A Long Decade

On that day, I was getting off a bus at Taman Tun Dr Ismail when I saw the burning towers on the newsstand. The days that followed passed in a blur. Far removed from the scene of the largest terrorist attack in the US, something of it reached our shores.

Several days later, the workplace was evacuated due to a bomb threat. I remember feeling more relieved than panicked; it'd been a lousy day and I couldn't wait to leave.

There were wars in the Middle East. Regimes toppled. Reprisals. But they couldn't get the one who was said to have inspired the 9-11 attacks.

Until May 2, 2011.

After all the anger and blood, however, one wonders whether any ghosts have been exorcised at all with the killing of the avowed terrorist leader.

That's the impression I got after finishing A Decade of Hope. This seemingly hasty compilation of interviews by Dennis Smith, with the editorial assistance of his daughter Deirdre, appears to be some attempt at burying the spectre of 9-11 with stories of how New Yorkers coped with the change wrought by the 19 airplane hijackers and the loss of friends and loved ones on that day.

Most of those featured are first responders to the tragedy: firefighters, police personnel and paramedics, with a civilian or two and the token American Muslim. And most of them are still grieving. Some cannot forgive. But all of them cannot forget, and aren't likely to.

The choice of interviewees may be more than coincidence; Smith was a firefighter before he became a writer, and it would've been easier to speak to people within that group. That would explain the strong firehouse camaraderie emanating from the pages.

I found the book a long, laborious and lugubrious read, mostly because I couldn't relate to any of the interviewees. Should I be moved, inspired? Is the publication of the book meant to be cathartic, the push we all need to move on?

Many of the interviews are lengthy, and while preserving as much of each as possible honours the spirit of the book, some substantial editing could've helped make space for a few more points-of-view. For one, there's too much background info on the interviewees and the people who died.

That some of the characters refer to each other throughout the book reinforces the - dare I say it? - the cliquishness of the collection. Over 3,000 was said to have perished that day; surely there were more people who'd be willing to come forward with their stories? Apart from the first responders?

Given the superhuman expectations we mere mortals have for first responders, seeing these men and women of steel grieve and bleed in the face of the disaster would show us the enormity of what happened to them and what they went through. It does, but I don't think it affected me the way the author wanted it.

The shadow of terrorism is still with us, but 9-11 just doesn't have the same gravitas these days. Bin Laden is gone, and Bush is no longer president. And we have other worries keeping us up at night.

The author has good intentions, which makes me ashamed to feel this way. Despite the honest, heartfelt outpouring of grief and hope, I just couldn't empathise; were I to try I'd end up sounding glib. Nor can I imagine the weight of the burdens they've borne and will continue to bear.

Nevertheless, whatever has been said about their leaders and foreign policy, one should note that the views and behaviours of a government don't always reflect those of the populace. Nobody deserves a 9-11.

With Bin Laden's death, the Americans can sigh away a collective breath held for ten long years; for many, some measure of justice has been reportedly done. But Smith's collection of voices suggest that the healing has only begun and that full closure may only be a matter of hope.


This point of view is based on an advance reading copy.

---

A Decade of Hope

Stories of Grief and Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends

Dennis Smith, Deirdre Smith
Viking (2011)
356 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-0-670-02293-9

News: Authorship Has No Privileges? And E-Books Are Like Apps?

"You have no right to make money anymore"
Seth Godin, whose book Stop Selling Dreams was kept out of Apple's iBooks store because of the buy-from-Amazon URLs in that book, has apparently come out and told authors to drop any sense of entitlement (like the big fat advances) and go out there and fight to hawk their wares. "Who said you have a right to cash money from writing?" he said. "I gave hundreds of speeches before I got paid to write one. I’ve written more than 4000 blog posts for free."

Authorship ain't the fabled aerie in the arts no more, what with indie publishers and self-published e-books bucking trends and flooding markets. But no complaints from Godin, it seems. "Poets don’t get paid (often), but there’s no poetry shortage. The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word–over."

He's got something to say about libraries and literary agents as well.

...So, still wanna be a writer?


Books: From Hardware to Software
Writing for the Guardian, Frédéric Filloux argues that, as books go digital, publishers will look more and more like software houses. And like software houses, publishers need to 'debug' their 'apps', i.e. e-books to distinguish themselves from the pack.

"Like the app business where abundance creates a need for more human-powered guidance and suggestions," says the general manager of the French ePresse consortium, "book sections of magazines and newspapers will have to adapt and find ways to efficiently suggest e-readings to their audience. ... The most potent selection tool will remain the quality of the product."

...So I left that field only to return to it?

Filloux may think that Apple is a quality app provider, but somebody at TIME thinks the late Steve Job's company should avoid vetting books for publishability.


