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Thursday 16 November 2017

Saving Timbuktu's Treasured Texts

A tale of a high-stakes rescue of a trove of ancient manuscripts that is the stuff of legends

first published in The Star, 16 November 2017


The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English is a painstakingly well-researched saga of a far-flung desert town in the West African nation of Mali and the incredible modern-day effort by that town's librarians and archivists to save its cache of ancient manuscripts. But it's also more than that: It appears to warn against taking anybody's word at face value.

A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and former head of international news at Britain's The Guardian newspaper, English tells the story of Timbuktu by alternating between two timelines: the West's long quest to discover the city, and the attempt in 2012 to protect its trove of texts from a civil war.

For centuries, the City of 333 Saints (and probably just as many spellings of its name) was a key part of a trans-Saharan trade route, small parts of which salt caravans still ply today. Early accounts by medieval-era travellers painted Timbuktu as an African El Dorado. The city did thrive on trade, but Timbuktu's wealth and stature has long faded since then.

However, it had other treasures. Timbuktu was also a university town in its heyday. Scholars from the Islamic world flocked there, and tons of written material on various subjects including mathematics, medicine and astronomy were produced, copied, and imported. It is estimated that tens or even hundreds of thousands of manuscripts could reside in its libraries and private collections.

Both strands of the narrative are well paced and thrilling. Tales of derring-do and misadventures abound, showcasing the best and worst of humanity. Besides the terrain and weather, the early European explorers also grappled with disease, hostile tribes, local politics and anti-Western attitudes, while the book smugglers had to deal with ransom-seeking thugs, faulty equipment and patrolling rebels.

However, we lurch between the two timelines like a camel's ungainly walk, making it onerous to closely follow both in long stretches. Key figures and events blur and blend into the background as impatient readers pray for the ride to end. Well, at least the experience is immersive.

The story doesn't end with the Great Manuscript Rescue. Questions eventually arose over details of the operation, the final tally of the salvaged manuscripts, how foreign donations for the task were spent, and whether the texts were in any danger at all. Even the principal rescuers appear to be vying to claim control of and credit for masterminding the effort.

One also notices similarities between the two timelines: the role of legend in shaping the image of Timbuktu in the minds of outsiders, the Timbuktiens' resistance against hostile forces and changes to their way of life, and how the town and its manuscripts became the focus of competing agendas.

From what I could gather, besides those ancient voyagers, the Timbuktiens of old may have concocted their own myths about their town and its personages. They attributed religious piety and supernatural abilities to the resident Muslim scholars, perhaps to deter invaders or bandits. Such sketchy and sometimes fantastical anecdotes helped feed the West's centuries-long curiosity of Timbuktu and boosted its reputation among adventurers looking for a challenge.

In the present, news of the manuscripts' successful evacuation raised a similar degree of excitement, relief, and a sense of victory. At the time, Timbuktu was occupied by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists embroiled in the civil war. They had vandalised some of the city's landmarks, which were accorded World Heritage status, and many feared the prized papers might be targeted as well.

But one can't help but wonder: could the threat to the manuscripts have been played up to bring more of the world's attention to this town?

English provides notes for his sources and appears to vouch for them but he seems cautious, as we should be, about who and what to believe. When it comes to researching and writing about people, places and events of bygone eras and in isolated locations, one has to start with and trust contemporary sources of information, and dig deeper from there because Рpardon the clich̩ Рnothing is what it seems.

According to English, "This book is as much historiography as history. That is to say, it is an account of the interpretations of Timbuktu's past at least as much as it is the story of what actually happened there. The reasons for this will, I hope, have become clear: Timbuktu's story is in perpetual motion, swinging back and forth between competing poles of myth and reality. Spectacular arguments are made and then dismissed before another claim is built up, in an apparently continuous cycle of proposition and correction."

So one should read it without judgement, and take whatever is printed with a pinch of (caravan-borne?) salt. Like the glittering fables of West African empires, English's tale of these latter-day book smugglers can be compared to pearls: grains of truth layered with opalescent embellishments from the author's sources, with a little writerly polish.

Yet this doesn't diminish the story, its protagonists and what they sought to save, or cast doubts on the author, his work and his motives. Instead, English has brought us closer to this corner of the world, helping to lift the mystery shrouding it and revealing that even bare truths are just as fascinating as illusory palaces of gold in the African desert.



