When New World Changes Old, And Vice Versa

I don't have much to add to this review, other than the doubts I had about the "Mongol empire in ruins". A quick but much-belated check revealed that the Mongol Empire began breaking up around 1368, when the Yuan Dynasty fell and was replaced by the Ming Dynasty.

Now, we have the Internet, which not only informs us when an empire falls but can potentially facilitate the fall of empires. Misinformation, conquest, and war and all its inhumanities, however, are still with us.

---

Clash of civilisations

The shockwaves of Christopher Columbus's voyages of exploration and discovery five centuries ago still reverberate today

first published in The Star, 17 February 2012


The Christopher Columbus I read about in school was the famous explorer and navigator who discovered America. His image then was viewed through rose-tinted lens, his exploits written and spoken of in admiring tones.

Years later, I'm older, just a teeny bit wiser, and ready for the rest of the story. So thank you, Laurence Bergreen, for writing Columbus: The Four Voyages. This book appears to be an attempt to fill the gaps in the Columbus narrative and explore the darker side of the explorer's forays into parts of the Caribbean. It is dark, and bound to instil revulsion towards the behaviour of the Spaniards who would later hasten the demise of the Inca and Aztec empires.

Apart from the life story of Christopher Columbus, or Cristóbal Colón as he was known in Spain, the author also shows us what it was like in Genoa and Europe back then, thus providing historical context for everything else that followed: Columbus's voyages and the subsequent colonisation of the New World and the subjugation of its native populations. Bergreen also notes that other Genoans before Columbus tried – and failed – to sail across the Atlantic. And the reaction from those who heard about his research: "You mean he made four voyages?" Yes, he did.

The Genoan's idea to cross the Atlantic and arrive in the East was, from Bergreen's writings, a badly informed venture based on mostly unreliable accounts by the likes of Marco Polo and the polymath Ptolemy (c. 90–c. 168CE). By Columbus's time, the rule of the "Grand Khans" in China was long over and the Mongol empire lay in ruins. But he didn't know that.

They even added an image of the explorer, allegedly painted
by Venetian artist Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547). No
paintings of Columbus were made when he was alive, and no
one is sure if the guy here is ol' Chris. If he hadn't been
away most of the time...

Of course, the undertaking needed lots of resources. Failing to sell his idea to the king of Portugal, Columbus turned to the Spanish monarchs. His proposal, in short, was: Give me men, ships, and stuff, and a nice shiny title, and I'll bring back spices, gold and all manner of riches – and convert a few locals to Christianity. The self-styled "bearer of Christ" believed his was a holy enterprise. That belief was strengthened by the safe crossing of the Atlantic on his first voyage, and a few other strokes of luck in subsequent journeys to "the East".

But his luck and supposed divine protection was not foolproof. Though a masterful mariner and expert on the water, Columbus was rather clumsy on land and in politics. Many of the men who came with him to the New World on subsequent voyages behaved badly, to say the least. Columbus himself was accused of using torture to keep the peace and force the natives to bring him gold. News of his alleged mismanagement of the New World settlements reached Spain, and at the end of his third voyage, he was sent back in chains and stripped of his authority. After returning from his disastrous fourth and final voyage, he died in 1506, a physical and emotional wreck.

Bergreen has done a good job researching and writing Columbus. The facts practically turn the pages for the reader, though one could argue that it could also be the morbid fascination with people's bad behaviour. Even some of the "noble savages" exhibit varying degrees of political cunning, using their ties with the explorers to their advantage.

As for Columbus himself, sadly, I came away with an impression that he was a self-serving, delusional jerk with gold fever, who was not averse to the idea of enslaving the natives, even those who had been kind to him and his countrymen. The author uses several forms of the word "delusion" a few times.

Though Columbus may not have been the first to reach the Americas, he did make it public, triggering the massive and continuous influx of people to the Americas. A partial result of that is the world-shaping superpower that is today's United States. His name has been given to many roads, buildings, vessels, geographical features, and towns in that country. The native populations there, however, would probably have other opinions.

Bergreen's Four Voyages shouldn't be seen simply as an indictment of his subject's failures – as a governor or explorer of the East – but also a historical account of the consequences of empire, and how lofty goals and high moral grounds can never fully justify the damage done to the colonised in the name of religion, wealth and nation.

Even so, Columbus shouldn't be harshly judged for the times his conduct was less than exemplary. His fate depended on the successes he promised he would achieve upon crossing the Atlantic. If he didn't make it, well, who can say that a world unmarked by his voyages would be any better?


18/10/2014  About a week after this review was published, someone wrote to The Star in response to it. The paper published my reply not long after.

Another issue I felt I haven't explored was the 'true image' of Columbus in comparison with one Bartolomé de las Casas. But I think I'll let The Oatmeal handle that.

---

Columbus

The Four Voyages

Laurence Bergreen
Viking (2011)
417 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-670-02301-1

MPH Quill Issue 33, Jan - Mar 2012

This issue is a bit... subdued, but still interesting.

Cover for this issue (left), and the Richard Zimler interview

Andrew Matthews, writer and illustrator of the best-selling self-help Happy books, talks about happiness, attitude, and success. And his latest book on bullying, a departure from his usual theme(s).

Sample shots from the Andrew Matthews feature

...That looks like a real practised smile.

Meanwhile, Eric Forbes speaks with Richard Zimler, author of such books as The last Kabbalist of Lisbon (1996), Hunting Midnight (2003), The Warsaw Anagrams (2011). Also featured is Margaret Stohl, YA author of the Beautiful Creatures series, and the Zapp family who travelled the world in a 1928 vintage Graham-Paige.

First pages of the features for Margaret Stohl (left) and the Zapps

Robert Raymer ponders whether creative writing workshops are fun or torture, while Geoffrey S Walker (The Bomoh's Apprentice (2010) and Blood Reunion (2011)) encounters an otherworldly distraction while writing.

Also included are excerpts of the coffee table book Sikh Community in Malaysia and bits about Charles Dickens, in conjunction with his 200th anniversary of his birth. And visit Cappadocia in the Turkish region of Anatolia, a place known for its chimney-like rock formations. It also has several underground cities where early Christians hid.

There was some talk about an annual issue for 2012, but nothing concrete so far.

News: Dickens 200th, E-Book Apps, And The Amazon Boycott

Last Tuesday (7 February) marked the 200th birthday of Charles John Huffam Dickens, author of such works as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist and founder of the literary magazine All the Year Round. I'd say more, but I haven't read or am familiar with his life or writings. Maybe it's the language, or the length of some of his works.

Bring in the e-book apps. Last week CNet featured another e-book publishing app: Booktango, plus some self-publishing tips. And the Booktrack soundtrack app for books "works", app-arently. The way things are going for e-books, we'll be watching movies on smartphones.

Red Staple Inc, meanwhile, has announced the release its browser-based, Red Staple Enhanced ePub Authoring Tools. And French firm Aquafadas is offering tools to help comic creators self-publish digitally.

Also: There's this book, A Lifespan of a Fact, which is said to be about the task of fact-checker for a novel in progress. The excerpt, however, does the book little help: it looks like part of an exchange between a beleaguered fact-checker trying to do his job and an author who changes facts to better suit his "art". It does looked hammed up, doesn't it? Despite the apparently less-than-glowing reviews of the book, I'm still curious about it.