Future of Books at Bath Lit Fest
At the Independent Bath Literature Festival, the future of the book, discussed. Hardbacks will become luxuries (as they'd been before Gutenberg came along), and authors will become "brands".

What Charlie Redmayne, CEO of JK Rowling's online venture Pottermore, said about publishers more or less concurs with Godin's exhortation to authors to 'come out more':

"...publishers should learn from the fate of the music world. Just as record companies make money only by sending artists out to play live, book publishers will expect authors to promote themselves more – to have a media 'presence,' acquire followers on Facebook and Twitter, interface with current readers and fans and establish a 'community' to buy their books on Day One."

Oh, and spend lots of time at literary festivals.

(Speaking of Rowling: it's been reported that she's no longer a billionaire, thanks to "Britain's high tax regime" that left her with "less than £640 million in the bank." How. SAD.)


Some E-Reader Pitfalls
E-book readership is growing, but are e-reader devices selling? Right now, says ZDNet, the market is dominated by the iPad, Barnes & Noble's Nook and the Amazon Kindle - all of which are from companies that are not playing nice with each other.

A major problem, claims CBSNews, when consumers ditch one platform for another. I wouldn't really know about that; though file formats such as EPUB are 'universal', issues such as ownership rights (when I 'buy' off iBooks, do I really get to keep it?) will mean that buyers will think twice before pulling an e-reader off the shelves. That, and the hefty prices (I think) of e-readers.


Other News

• The £130,000 (RM617,022) Sheikh Zayed Book Award for the "best literature in the Arab world" has reportedly been withheld because all candidates weren't up to mark. The advisory council for the Abu Dhabi-based award came to this decision after six titles were "longlisted" (shouldn't it be "shortlisted"?) for the honour. ...It's kind of like the Burj Khalifah of book awards, isn't it?
• A collection of World War II memories from residents of a retirement home became a surprise hit. More on the book, World War II Remembered, here.
• The Syrian tumult is keeping the country's publishing houses from the Riyadh International Book Fair. For the first time in six years, Syrian publishing houses were absent from the event but, from the report's headline, it looks like their presence was not missed much. However, "Abdul Aziz Khoja, [Saudi Arabia's] Minister of Culture and Information, expressed his regret over the no-show of Syrian publishing houses."
• In You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom, Nick Cohen says you can't always read the books you want. "...not because they have been banned but because they have not been written."
• UK-based e-publisher HopeRoad continues being a platform for Caribbean, Asian and African writers.
• One of the last of his kind: book scout Wayne Pernu.
• Trying to donate books to a library? It can be painful, as one donor in New York learns.
• As libraries are threatened with closure in the US, a book-printing machine comes to the Brooklyn Public Library.
• Some more self-publishing successes. And oh, look, a housewife scored a book deal with Harlequin. More endorsement for the genre. How many more "shades of grey" will be written about?
• Oh yeah... about those Nazi myth-busting Mein Kampf excerpts? No go.

Ruby Red Reads

I had the fortune of proofing Adibah Amin's As I Was Passing I and II and Glimpses for e-publication several weeks ago. A lot of reading, which has left me mentally tapped (on top of a much less interesting manuscript that followed).

The three volumes were mostly compiled from bite-sized articles from her old column in the New Straits Times, "As I Was Passing", written under the pen name Sri Delima (the glimmer of a ruby). Put together, the three books are a love letter to Malaysia, Malaysians and Malaysiana.

Books by Adibah Amin: As I Was Passing Volumes I and II,
and Glimpses: Cameos of Malaysian Life

Her anecdotal essays, crisp and humorous, open windows into the heart and soul of this country, past and present. She dissects the Malaysian psyche and its quirks and idiosyncrasies with relish and abandonment, poking fun at her subjects with affection not unlike an old teacher (which she is) putting ex-students in their place with fond reminiscences of misadventures and mischief past. Through it all, she displays a keen sense for the foibles of others and a keener sense of humour about her own follies.

The existence of text scanning errors warranted a line-by-line examination, which meant I had to read the books for errors. That it took longer than necessary to complete the tasks had little to do with the number of errors, however. And there weren't many to begin with.

The writing surprised me. So succinct, so simple! Her economy of words and vocabulary enhanced the effect she, perhaps, didn't consciously try to achieve.

One book. Just one of her books. Any one. Pick it up and read, really read it. Don't you dare skim or 'flip through' the pages.

Do this, and I can guarantee that all your writerly aspirations will be consigned to a deep, dark grave.

The angles! The succinctness in the storytelling! The efficient exposition of Malaysian cultures, fables and foibles. The twang of your heartstrings as something familiar is so vividly described, before the pang that follows when you realise that it's from a past you can never return to.

What's her secret? Probably an eventful life well-lived, well-observed and well-told, her pen sharpened and coloured by years of experience.

