience and the venue on on Leon Wing's and Yvonne's Foong's Facebook pages too.

Ioannis at Borders

You can catch up with author Ioannis Gatsiounis at Borders, The Curve between 3-4pm this Saturday, where he will be signing copies of his new collection of short fiction Velvet and Cinder Blocks.

Singaporean Interlude

Back in the 80's, I used to take a bus down to Singapore so that I could get my fix of cheap second hand books at a row of tumbledown shops in Bras Basah road.

The area was redeveloped (as everywhere in Singapore tended to be) and the shops disappeared. It was only on this trip that I caught up with the booksellers again - in the (aptly named) Bras Basah Complex on Bain Street and thanks to Ellen Whyte who dragged me there during our symposium lunch-break on Thursday. The pictures are of Knowledge Book Centre on the third level of the complex - just one of several bookshops here, and well worth a visit when you are down in Lion City.

(I've lots to post about the symposium over the next week or so.)

Rebecca for Readings Too!

Oops! One of my readers I accidentally left off my list for tomorrow's Readings@Seksan's is children's author, Rebecca Loke who will be introducing us to her new book Great-Grandma's Hair Loss Remedy.

The book was inspired by Rebecca's son, Ethan, who has alopecia universalis - a condition which leads to the loss of hair, not only on the head but all over the body, including the eyebrows and the eyelashes.

As Rebecca notes on the book cover, there is meagre understanding of the condition in the community at large. She says in the foreword :

At times when Ethan goes out without covering his head, people stare at him. Some even do a double-take. Some tease and call him botak-head. Others assume he has cancewre and offer words of comfort. A few people have asked 'What did you do to make your head so smooth?'

Hopefully the story about an 8 year old called James will make folks more aware of the issues. The book is the first in a planned series called Children’s Concerns.

Rebecca and her son were featured in The Straits Times of Singapore last month, and you can read the piece here.

So What Have You Been Reading?

I'm off to the Publishing Symposium at the Singapore Writers festival and most probably away from this blog till Friday. Expect some updates after that of stuff I hope will be particularly relevant to local writers.

So while I'm gone, this is your space. What have you read recently? Any good?

Non-fiction and short stories are still my reads of choice at the moment. I finished Madness : A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher very moving memoir of life with the illness - very well written, often harrowing but ultimately hopeful. A must-read if you know people who are bipolar and a book to put beside Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind. (I found my very cheap copy at Big Bookshop, and you can read excerpts from the book here.)

I read most of Gerrie Lim's In Lust We Trust : Adventures in Adult Cinema, at the hairdressers yesterday. Quite an eye-popping read (How does a nice Singaporean boy get mixed up in this? What actually goes on behind the scenes at the filming of porno movies - well aren't you also curious?), insightful and intelligent. (Bought by copy from Times bookstore.)

And now I'm toying with what to put in my bag to take to Singapore. Might give Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book a chance since it's almost halloween.

What Made Junot Diaz a Writer

... in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. Wasn't until that night when I was faced with all those lousy pages that I realized, really realized, what it was exactly that I am.

Do read this very inspiring (and remarkably humble) account of how Pulitzer prize winning author Junot Diaz came to the realisation that he was a writer in O, the Oprah Magazine.

Faith and Fiction

Here in the early part of the twenty-first century, religious faith seems to have become increasingly prominent in world and cultural affairs. And this change in the salience of religious faith raises several questions, I think, for the art of the novel. If we think of fiction as “make believe” and religion as “must believe,” how might novelists reconcile the ambiguities and uncertainties of their craft with an attempt to express or characterize religious faith? Is what is meant by religious truth the same as artistic truth? And if these truths are different—and perhaps they are profoundly different—how might a novelist who hopes in some way to characterize or advance the cause of religious faith serve two masters?

says Albert Mobilio in conversation about Faith and Fiction with other authors at the 2009 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. You can listen to this very interesting discussion here. (And there is much else worth browsing on the website.)

The Challenge Ahead

The development of serious literature in Malaysia is inhibited because the level of discussion in society is not high enough. In general, we are not a reading society. ...

Malaysia's new literary laureate is interviewed again, this time by Andrew Sia in Starmag.