Some time ago, Barnes & Noble announced that they won't be selling books published by Amazon, in protest of the latter's allegedly aggressive tactics to monopolise the book publishing sector. That number rose to three with Canadian outfit Indigo and US company Books-A-Million following suit. Then the American Booksellers Association for-profit division IndieCommerce hopped into the anti-Amazon bandwagon.

In the short-term, this tactic may help highlight Amazon's bold moves and open it up to some scrutiny, but I'm not sure what it would do to these companies in the long run as Amazon cranks out more and more popular titles.

• Running on empty: US indie publishing house Grateful Steps in Asheville, Colorado. Working without pay? In the US? That's dedication.
• Edinburgh book festival chief Nick Barley wants authors, not celebrities.
• Writer Adam Mars-Jones's take on Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall wins The Omnivore's inaugural hatchet job award. The prize is given to the 'writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review' of the past year 'not to punish bad writing, but to reward good and brave and funny and learned reviewing'", says the Guardian report.
• Tamil audio books, it seems, are making a comeback in India.
• Another self-publishing success story: Kerry Wilkinson sells over 250,000 copies on Kindle, beating Lee Child, Stieg Larsson and James Patterson.
• The future of academic publishing: accessible, borderless, connected. Sounds like the Internet.
• What's missing from children's books of late? A study suggests that kids' books these days are being set in nature less and less. Imagine that. And imagine this:
  
  "Junior, stop changing your iPhones so often. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know."
  
  "Trees? What are they?"
  
  Shudder. Elsewhere, more and more parents are reading less and less fairy tales to their kids. Why? "Too scary," it seems. Look at the top ten list. Of course "Jack and the Beanstalk" is "unrealistic". It's. A. Fairy. Tale. Make-believe.
  
  If only they knew just how Grimm some fairy tales used to be. Guess they don't make kids like they used to.

News: Franzen, Coelho And An Endangered Publishing Ecosystem

It's been three hours since I returned from a gym. That's my resolution for this year: spend some time working out - and tackling that problem I've had for years.

Some big news includes Jonathan Franzen's rant about e-books damaging society and endangering democracy. Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan blows off the latter, calling it "Wieseltierian piffle" (whatever that is). Sullivan's readers put in their two cents on the issue.

But Franzen isn't the only author who seems to hate e-books, and e-books aren't the only things he hates. That being said, "Things Jonathan Franzen Says Are Bad for Society" would make a great e-booklet.

Paulo Coelho, however, loves e-books. So much so, that he's spreading that love - by asking people to pirate his e-books. It's understandable when you know that he claims to owe his big break to his decision to make The Alchemist free for download on his web site. But Coelho's no struggling author, and I don't think he's sending out the right kind of message with his "Pirate Me!" plea.

• The Amazon vs Other Publishing Houses battle heats up with Barnes & Noble announcing that they won't stock books published by Amazon. Also joining the boycott is Canada's Indigo Books and Music. This guy says that move won't work.
  
  Someone even went so far as to say that Barnes & Noble is the last hope for traditional publishers. I hope B&N won't take that too seriously because, well, look at Borders. The Authors Guild, part of the Authors League of America, blogged its take on a "publishing ecosystem on the brink".
  
  Amazon, meanwhile, gets achy breaky with a publishing deal for Billy Ray Cyrus's memoir. Because who can resist the urge to insert "achy breaky" in a sentence like that?
• In response to the ban on Mexican American studies in Tucson, Arizona, which entails an alleged ban on books about Latino history and culture, the Librotraficante movement is planning to smuggle books that would be banned back into the state. Elsewhere in the US, some schools are adopting Mexican American studies.
• Some "big" and familiar reasons why indie authors are not taken seriously.
• Flavorwire's list of the most dangerous books of all time.
• An interesting piece on marriage and bookshelves. We've all heard of joint bank accounts - joint home libraries, anyone? I didn't know having different reading preferences could be a problem for married couples.
• Ewan Morrison says we're at the start of an e-publishing bubble. A dissenting voice speaks out. Also, there may be problems in pushing e-textbooks at one university.
• An author's guest post about the first month in Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select programme. In short: you won't get rich quick.
• Some things learned from opening a bookstore: tips for buying bookshelves, recommending books and stocking free stuff baskets. Because lists like these can come in handy.
• Why do we insist on learning lessons from the books we read? ...Yeah, why do we?
• Someone asks: Should "Mein Kampf", with its "hundreds of pages of turgid, often incoherent prose," remain banned? I say no. The ban hasn't worked at all in stopping the hate. And the "Never" in "Never again" is happening to other people.
• Another thing we share with Indonesians: not reading a lot of good books. No simple explanations here, however.
• It's not just budding millionaire YA authors. Serious photojournalists also have trouble publishing books. Here's one photojourno's rocky road towards publishing his book on the illegal trade of endangered species.
• Weighed down by serious reads? Take a book break and sit down with something lighter. Don't think anyone should be judged for that.
• Moon People is probably the worst book ever (for 2012) - just look at the excerpts. Makes me excited about what "the worst book ever" will be for 2013.

A Nearly Fulfilled Prophecy

“There shall come a day when a prince of my line shall possess this treasure, and it is that prince who shall make all lands below the wind subject to him.”

So promises Malik al-Mansur, the last king of Beruas, to anyone who finds the hoard of riches and artefacts he'd assembled and hidden after the Portuguese invaders sacked his kingdom. This is the premise of Iskandar Al-Bakri's debut, The Beruas Prophecy, published by Silverfish Books.

No vampires, zombies, child wizards or sentient jewellery here. This piquant package features a legendary treasure trove, villainous orang putih, Malay secret societies and unlikely heroes. We also get magic and an appearance by Taming Sari, the keris once wielded by the legendary warrior Hang Tuah.

Months before the Pangkor Treaty is to be signed, a promising silat student is shot dead by a bullying British officer. Said officer is part of a plot to destabilise Perak through the use of pirates, so that the Brits can "intervene" and set up shop in the state. But this officer and his cohorts are also looking for the fabled hoard of Malik al-Mansur, who ruled Beruas around the twilight of the Malaccan Sultanate.

Searching for the treasure, these Brits also get tangled up with two Malay secret societies. Indera Sakti, founded after the fall of Malacca, has become a nest of vipers who seeks the fulfilment of Malik al-Mansur's prophecy by one of their own. Darul Kubra, at odds with Indera Sakti, wants to keep the treasure a secret. A power struggle between two Indera Sakti factions adds to the excitement.

While causing trouble at the British's behest, pirate king and Indera Sakti bigwig Sabu sacks the village of Kuala Sepetang, the home of village elder and silat grandmaster SiTumi. Burning with vengeance, the old man and several other villagers join members of Darul Kubra who are out to foil Indera Sakti's latest schemes. Clashes of swords, silat and sorcery would follow.

If this book were a dish, it has all the ingredients - albeit with a little English mustard - for an exciting, gripping made-in-Malaysia senjata dan sihir epic with lip-smacking local flavours. It's also aesthetically pleasing: nice cover, nice typeface, and a comfortable layout. Reading about Malay traditions and jampi (incantations) in English feels like a sunny burst of citrus. Even Hang Tuah's origins and significance are explored briefly. No apparent romance sub-plots, but no problem.

