Book Marks: Eka's Kurniawan's Wound, Self-Publishing, And Jalan-Jalan

Eka Kurniawan has won the inaugural World Readers Award with Beauty is a Wound.

The award, "organised by the Hong Kong and Australia-based Asia Pacific Writers and Translators association, was given out in Hong Kong." Kudos was also given to the translator for her work on the Indonesian original, Cantik Itu Luka.

Before receiving the grant to publish the book from the Yogyakarta Cultural Academy, Eka had offered Cantik Itu Luka to four publishers, but to no avail.

"A major publisher included a note [with the rejection letter], saying 'the novel is too literary'. I have no idea whether that's a compliment or something else," he recalls, laughing.

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"Self-publishing? It generates a lot of noise on social media. It results in many flashy-looking websites from authorpreneurs keen to sell success secrets to other aspiring authorpreneurs. With Amazon's Kindle and CreateSpace as the major outlets, it continues to put money in the coffers of the company largely responsible for destroying author incomes in the first place. But it isn't a route to financial security. For those who prefer orchestrated backing to blowing their own trumpet, who'd privilege running a narrative scenario over running a small business, who'd rather write adventures than adverts, self-publishing is not the answer."

I'm still trying to decide whether the writer of this piece is for or against self-publishing.


Meanwhile:

• In The Guardian, the interesting story of Mike Stoner's self-published novel, Jalan-Jalan, a tale about "a heartbroken young Brit through Indonesia, where he finds himself embroiled in a murky world at the bottom of the expat barrel after accepting a teaching job at a dodgy language school after a five-minute telephone interview."
• Parnassus Books is now mobile. Bookmobile, that is. "The bright blue bookmobile, which hit the road this week, is a roving offshoot of Parnassus Books, a popular independent bookstore ... co-owned by Karen Hayes and the novelist Ann Patchett," wrote The New York Times/ "The store’s name comes from Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel Parnassus on Wheels, about a middle-aged woman who travels around selling books out of a horse-drawn van."
• Bloggers and social media people in Singapore now have to pay tax for freebies they receive. According to the report, "The rule applies to not only blogging website but social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the likes. Payments are taxable regardless whether they are received directly from the advertisers, or indirectly through a social media influencer companies."
• Sabah-based artist Tina Rimmer launched her memoir, A Life on Two Islands "The memoir tells the story of Tina's life in the United Kingdom and British North Borneo where she arrived in 1949 as the Colony's first female education officer," according to The Borneo Post. Sounds like a good read.
• RIP Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall, and Barry Hines, author of A Kestrel for a Knave. Still a bad year for the arts.

The "First Time"? Maybe Not

This year, a couple of local (Malaysian) novels were nominated for the 2016 Dublin International Literary Awards (DILA, formerly the Dublin IMPAC International Literary Awards): Tree of Sorrow, by Malim Ghazoli PK and The Michelangelo Code by Nazehran Jose Ahmad. Both, I understand, are English translations of the originals in Malay.

An official from the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (National Institute of Language and Literature), told The Malay Mail Online that "both the novels were nominated by the Malaysian National Library and that this is the first time that local novels have been included for the awards."

Well... if they're the first local novels included for the awards after the name change in November 2015, yes. If the DILA is a new award that's different from the Dublin IMPAC, with different criteria and categories, yes.

But it doesn't look that way. For one, why are the previous longlists still archived?

A search shows that in 2015, John Solomon and The Fifth Island (Samuill Tiew/Monopoly Publications) was longlisted; and in 2013, DUKE (Rozlan Mohd Noor/Silverfish) and The Dulang Washer (Paul Callan/MPH Group Publishing) got in. These were published by Malaysian publishers and also nominated by the National Library of Malaysia. Aren't these local titles?

Also: two titles by Khoo Kheng-Hor: Taikor (2006) and Sifu (2011). I think these were published by Pelanduk. Tunku Halim's Dark Demon Rising made it as early as 1999. Aren't these local too?

So I don't think it is the first time local novels have been included for the awards. Was someone misquoted? Did someone transcribe something wrongly? Or has somebody not been doing homework?

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As it turned out, IMPAC, the American company that jointly sponsors the award with the Dublin City Council, had apparently gone defunct in the late-2000s and the trust fund that supports the award had been wound up. The 2015 prize was entirely funded by the Dublin City Council while a new sponsor was being sought.

One of the councillors, Mannix Flynn, suggested the name of the title be changed to relect the departure of IMPAC as a sponsor. From the Irish Times:

"It should be called the Dublin City Council City of Literature award or at least it should denote that the city backs the award [FINANCIALLY]," he said, adding the money might alternatively be spent in other areas.

"There is absolutely no sign of a [NEW]sponsor whatsoever on this. It's a grandiose gesture when you have a city that is suffering from great austerity and the vast majority of artists are living well below the poverty line."

So it's now the DILA, minus the IMPAC. It's kind of like how the Orange Prize for Fiction became the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, when Bailey's (yes, that Irish Cream one) stepped up after the telco firm Orange withdrew.

But if Councillor Flynn is correct about Dublin's situation, the future of the award, once described as "the most eclectic and unpredictable of the literary world's annual gongs", looks bleak without backers. How long can Dublin's city council be able to keep the award going by itself?

Unfair as it may sound, many prizes and awards in the arts are propped up by private sponsors. The implications of this - and the question of what makes somebody's work "world-renowned" and whether this needs to be redefined - is probably better explored in another post or forum, if it isn't already.