Readings October

Catch our next monthly writers event :

Date: 31st October, 2009
Time: 3.30pm
Place: Sekeping Tenggiri, 48, Jalan Tenggiri, Taman Bukit Pantai, Bangsar, 49000 KL

The readers for this month are :

Haslina Usman
Afi Momo
Tan May Lee
Julya Oui
Ellen Whyte
Fadli Moja Amin

Yvonne Foong will also be along to sell copies of her own books, as well as Steven VS Lee's beautiful books of photography, her t-shirts and (best of all, I think) cupcakes, to raise money for her surgery.

Admission free and everyone very welcome. Please pass on the invitation to anyone else you think might be interested.

Note the new venue!!!

(For enquiries contact Sharon 017-2644956, sharonbakar@yahoo.com)

Thanks very much to Shahril Nizam for the poster.

Banning Bad for Book Business

The banned books issue is (hurray) the cover story in Starmag today, and there is a writeup about the Right to Read event, jointly organised by Sisters in islam and Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ).

The article highlights the confusion that surrounds the banning of books which all to frequently causes publishers to lose money and deprives the public of information.

Suaram chairperson K. Arumugam describes how his book on the Kampung Medan clashes in Kuala Lumpur was banned after he had spent RM10,000 on the printing, although he personally was not informed of the decision and the Home Ministry could not possibly have read the book since it was only published in Tamil. He says :

Banning a book which documents history is wrong as it denies me the right to record history ... I brought out a rational view of what occurred and what the government should do to correct the situation (in Kg Medan). Sue me in court (for defamation) or write another book to prove me wrong. I have a right to express myself the way I want to. You can’t take that away from me.

Ezra Mohd Zaid of ZI Publications was also in a quandary. It bought the translation rights to Irshad Manji’s The Trouble with Islam Today and had started the process of getting it translated. Then the book appeared on a banned books list in the local newspapers! says Ezra :

Theoretically, we can proceed with a Bahasa Malaysia version. But can we get any guarantee, as a business that has pumped money into the translation project, that the BM edition won’t be banned as well?

Masjaliza (of SIS) says that the Home Ministry officials also confiscate books that are not banned:

Last November, they went to a bookstore in Kota Baru to take copies of books which are actually not banned, such as Asian Renaissance by Anwar Ibrahim, Two Faces by Dr Syed Husin Ali, 13 Mei: Dokumen-dokumen Deklasifikasi Tentang Rusuhan 1969 Malaysia (May 13: Declassification of Documents About the Riots in 1969) by Dr Kua Kia Soong and Keganasan, Penipuan & Internet (Violence, Fraud and the Internet) by Hishamuddin Rais. ... According to the law, Home Ministry officials need to account for the books they take from a bookstore. But who pays for the books? Is it a loss you have to absorb?

It is, of course a national scandal. (One of only too many in the country. *Sigh) It's more Kafka than Kafka.

Tai reports that :

When contacted by StarMag, officials at the Home Ministry declined to comment.

No surprise there. They never ever do!

The article mentions the Manuscripts Don't Burn blog, which Erna Mayuni set up in 2006, but sadly stopped updating. I found myself uncomfortable as the lone voice there, especially as a foreigner (Keep head low when waiting for PR!) and decided just to blog about banned books on this blog, as I had been doing before.

It's nice to see the blog has now had a facelift and after a 2 year hiatus a couple of posts have been added. But a blog needs ongoing commitment ...

Anyway, the event was a worthwhile one. I went along on the Saturday afternoon, bought books, bought a hand-printed tee shirt which reads I Read Banned Books, and got roped in for a forum where we talked about banned books we had read. (I talked about how I seemed to have a knack for buying and reading books that later got banned.) It was cathartic and cozy, but no-one from the Home Ministry came along, of course.

Sekeping Tenggiri

I hope to get the list of readers for next Saturday's Readings@Seksan confirmed and posted here by tomorrow.

Meanwhile, you might like to check out the venue. We're honoured to be invited to use Seksan's beautiful new space, part art warehouse, part guesthouse called Sekeping Tenggiri (which translates, charmingly, as "a mackerel"). The address is 48, Jalan Tenggiri, Taman Bukit Pantai, and you can see some pictures here and read an interview with Seksan about it here.

I know you need a map, so here's a link to Google.