...except the overly detailed "tell instead of show" narrative - from the first paragraph of page one.

Balik Pulau, 1823. Friday evening just after eight. Yaakob lives with his wife and three daughters in a village in the west of Penang Island. His house is a modest, timber one that has just two rooms. Yaakob built it with the help of his neighbours a week before his wedding, many years ago. His wife has planted vegetables and tapioca in the front yard, and banana along the sides.

Everything else after the description of Yaakob's house is not critical to the storyline. Also, we probably don't need to know that one Sir Robert Fullerton "was born in 1773, the son of Reverend William Fullerton", etc etc.

These awkward little info dumps continue throughout the book, even for cameo characters such as SiTumi's daughter Minah. One page after she first appears, the fish salter and mother is killed with a head shot by pirates raiding Kuala Sepetang. Nowhere is she depicted salting fish. She doesn't even get to take out a pirate's eye with a well-thrown ikan kembung masin, which would have been awesome.

Instead of the compelling cinematic tale it could have been, we get a wayang kulit where the dalang moves the characters about and recites the story. Action scenes become formulaic, jokes fall flat and the mysticism and lore sound clinically curated. One casualty is The Dark Mambang; the spiritual patron of Indera Sakti is more Muppet than malevolent in its appearances.

I've not seen a pendekar Melayu (Malay warrior) novel in English that's written this well, and with such good material. If not for the staid, sporadically choppy storytelling, The Beruas Prophecy would be a fine example for its genre.

---

The Beruas Prophecy

Iskandar Al-Bakri
Silverfish Books (2011)
233 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3221-34-9

Franzen's Freedom Fries

Heard about Jonathan Franzen's rant about e-books corroding social values and endangering democracy? I am, and you should be, puzzled at the leap from e-books to self-government. It's such a sudden transition that one wonders whether the journo skipped a paragraph or two somewhere.

However, some points are worth pondering.

I don't know if the "radical contingency" in the fluidity and stealth of e-book edits can "threaten democracy", but what I thought was pertinent was this bit when he argued for paper books: "Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper."

One year in publishing has taught me that one is never really, really sure if a book is going to be right, even after it's printed. Something will slip through: missing punctuation marks, typos and the like, or the occasional, unfortunately nuanced phrase. What we do is try. Really hard.

The loads of people touting e-books and self-publishing as the future appear to be inadvertently selling the myth that digital self-publishing is a viable road towards best-sellership in the new millennium.

Probably, but not without the "hard work" that goes into Franzen's idea of the book, such as editing and marketing. Why else did that self-publishing wunderkind eventually seek the help of traditional publishers?

Franzen also reportedly made a statement that suggests we left our nations' financial decisions to bankers because we're too busy with our gadgets:

If you go to Europe, politicians don't matter. The people making the decisions in Europe are bankers. The technicians of finance are making the decisions there. It has very little to do with democracy or the will of the people. And we are hostage to that because we like our iPhones.

Makes you wonder, right? Was it the editorial standards or did Franzen's train of thought, in fact, skip a few rails?

I do agree that the tech boom has its dark side. Hardware manufacturers seemed to be pushing newer, faster, smaller, higher capacity, etc on consumers, creating a market that recycles its gadgets every year or so. Like the Walter Berglund character in Franzen's Freedom, many of us are kept awake at night by the "trillion bits of distracting noise", finding ways to contribute to the chatter for no apparent reason other than to belong. Our offline lives become mundane.

Perhaps that's why some people shouldn't be connected to the Internet when they want to write or work.

But as it has already been pointed out, neither paper nor digital media confer a true sense of permanence. Paper degrades, turns colour or becomes mildewy. And what if an e-publisher pulls a book from its library? Then, this claim:

...Apple, for instance, is well-known for both refusing to publish apps for the iPhone/iPad/iPod ecosystem that offend its editorial sensibilities or are contrary to its own business goals, and revoking previously-published apps, effectively deleting them from customers' devices.

If true, isn't that more of a threat to democracy - and freedom of speech or expression - that the addiction to gadgets?

Books will be around, and it will take on other forms. Some of us just need more time than others to get used to the changes.

Read, Read, Read Some More

Hey, it's fill- um, reading list time.

I've been loaned a couple of books for perusal, and given a list of new and upcoming books to pick for review. And here are my selections from that pool, in no particular order:

• The Natural
  Richard La Ruina
  HarperOne (February 2012)
  224 pages (hardcover)
  Non-fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-062-08978-6
• The Mirage
  Naguib Mahfouz
  Anchor (February 2012)
  480 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-307742582
• The Wisdom of Beer
  Christopher G Moore
  Heaven Lake Press (2011)
  310 pages
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-616-7503-11-0
• A Land More Kind Than Home
  Wiley Cash
  William Morrow (April 2012)
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-062088147
• An Unexpected Guest
  Anne Korkeakivi
  Little, Brown (April 2012)
  Fiction
  ISBN: 978-0-316-21266-3

I won't be reviewing The Wisdom of Beer for the papers, though. As for the rest, well, there's no confirmation, either. But I hope I get to read them all.

News: Post-CNY, Book Bans and E-Publishing Hijinks

This year's Chinese New Year holidays saw me totally disconnected from the Internet, but perpetually plugged into the food and learning channels on Astro B.yond.

Didn't drive home by myself, so I hitched a ride with an uncle and got snared in that awful five-plus-hour traffic jam at the Tanjung Malim rest stop. The snarl in human and vehicular traffic combined the Saturday balik kampung rush for the long weekend and the annual CNY exodus. People were taking pictures of the mayhem with their phones.

For the ride home, I hitched a ride with my sister and brother-in-law. The whole trip took about four hours. My poor heart shrivelled several times as he floored it. I'm treating my car better so it'll be fit for next year's CNY holiday. I drive slower, but it's better for my nerves.

Hey, we all age.

---

So I went home and saw my review of Luis Urrea's book in the papers. In it, I wondered if the book would be banned in Arizona, which is gaining a reputation for becoming increasingly hostile to Hispanics.

Turns out that several of his non-fiction works have been affected by the plan to end allegedly biased and politically charged ethnic studies in the US state. As I see it, critics see it as an attempt to stamp out Mexican-American culture in Arizona, which has a sizeable Hispanic population. Urrea had some choice words about the issue.

"Wait a minute", this guy appears to be saying. "Nothing's set in stone yet. And it's only in Tucson." Unless the air clears over the issue, Mexican-American writers are likely to continue voicing their displeasure over the matter.

• iBooks Author, a free, downloadable Mac OS X application for creating e-books has landed. Though the simplicity of the app is appealing, the folks at Writers Beware are urging (would-be) users to read the fine print before trying it out and submitting the output to iBooks.
  
  One reason is Apple's alleged attempt to fix the e-book file format used by the app. Ed Bott at ZDNet is crying foul, saying that Apple's move will hamper the application of an open standard for e-books.
  
  Meanwhile, the big fruit appears to be in trouble over e-book price fixing.
• The Chicago Tribune introduces Printers Row, a new Sunday books section that the paper's subscribers can purchase at an additional US$99 per year. Featuring 24 pages of book reviews, author interviews, Chicago-focused literary news and a weekly bonus book of short fiction, the "journal" will be delivered with the Sunday paper and online beginning 26 February. Bonuses include access to member-only book events, such as the Tribune series of author conversations and discussion groups.
  