The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu
The Quest for this Storied City and the Race to Save its Treasures

Charlie English
William Collins (2017)
400 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-00-818490-2

Tuesday 7 November 2017

Rise Of The Streampunks

How YouTube and its stars are driving a revolution in media

first published in The Star, 07 November 2017


This book made me feel old and question what I'm doing with my life. Understandable, I suppose, as it's mostly about the new stars of online video, many of whom are millennials and Gen-Xers—dubbed "streampunks" by Robert Kyncl (pronounced "kin-sil"), chief business officer at YouTube.

Written by Kyncl with Google writer Maany Peyvan, Streampunks tells how a bunch of creators and entrepreneurs used YouTube to do their thing and transform how media works. The book also highlights the tactics they've used, the challenges they have faced, and what their success means for the future of media.

Kyncl and Peyvan set the mood by contrasting the barren media landscape that is the Czechoslovakia that Kyncl grew up in, with scenes from the YouTube Creators Summit in New York in the present day. The latter is attended not by greying guys in sharp suits, but youngish-looking people in "the rarest sneakers", "the sharpest athleisure", or just jeans and T-shirts, many of whom have tattoos or dyed hair.

And yet, there is an "overwhelming sense of respect as they exchange greetings with their peers from around the world", the authors note. Perhaps, above all, the people in that space are those who seem to be doing what they've always wanted to do, from vloggers (video bloggers) and beauty gurus to chefs and gamers.

How is it possible for these people to earn a living and achieve fame rivalling that of Hollywood stars, to have a global audience of millions and gain influence the likes of which big brand names would splurge for, by just being themselves and doing what they love?

Kyncl would probably say "YouTube", which would be a gross oversimplification. When TV was king, the authors argue, a small group of executives determined what got aired and what didn't—subsequently deciding who got the limelight and who didn't. With online video, that power has shifted to the audience, whose interests "are far more diverse and unique than those execs ever imagined".

So it turns out that many out there are interested in quilting, as demonstrated by the story of Jenny Doan from Hamilton, Missouri, the United States, whose YouTube quilting tutorials made her the Julia Child of the craft and brought her quilt company and her town global fame.

Other chapters tell of the rise of other personalities who built their brands on the platform. There's Lilly Singh, a.k.a. "Superwoman", who created that geography video for racists; vloggers Hank and John Green, the latter many would know as the author of young adult fiction bestsellers like The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns; Shane Smith, CEO and cofounder of Vice Media; and talent manager Scooter Braun, who brought the world Justin Bieber and made Psy's "Gangnam Style" as hot as Shin Ramyun instant noodles.

More than a collection of success stories, however, this book can be considered a primer for aspiring streampunks in how the stories are stitched together. Besides sharing some tricks of the trade, the authors make a good case for their subjects' bright futures, dropping names and lobbing figures to fortify their arguments.

But behind the six-figure subscriber counts and slick online clips is a lot of hard work, passion and perseverance. Hints of that are sprinkled throughout, but it's the title of the eighth chapter, "The Struggle is Real", that drives it home.

The cost of being "real" and independent is constant engagement with the audience, while coming up with new ideas, and learning to shoot better videos ... imagine doing all that and more for years before one's big break.

That's a lot of time and money spent, not to mention crappy clips, at least in the early stages. The issue of revenue is also looked at, spliced between accounts of the births of crowdfunding platform Patreon and premium service YouTube Red (which is not available in Malaysia when this was written).

One thing that's only briefly touched on and perhaps more suitable for discussion in other books is the potential downsides of online fame, as illustrated by the posting of anti-Semitic content in 2017 by Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. PewDiePie. Also, what to make of recent outbursts (which might have emerged before the book went to print) by some YouTubers against the platform's alleged demonetisation of videos that it considers not ad-friendly?

And just because there are YouTube videos of how braces are fastened doesn't mean one can watch those and start practising orthodontics. Even cooking videos and recipes don't always yield perfect results when followed faithfully.

On the whole, Streampunks paints bright picture of an emerging new media landscape powered by a growing horde of video wizards who are coming up with innovative ways to tell and share stories in an engaging and authentic manner.

As such, the overall tone for this book is quite rah-rah, no surprise considering who the authors are. Whether it's because they sound genuine about what they feel for these streampunks and the future of new media or that Kyncl works for YouTube—or both—is best left to the reader to decide.

But no one should deny that a revolution is happening in media.


An edit has been made to this version, for clarity.



Streampunks
YouTube and the Rebels Remaking Media

Robert Kyncl with Maany Peyvan
Harper Business
288 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-06-265773-2