  Not a Trib subscriber? Buy single copies of Printers Row from Amazon at US$2.99 each.
• E-readers and tablets spur growth in sales of children's books. Meanwhile, it's been reported that there are 21 Academy Award nominations this year for films based on kids' books. Hugo, based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, has 11 nominations, followed by War Horse with six nominations. Both films are fighting for the Best Picture category. Just what we need: another boost for the YA genre.
• From what I can read about this bit of news, Amazon's New York book-publishing arm is getting publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to sell its books under an imprint called New Harvest. The writer seems flabbergasted, partly because the books are Amazon publications, which some retailers have sworn to avoid.
• Digital comic book startup Graphicly plans to fills a void amidst the hubbub over e-book publishing. They estimate that over 300,000 self-published creators will start selling their own comic books and graphic novels this year.
• The story of Larry Kirshbaum, the guy fronting Amazon's publishing land grab (I'm being dramatic). And here's someone wondering if Amazon is killing or improving the book business.
• Banned books are hot in Vietnam. At some point, these censor-happy governments should just throw their hands up and sigh, "Why bother?"
• Book publisher Harlequin has bought Heartsong Presents Book Club, which provides its members with Christian romance novels. ...Christian romance novels? How does that even work?
• As Nigerian authors look west for fame and recognition, they'll probably have to deal with the continent's apparent reluctance in the shift to e-books. ...No, no jokes about Nigerian e-book publishing scams, please.
• How do those best-seller lists work? Says Paul Takushi, UC Davis Store's book promotions and marketing manager: "The creation of a best-seller list is the most nebulous thing you will ever encounter. No one really knows how it's done." There you go.
• The Hocking-esque tale of an Oak Harbor graduate who made self-publishing magic with Wattpad.com, a "YouTube for writers". Seems the web site helped her book get 15 million reads - before self-publishing it through Amazon.com's CreateSpace.
• University e-presses are, it seems, not lightweight affairs.
• A book reviewer's thoughts after reading a digital copy of John Burdett's Vulture Peak from online book review service NetGalley. Basically, the future is coming and there's no stopping it.
• Next: interactive e-books, ala Steve Jackson. What if you could choose your own ending? ...No, don't think that applies to non-fiction...
• Author and self-publishing guru Stephanie Chandler talks about "the numerous advantages of writing, self-publishing and how it can enhance one's business".

Sweeping, Colourful Yarn

It took a while, but it's finally out: the review of Luis Alberto Urrea's Queen of America. I was bummed at first to learn that it was another of those "sequel novels" but it turned out all right, even without reading the first book.

The way I wrote about the descriptions of food in the novel is a reference to the author's vivid, evocative storytelling, not about the topic. This is not a food book.

I don't know if they've modified or kept the standfirst in the print version, but I'm putting it in here.

...wait, did they uncensor the "b*****d" in my submitted copy?

---

Sweeping, colourful yarn

The "hummingbird's daughter" grows up and finds hope and heartbreak in a new country

first published in The Star, 29 January 2012


A controversial bill of law signed last year in the US state of Arizona, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper, "bans schools from teaching classes that are designed for students of a particular ethnic group, promote resentment or advocate ethnic solidarity over treating pupils as individuals." As a result, schools in Tucson, Arizona also banned such titles as Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years and William Shakespeare's The Tempest from classrooms.

And this book I'd just finished reading, would they ban this, too? I wonder.

Queen Of America is about Teresa Urrea (1873-1906), who was revered as the "Saint of Cabora" by Mexico's indigenous Mayo and Yaqui populations.

Her popularity with the Indians and the poor made the Mexican Government nervous and, after her exile, she came to the United States and briefly stayed in Clifton, Arizona, before embarking on a managed tour across some major US cities.

After a quarrel with her minders, Urrea (known as Teresita) cancelled her tour and went home to Clifton. She reportedly died of an illness in 1906 and is buried there.

This book is the sequel to The Hummingbird's Daughter, which chronicles Teresita's early life up to the moment she was exiled from Mexico.

Both were written by Luis Alberto Urrea, the 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for non-fiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame. Teresita, it seems, was the author's great-aunt.

In Queen Of America, Teresita and her father have fled to the United States. Trailing them are assassins, possibly hired by the Mexican regime at the time, as well as multitudes of pilgrims and people seeking healing. And reporters.

Her father, the now jobless and purposeless Tomás Urrea, is often drunk and depressed but Teresita, besieged by the sick and poor, has no patience for her dad's mood swings. Adopting a neutral position, the US Government won't accept the Urreas as citizens.

Tomas eventually puts down roots in Clifton. However, Teresita longs for more. She marries a stranger who turns out to be a bit – it was said – bonkers. Unable to go back home, she accepts an offer of a lift to San Francisco.

After healing someone there, her tour around America begins. She faces much of the same: needy people, curious Yanquis, doubting reporters, and strident critics – and finds a new love interest.

In this fictionalised retelling of her life, it's hinted that Teresita's powers are real.

The fictionalised story of Teresa Urrea, the "Saint of Cabora",
is told in these two books - the results of a total of over 20
years of research

Urrea blends history with fiction so well it's hard to tell whether an event is authentic or apocryphal.

You want to believe the salty correspondence between paper man Lauro Aguirre ("My Beloved Companion, You Degenerate Wretch, Tomás: Things are excellent in El Paso! Even a dissolute drunkard like yourself could be happy here.") and Tomás ("[Spanish bad word] Aguirre ... How it darkens my day whenever another letter from you arrives, you pretentious bastard.") actually happened. Spanish words in the narrative add flavour and Spanish swear words add spice. I chuckled upon spotting several of the latter – thank you, Anthony Bourdain.

Speaking of that celebrity chef, Bourdain of the descriptive prose: oh, the vivid, mouthwatering descriptions of food, of chillies rellenos "searing on the flame"; fried tortillas "awash in pico de gallo salsa and crushed avocado wedges with lime"; new things such as "los pancakes"; and even more tortillas, "lying like tawny magic carpets beneath the drooling eggs" along with "diced nopal cactus, melons, oranges, coffee, and watery milk". Don't read when hungry.

Urrea's painstakingly researched novel (six years worth; The Hummingbird's Daughter took 20) also explores Teresita's emotional tug of war between home and the heart.

Readers' hearts will break, little by little, as her hopes are dashed, raised a little, and dashed again in the rollercoaster of a life away from her father: her failed first marriage, the US tour, becoming a mother, and her father's passing.

Eventually, the novelty of her US roadshow wears off.

After the birth of her daughter, her second pregnancy and her father's death, the "queen of America" realises that she's the queen of nothing, and that everything she really wanted is everything she'd left behind. She returns home but not long afterwards, symptoms of her illness appear....

What a sweeping, frank and colourful yarn. Urrea's latest is a brave yet delicate effort that weaves his great-aunt's history into an entertaining yet touching non-hagiographic work that honours her life and times.

The new Arizona law might keep this book out of the state's schools, but at least one copy should find itself into everybody's hands.

At the risk of sounding stupid, through the flawed magic of Google Translate: Gracias por esta hermosa historia (thank you for this beautiful tale), Señor Urrea.

---

Queen of America

Luis Alberto Urrea
Little, Brown (2011)
491 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-316-18764-0

News: John Ling's Blasphemy and Apple's E-Ducation

...Relax, it's not what you think John Ling did.

Congratulations to John, whose latest (e-)book, The Blasphemer, is making waves at Amazon. I've skimmed through it. This pulse-pounding thriller, set in the backdrop of rising Islamic militancy, revolves around the fires stoked by an author and his book - shades of Salman Rushdie, but the main character is said to be based on Taslima Nasrin. Short, bite-sized chapters, nothing complicated and- argh, there's going to be a sequel? ...Does that explain the freebies he'd been giving out?

It seems he now has another dilemma: should he make the book available to Malaysians? Help him decide. But I think he should finish the series before pondering this question. My answer would be "No, not yet."

And he's got some writers guestblogging their writing journeys at his blog. Go read, or if you want to contribute, I suppose you could give him a buzz.

• While the publishing world trembles at the ongoing Amazon advance, Apple throws its hat into the publishing ring - but only in the education sector.
  
  Several news outlets reported the planned release of e-textbook publishing apps. This might be followed by strategies to place iPads or some other e-reader into the hands of school and college kids. It looks like an astute move, encouraging students to "shun costly tomes that weigh down backpacks in favor of less-expensive, interactive digital books that can be updated anywhere via the Web." Not to mention the potential profits in the US$10 billion-a-year (claims the Bloomberg report) textbook industry.
  
  On a slightly-related note is Penguin's Dorling Kindersley's move to offer both digital and printed editions of its titles. Penguin DK publishes children's, travel and reference titles.
  
  The e-book momentum seem unstoppable, but the Delaware Online says that the new e-textbook industry still has a long way to go before the "digital destruction" of the (paper) textbook industry foreseen by the late Steve Jobs. For one, they're still fairly new. The piece also said that students found Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and some digital versions the print book "clunky and eye-straining to read". Also: "You can't highlight or underline things in the e-book. I find it more of a hassle," said a student who reportedly prefers "the tangible presence of a thick book on her lap."
  
  If they're going to sell e-textbooks in a big way, perhaps it's a better idea to inspire students to go and stay in school or college, as opposed to dropping out and pursue their dreams...
• After decades, Hitler's Mein Kampf is returning to Germany... not the whole book, but excerpts in the accompanying supplement for a company's weekly publication. The German state of Bavaria, which owns copyrights to the book, is considering legal action to prevent that. The decision to publish the excerpts has also divided Jewish groups. One camp has no problem with it, as long as the excerpts "are viewed in context". The other camp, of course, is totally against its return on the printed page.
  
  "Everyone sees Mein Kampf 'as a sort of diabolical Nazi Bible', the publisher said, "but people haven't read it and therefore haven't seen that it is the poor-quality and confused work of a totally twisted mind."
  
  Which is why I believe the ban on Mein Kampf is pointless. The only people who'd most likely swallow what Hitler's got are the ones who are already drinking out of the same poisoned well he did. Has any ban stopped the hate?
  
  And, it seems, ordinary Germans of the time knew what the Third Reich was doing and were talking about it, according to a published World War II diary. Just a little lit titbit.
• An e-book explosion in India. And Amanda Hocking. Because we can't seem to have enough of either.
• "We're in Amazon's sights and they're going to kill us. And we helped them do it." At least that's the vibe I got from this article. Well, that kinda happened to Borders, didn't it?
• How can independent bookstores compete with Amazon? By, from what I understand of this article, not competing with Amazon. And by hosting lots of poetry books and readings. "Poetry, the least profitable and most esoteric of all the genres, can save the bookstore." ...Why do the interesting pieces have elements of bias in them?
• Online article curator Longreads publishes list of their top ten pieces of 2011 as an e-book. Wow. First, we had blooking, and now, this. Who'd be the first to define what a "Faceblook" would look like?
• Self-published authors are not really leapfrogging towards publishing houses. With more Amanda Hocking. Honestly, there should be a law against the profligate citation of Hocking's success story to make the case for e-books and self-publishing. Still, can't blame the writers...
• E-publishing may be cost-effective, quick and cool, but it may be a double-edged sword. Would you trust a book that can be surreptitiously updated whenever?
• As Dickens's 200th birthday nears, The Independent asks: Where have all the book illustrators gone?
• Flames fly in the wake of "snarky" comments of some young adult novels. Was this a long time coming?

Okay, that's all I got before I go offline for the holidays. Hope to get back to the reviewing state of mind after my return.

Happy Chinese New Year.

The Source, Revealed

When I consulted am ENT specialist for the first time in years about my allergic rhinitis, I paid over RM250 for some overpriced medication - and advice to do nothing.

My tormentor(s), revealed.
At long, long last

Well, almost. All I needed to do was exercise, build up my immune system. Surgery for my stuffy turbinates was not recommended.

But of course, I fell off the wagon in no time. As expected, nothing improved. My condition probably worsened.

Months after attending an immunology seminar at Pantai Medical Centre, I finally got tested for allergies last weekend. The results came in yesterday afternoon.

"...severe allergic reaction to dust mites..."

Okay, so RM450 was forked out to confirm what should've been obvious. House dust mites are among the most common causes - if not the most common cause - of allergies in the country. But in my case, "severe". At least they didn't find any food allergies listed in the common test package...

At long last, I had answers.

Knowledge is empowering.

News: E-Book Explosions and Indie Icons

No time to write extensively on some topics! Several books are being (re)published and I've had to read the softcopies. And I haven't been sleeping well, either.

As I'd previously reported, Tunku Halim's stories are being republished electronically. I'd just had a chunk of 44 Cemetary Road dropped into my mailbox, which I've had to psyche myself up to edit - that's how disturbing the stuff is.

Also, the travelogue of a cyclist who toured the "four corners" of Peninsular Malaysia as part of a duo is now in the final stages of design and checks.

I'm putting the page for manuscript solicitations up after the Chinese New Year holidays. I'm not expecting an inundated mailbox (or even a joke e-mail) within weeks of it going up, but I'd rather play it safe.

• Happening elsewhere: e-books and e-publishing. The Czech Republic has seen rising e-book sales. Catching on to the e-buzz, some have proffered tips and thoughts on how to catch the wave.
  
  Meanwhile, Chinese B2C e-commerce site Dangdang expects a 20% profit margin on e-books. The company's plan to grow its e-book business is kind of ambitious, and highlights China as a plum market. But only if more publishers sign up; concerns include copyright protection short-term effects on business, and piracy.
  
  Speaking of which: Recently, a bunch of Chinese writers announced their intent to sue Apple for allegedly hosting pirated e-books. And, asks this article, "who owns the e-book rights to books published years before there was such a thing?"
  
  Still, the e-book explosion is good news for Amazon, which looks more and more the e-publishing monopoly feared by the traditional publishing sector. It seems Kindle Direct Publishing authors and publishers LOVE Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Celebrities such as James Franco and celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl are choosing to collaborate with Jeff Bezos's behemoth firm.
• Mention e-publishing and indie comes to mind. Mention both and Amanda Hocking comes to mind. Just last week, it was the Guardian's turn to profile her. It should be noted that this member of the Kindle Million Club (authors who have sold one million or more e-books via Amazon's Kindle) had turned to traditional book publishers to relieve herself of the burden of marketing her books so she can write. With Amazon becoming a one-stop-shop for publishing, selling and lending books, one wonders if that will change.
  
  But Hocking hasn't dismissed traditional publishers as dinosaurs of the industry. Nor does she make her success sound like magic. "Self-publishing is great, but it's not easy," she blogged. "Most people who do it will not get rich, just like most authors signed up at Scholastic books aren't billionaires. Traditional publishers are not evil any more than Amazon or Barnes & Noble are evil. Things are changing, hopefully for the better, but it is still hard work being a writer."
  
  Sorry, but I think Amazon is getting evil. I'm also biased.
• But speaking of indie publishing: A blook is being turned into a Zhang Yimou movie. The nom de plume Ai Mi penned Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution - which may or may not be autobiographical. Are e-books are all about MOBI, EPUB, etc? Not really. Blogs may not resemble a books but written right, they read like books. But it's still hard work. The reception to a teacher's blook, released by MPH, was a surprise.
  
  So indie publishing is slowly shedding the dreaded "vanity" label as e-publishing evolves; in a saturated market, quality and integrity will make you stand out. But pitfalls abound for the aspiring Hocking. Enter Indie Beware, a watchdog site styled after Writer Beware. It's still new, but will fill up in time.
• The Omnivore (UK) announces the Hatchet Job of the Year award for literary criticism. The Telegraph has the shortlist.
• Another new award: The inaugural Kidwell-e Festival, taking place this summer at the Welsh village of Kidwelly, will see the UK's first literary prize for e-books and digital publishing: The £10,000 Kidwell-e Ebook Awards. It's the latest among the few literary prizes in the world for electronic books, which includes the US's EPIC eBook Awards and the Global Ebook Award.
• Oxfam bookshops, the equivalent of Penang's Chowrasta book bazaar, are challenging the big chains in the UK. Sounds kind of sad that outlets selling new(ish) books are being challenged by what are effectively second-hand bookstores. The mentality is universal, though. Someone goes "cheap, cheap" and we all close in like predators.
• Beijing Book Fair highlights underground literature - and the plight of private bookstores.
• Public Enemies by Michel Houellebecq and Bernard Henri-Levy is "digested" in the Guardian. Shades of Stephen Clarke. Très bien. Also: Is Twitter the 21st-century literary salon? And are we seeing the death of literature?
• A compelling piece on Jodi Kantor's The Obamas. Doesn't it make you want to read the book?
• An end to "bad heir days": James Joyce's kin's "copyright dictatorship" and the posthumous power of literary estates.
• This guy stopped reading books. Horror ensued.

...I compiled that list of stuff over a week. I tweeted most of them. Just added more text to some of the items. That ain't writing.

News: Bookstore Buzz and Tolkien's Nobel Miss

Lots of stuff last week from Publishers Weekly.

• Some interesting news bites include the closing of feminist US bookstore True Colors in Minnesota next month. Said to be the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America, it was opened 40 years ago elsewhere as Amazon Bookstore - and later got into a trademark tussle with Bezos's behemoth.
• Decade-old indie bookstore The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, Maryland has changed hands, while Kansas City almost lost a mystery-genre bookshop - and got another.
• In a bit of a reverse situation, three-year-old online bookstore La Casa Azul to open as a brick-and-mortar shop. It "will sell new and used books, e-books, coffee, and locally-made art and gifts", and "offer literacy programs, writing classes, and author readings.
• Finally: Be one of the 5,000 "who keep book culture alive," exhorts Dan Simon of Seven Stories Press. "Read books, talk about them. Give them as gifts."

News elsewhere: The next chapter in Spanish author Lucia Etxebarria's quit threat sparks a digital publishing debate on the future of writers - and by extension, artists - in the digital publishing era. Some writers don't think quitting is the answer to problems such as strong-arm tactics by publishers and pirates. Author and publisher Harry Freedman, for one, is not worried about e-book piracy. Why?

Meanwhile, publishers are clashing with libraries over free lending of e-books. And so, the debates continue. Also:

• As more good times ahead are predicted for e-books, some cases are made for vanity publishing. For instance, what if the books are good? One thing about e-books, though: easy to update may also mean easy to doctor. Another area to explore, innovate and make money out of.
  
  But the year Borders closed - last year - was a good one for small bookshops in St Louis, USA. So no, maybe bookshops still have a little life to them. And just look at all these books coming out of Oz and around the world.
  
  And indie bookshops aren't entirely helpless: some are fighting back against the likes of Amazon by creating their own unique titles. Just like Silverfish Books, as they'd love to remind us.
  
  And somewhere in Tokyo is Dokusho no Susume, a bookstore where a real human - the owner, Katsuyoshi Shimizu - recommends books based on one's moods and interests. Who needs algorithms?
  
  But will Amazon's Price Check app ruin bookstore browsing for everybody? Let's hope not.
• The emergence of local e-book portal e-Sentral is good news for local authors. Though the name sounds a little... generic.
  
  Elsewhere, there's fledgling web site and digital publishing company Byliner, which is publishing short pieces by some well-known names. You might have heard about Jon Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit.
• Revenge of the paperback? A new book series attempts to revitalise the printed word.
• JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings didn't get the Nobel (I'm assuming) literature prize because of... poor storytelling? Those who have read the book(s) will probably... agree.
• Wow. The AP StyleGuard plug-in. Will it spell the death of editing? Not really, the piece argues.
• Other victims of Thailand's floods: books. It's Germany's Centre for Book Preservation to the rescue in Ayutthaya.
• Here's a hilarious excerpt from Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women. Pity we might not get the book in the bookstores here.

Tight Civet, Fighting Mongoose

We all had a good laugh at the Defence Ministry's "tight Malay civets", "mongoose fights", eye-poking clothes and "skirts with exquisite" - not to mention (George W) "Bush's jacket".

But it's more than just the standard of English.

A mongoose (left) and a civet. Try wearing these two. Photos not mine.

For one, I would think that the employee dress code for a ministry or firm is not meant for the public. Unlike, maybe, the dress code for visitors to a ministry or firm.

The list doesn't appear properly structured, and its items don't appear organised. And word-for-word translation isn't always possible - or recommended in some cases.

The original dress code section for men, based on the copy in Scribd.com, looks like:

Dress code
How to dress symbolizes the personality of the officers and staff as well as the values and moral work ethics. Therefore, how to dressclean, tidy and appropriate to be standard practice is emphasized to the officers and staff. Following rules of dress while on duty in to be observed:

Dress code FOR MEN

Men's Clothing:

1. For officers in the management and professional, "Lounge Suite" or "Bush's jacket
2. long pants with long sleeved shirt and tie
3. complete with Malay dress clothes and bersongkok bersamping dark.
4. Officers in the management and professional to wear a neck strap / cap / corporate scarves every Wednesday and the officithe Ministry.
5. long-sleeved shirts and T-shirt:
1. collared shirts and tight Malay civet berbutang three
2. collared shirts and tight Malay civet berbutang five
3. hidden berbutang Nehru collar,
4. three berbutang mandarin collar.
5. long pants. Do not fold your sleeves. Shirts must be included in (tuck in).
6. Nehru suits made of fabrics and colors to suit:
1. forward berbutang
2. hidden berbutang

Would the following be more suitable?

Dress Code
The way an officer or staff member dresses indicates his/her character, values and work ethics. Therefore, the habit of being dressed in clean and neat clothes must be inculcated among the staff. The following dress codes must be observed when on duty:

For men:
Attire for officers classified under management and professional categories:

• Lounge suites or bush jackets with a
  
  • Nehru collar with concealed buttons or
  • mandarin collar with three buttons
• Trousers with long-sleeved shirt and tie; sleeves must not be rolled up, and shirt must be tucked in
• Baju Melayu, complete with samping, dark-coloured songkok and cekak musang collar with three (or five) buttons
• Nehru suit of a suitable fabric and colour with exposed (or concealed) buttons

Ties/Caps/Corporate scarves must be worn on Wednesdays and during official Ministry functions or events.

The above is based on my understanding of the original text in Malay, in which I'm not fluent. It's an itch I had to scratch.

Some have suggested that this snafu is why the teaching of maths and science in English or PPSMI should not be abolished. Would teaching maths and science in English help with one's sartorial terminology?

"Ethical clothing", by the way, describes clothes that have, say, not been made in sweatshops or by screwing cotton farmers over and stuff like that.

Since then, more examples of eye-gouging English in the web sites of other ministries have been found. Perhaps not "found", but "noticed". Who knows how long those errors have been there?

No one should claim that a ministry or firm "has better things to do" than correct the grammar on their web sites. Somebody did some research and found that, apparently, sales through online portals can be negatively affected by poor spelling.

Government and corporate bodies these days are represented by their online portals as well as their front-line staff. Typos and grammatical errors are as off-putting as rude or uncaring behaviour. That's something for government bodies to consider as they move towards digitising their services.

Who's Coffee And Why Is (S)he In Love?

On Jalan Sri Hartamas 1, en route to Publika at Solaris Dutamas, you may have noticed a sign outside Eastern Nursery just after an overpass. It sounds like and odd declaration of love.

Who the hell's Coffee and why is (s)he in love?

Actually, it's just an odd name for a coffee bar tucked away in the nursery. Experience tells me good brews are to be had in places like this. Unfortunately, on the first two occasions I had a look, the place was closed.

A signpost marks the start of a path leading to a sheltered extension of a potter's barn. The signpost sports a wooden "Open/Close" sign that doesn't always mean what it says. If you can't open the café's Facebook page, open your ears. If the barista is in, there'll be music drifting out of the shelter - which I heard when I dropped by on New Year's Day.

One is also advised to show up a little after 2pm during weekends, when the café is most likely to be open.

Just when you think it's already tucked-away... it's just
like Aladdin's Adobo Shack

Established in June 2011, the Coffee In Love Café is reminiscent of those vendors' shacks in the Caribbean you might have read about. Assorted bric-a-brac here and there gives the whole décor a rundown yet quirky feel. Fake chillies, a gas lamp, old statuettes, wooden figurines and potted plants accent an interior festooned with salvaged furniture: chairs of all makes and sizes, old cabinets and kitchen cupboards, and wooden classroom desks.

The interior of Coffee in Love Café - an American Picker's
kinda place. Don't think all the items are for sale.

A water feature (in the background) are also made from recyclables: PVC pipes and paint buckets, and also serves to funnel run-off from a rain gutter. A blackboard for miscellaneous announcements was singing the owner's praises.

"Have you seen the owner?" Yes. "Is she cute?" No comment.

On a cabinet near the bar is the speaker where the music comes from. Depending on the barista and the help, you can have Latino/Spanish pop hits to jazz - good coffee house music. The whole décor adheres pretty much to the re-use and recycle principle espoused by the founders.

One of them, the supposed owner Helen, worked in the F&B business for a while. She calls herself an artist now, but opened the café to serve good coffee. "In KL it's easy to find crap coffee," she told me when I'd dropped by days ago.

Where did she learn how to make coffee? "Self-taught," she replied.

"100% Colombian Coffee" - that's what goes into every cup. They grind only as much as they need for each order. Only a few stray beans remain in the grinder's bin. This is good because coffee beans should be kept in the tin when not in use. They degrade when exposed to air.

You "like it STRONG and HARD?" Colombian beans'll do it for ya.
Ask for the Piccolo Latte (RM5). If you ask nicely, the barista may
even make you a a triple espresso - if your heart can handle it.

Like most of their hot beverages, my latte (RM7) comes with a square biscuit that tastes like a Marie's Biscuit - good for taking the bitter edge from the coffee. After a few sips, however, you won't mind a bit.

Cold water is served in re-purposed wine and spirits bottles and
glass jars that provide good photo opportunities for shutterbugs.
Brown sugar is provided but not necessary.

The brew? Kicks like a mule, their Piccolo Latte in particular. With less milk than the latte, you can better feel the strength and, perhaps, the quality of the brew. I wasn't doing too well on the taste department then because I'd scalded my tongue.

I got out my writing materials and tried to fill a few pages. Though it looked like a good place to get creative, the warm, humid weather saps much of that impulse in no time - not that it's a bad thing. Coffee in Love is more of a place where people can chill and get caffeinated after lunch.

The atmosphere will lull aspiring Hemingways and W Somerset
Maughams into a tropical torpor no amount of caffeine can jolt.

Few things beat sipping a steamy brew of Colombian Supremo beans in a warm, humid shack, surrounded by earthy sights and smells and with music to match. And a barista who says he likes coffee and half-jokingly greets you "Good morning!" when you arrive because, I guess, the day doesn't really start without a good cuppa.

Slanty art shot of the counter. You'll most probably find these two
at the Café on weekends, when it opens from 2pm-ish to 6pm.

So you'll forgive a lot of things about this weird little corner. Electric fans provide air conditioning when there's no breeze. There may be mosquitoes about. Rain will make it nice and cool, albeit quite damp. Damp air's no good for my lungs, but a great excuse for another warm beverage. Good coffee itself is already hard to come by, so don't complain about the latte art.

Though they had some in the beginning, food is very occasionally served here. The tiny place looks like it can only accommodate about twenty patrons at a time. And they only open during lunch on weekdays and after lunch on weekends and close at around six in the evening.

But with prices from RM3++ to RM10, it's damn good value for several good beverages (you're probably begging for a thrashing if you want them iced). And there's wi-fi.

It's been open seven months, but quite a few people have found it already (Facebook is fantastic that way). The Coffee In Love Café Facebook page has all the updates, and they announce their café openings there, too.

I had no reason to stay until they close, so I got up to leave and ask for the bill. They got P1 wi-fi and update their clientèle on a social network, but Coffee in Love's cash register is a Milo can on a pulley - so old-school, it's Jurassic - so you don't get a printed receipt. This is by far the greenest and coolest (style, not temperature) café I've been to.

---

Coffee in Love Café

c/o Eastern Nursery
132KV, SGBT - TNB 8-10
Jalan 1/70A, Taman Sri Hartamas
50480 Kuala Lumpur

CLOSED FOR GOOD

News: Publishers, Privacy and Memoirs

This list is a bit late, but my thought processes are borked and I can't think straight enough to write coherently.

• Print On Demand: A collaborative and real-time history of Occupy Wall Street, written by those who were there. Now, history is written by its characters, not historians.
• Community appeal saves a second-hand book shop in the UK. Maybe there's hope out there.
• An all-women comic book team kicks back against sexism in comics with their Bayou Arcana anthology.
• Komputing koach Kim Komando asks, "Got a dream for 2012? Why not publish a book?" The last time I saw her, she was on TV, demonstrating WordPerfect, Compuserve Prodigy and Lotus 1-2-3 on an Amazing Discoveries infomercial. Yes, it was that long ago.
• Will the UK's Leveson inquiry give rise to a privacy law that impacts memoirs? Particularly those with details that friends, colleagues and relatives may object to?
• Michael Korda says most Hollywood memoirs are dull, overrated and probably ghostwritten.
• Ooh, publisher Melville House has come up with their HybridBook™. Instead of CDs, I think, you get a URL. Do some things stay the same the more they change?
• What's coming in 2012 for the book publishing sector. Hopefully, not a variant of the so-called Mayan apocalypse.
• The story of Sixty-Eight Publishers, set up by and mainly for Czechs in exile.
• And for laughs: the diary of failed Doomsday prophet Harold Camping.

Also: Paul Callan (The Dulang Washer, 2011) is working on a new novel, and we're converting an e-book collection of Tunku Halim's scary stories. The second book in Tuttu Dutta-Yean's The Jugra Chronicles is scheduled for this year.

I'm also putting together a page for manuscript submissions. The company appears to have no official online portal for submissions, save a phone number and an e-mail address. So, I'm making one.

Some Pieces Fall In Place

Coming down from a long Christmas weekend of doing mostly nothing, I realise that it has come to a point where I can go for a month-long holiday and, upon returning to work, find myself not feeling refreshed. Bad sleeping habits might be a factor.

I wasn't sure how to respond to this post that filled the gaps in my pro-indie bookstore article. And I couldn't put a finger on what I'd felt as I typed it out.

One can say my piece was "biased". I was too tired or blasé to craft a more balanced take on the subject. Besides, some stories on small bookshops were recently published. Responses to Manjoo's Slate article, maybe?

I am aware that in Malaysia, there is no apparent reading culture. Rarely does the average reader's connection to books go beyond the product and the shelf it came from. How are books published? How does one write a book? What does it take to print one? Do readers know or care? Do they even need special places for buying or reading books?

Before he'd personally watched a pig get slaughtered or kill one himself, Anthony Bourdain claimed his understanding of where meat came from was not ...complete. Perhaps Manjoo's understanding of small independent bookstores would similarly benefit by an extended stay in Malaysia where he can witness the slow death of at least one indie bookshop.

I loved bookstores as a kid, but lamented my limited time in them as the folks had to leave for home. Though I have the freedom and money to spend in bookstores, I don't seem to be doing that a lot. Perhaps the force behind my piece was desperation. The urge to do something, however ineffectual, to delay the inevitable.

Brick-and-mortar bookstores may eventually be a thing of its past, but should its passing be brushed off with a toss of a pen, like Manjoo did, without a care for the people who work at and frequent those places? To be replaced with the likes of Amazon? Please. The thought of letting such a shapeless, faceless behemoth dictate what I can or should buy or download - and at what price - makes my blood run cold.

Maybe it's just me, writing about how I'm missing something that's about to disappear. Not like it's going to change anything, but it's better than doing nothing.

Maybe.

Another Red Future, Imagined

Probably my last book review for 2011. I not sure if I can call The Fat Years a "thriller", though. And so ends another year.

---

Red future

Hegemony and hope in an ascendant China

first published in The Star, 30 December 2011


With a tagline like "The notorious thriller they banned in China", a critique of China's ruling Communist Party is what you'd expect in these pages. But it's not exactly what you think.

Originally published as Shengshi: Zhongguo 2013 (loosely, "A Golden Age: China In 2013"), Chan Koonchung's work of speculative fiction was translated into English as The Fat Years. It starts "two years from now", ie after this novel's publication earlier this year. China has emerged ascendant from the aftermath of a global financial crisis. Some famous brands have fallen into Chinese hands, including Starbucks.

In one of the now Chinese-owned Wantwant Starbucks outlets, Old Chen, a former journalist, current author and resident of Happiness Village Number Two, is moved to tears by China's prosperity; some of those tears end up in his "great-tasting" Lychee Black Dragon Latté.

Earlier, his friend Fang Caodi pestered him for the umpteenth time about a missing February (yes, he means the month, the entire month). Big deal. Politically inconvenient timelines tend to disappear in China. That doesn't bother Old Chen – much. He's divorced, getting old and has writer's block.

Hope for his second spring in the country's golden age comes in the form of an old flame, Wei Xihong aka Little Xi. A former judge disillusioned by the system, she quit her job and eventually took the Raja Petra route (ie, she became a dissident blogger, for those who don't get the reference). Chen's search for her would put him on a course to unearth the truth behind the missing month, the details of which are only remembered very vaguely by several characters.

Born Fang Lijun, Fang Caodi is an asthmatic and jack-of-all-trades who returned to mainland China after years of wandering and renamed himself after an elementary school. Fellow asthmatic Zhang Dou, who was once a child slave, is now a wannabe guitarist. These two guys come to believe in the hand of the Chinese government behind this collective national amnesia.

Things come to a head one day when Zhang, Fang and Little Xi surprise Old Chen by pulling up to him in a black SUV with an unconscious government official bundled up at the back. Will he talk? And if he does, what will they learn?

The Fat Years describes so many things that are so close to home in modern China. Polemics for and against a totalitarian regime, its ideology and ruling elite are conveyed through the book's characters. However, it could do without the lengthy preface, which sort of gave the ending away. That and the translator's introduction pretty much summed up the novel for the casual book browser, who'd probably leave it on the shelf. Which would be a pity.

With its folksy narrative and dialogue and occasional bits of humour, The Fat Years is not stridently didactic about – nor a full-blown parody of – China's situation.

It's more about folks like Old Chen, Little Xi, Fang Caodi and Zhang Dou. Particularly Little Xi and Fang, whom the author considers among the many "incorrigible idealists" in China: "... the people languishing in prison or under government surveillance – human rights lawyers, political dissidents, ... public intellectuals, whistle-blowers...".

Despite the bad news in China (factory worker suicides, dodgy food manufacturers and callous drivers in horrifying hit-and-runs and so on), the presence of people like Little Xi and Fang gives others hope. That things aren't really all that bad, and that they will get better. That there are still people out there trying to make things better.

For me, the romance between Old Chen and Little Xi gives the book a bit of much-needed heart and gives us a glimpse of that hope. After Little Xi had gone into hiding, Old Chen tracks her down, but she refuses to see him, so they communicate through e-mails and comments in a forum thread.

Briefly, Old Chen's entreaties to Little Xi made netizens on both sides of the Taiwan Strait forget about politics to split hairs over the duo's online exchanges. Opinions differ, but they seem to agree about one thing: "Stop faffing around Little Xi, make up with Old Chen and everything will be okay!"

As the author puts it: "No society can afford to be without idealists – especially not contemporary China." After all, it can be argued that a bunch of idealists put China on the path it's treading today – and their job is far from done.

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The Fat Years

Chan Koonchung
translated by Michael S Duke
preface by Julia Lovell
Doubleday (2011)
307 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-385-61918-9