(That I'm fumbling over this quasi-review/commentary of her work just deepens the hurt.)

You will put the book down, stumble to your bed like walking through deep water, slowly slither into the sheets and curl up in there and waste away, like your dreams of the next great Malaysian novel or short story collection.

Everything you've ever written, every literary trick, every commercial gimmick you've employed in your middling attempts to tug at heartstrings or hit a nerve, your personal collection of painstakingly compiled library obscure words and catchphrases... all rubbish, irrelevant, old hat. Before Sri Delima's innate touch in conveying so much with so little, you are but the emperor with his 'new' clothes.

Above all, you will break all your pens and swear never to pick one up again - not even to edit or mark papers.

Forget about being the next doyen/doyenne of Malaysiana. Somebody had done it, in a way the likes of which will probably never be seen again for a long, long time.

(So shoo, shoo, go and write about something else. Vampires, maybe?)

...Okay, maybe there are a few things that I didn't like. For one, she has her own collection of stockphrases. Instead of "Tom, Dick and Harry", she uses "the Azmis, the Angs and the Arumugams" (pretty good alliteration, actually). Certain anecdotes are replayed. And the aliases: "EF"? "GH"? Invent some names, for crying out loud! And every repeated "ants won't die in her tread" (a supposedly Malay description of supreme feminine gentleness) urged me further and further into a formicidal rage.

...Okay, I was just nitpicking back there. Maybe she does struggle to come up with a topic and meet deadlines - late nights and all that (she hints at that in one of her books but I can't remember which one). And after all, is it not the wont of column writers to repeat certain words, especially when the time between columns is long enough that the repetition is not noticeable?

With these 'glimpses' into our past, present and psyches, Adibah Amin has managed to capture the essence of who we are and what Malaysia is, and more (wow, look at me pile on the book review tropes).

We want to climb trees and steal fruit, ride bicycles through villages (and scare some chickens), sit through bangsawan and dondang sayang performances and play games that require more than just two fingers.

We long for Malaysian hawker favourites the way they used to be made; the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of our hometowns; the clamour in a kin-packed house, the market, and a village feast.

We yearn for the days when our neighbours were almost like family, when we could laugh at ourselves and toss jokes without causing offence, when those who asked for help really needed it - not like these days when crooks and conmen take advantage of the good Samaritan in you.

But you probably won't feel like hiring maids. You'll be wary of polite but cash-strapped "foreigners." And the plight of the young couple, held hostage by tradition and bossy relatives who rarely visit, will infuriate anyone. "Let them hold their simple wedding ceremony! Big dos are expensive these days. You rant, rave and sulk about being defaced with charcoal when you see them maybe once a year or so, flapping your lips so freely when it's not your money, your children. What nerve! What gall!"

...She's good. They just don't make writers like that anymore.

Sadly, Cikgu Adibah has stopped writing entirely since suffering a stroke several years ago. I can't imagine what she feels about the current state of this country... nobody needs that kind of stress.

And when the glimmer of a certain ruby finally fades away, the loss of a warmer, friendlier and more innocent era and the voices of that time so well preserved in these books will be more keenly felt than before.


This piece was later published in The Malaysian Insider, 16 March 2012. I was surprised they accepted the submission. Many thanks to The Malaysian Insider.

I know, I'm not supposed to shill for books published by my employers, but these are some of the best reads I've seen in a while.

Besides: E-book versions of Adibah Amin's As I Was Passing Volumes I and II and Glimpses: Cameos of Malaysian Life will be out soon. Details to come.

---

As I Was Passing

Adibah Amin
MPH Group Publishing (2007)
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-06-6

Buy from MPHOnline.com

As I Was Passing II

Adibah Amin
MPH Group Publishing (2007)
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-08-0

Buy from MPHOnline.com

Glimpses

Cameos of Malaysian Life

Adibah Amin
MPH Group Publishing (2008)
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-983-3698-58-5

Buy from MPHOnline.com

More News: Random House, Slate And Publishing

Publisher Random House triples the prices of e-books they sell to libraries. A slightly more detailed report by The Huffington Post says that libraries were informed that "wholesale charges for e-books would rise by more than 20 percent for new adult releases and more than double for new children's books."

The dawn of the immortal e-book that can be circulated without falling to pieces has put publishers in a bit of a spot, says the report. It is also noted that "HarperCollins' e-books 'expire' after 26 uses, Hachette and Macmillan only make part of their list available, and others like Penguin and Simon&Schuster don’t allow library lending at all."

The American Library Association has asked Random House to reconsider citing the financial pressures US libraries are also facing, as funding dries up and libraries close. "In a time of extreme financial constraint, a major price increase effectively curtails access for many libraries, and especially our communities that are hardest hit economically," said ALA president Molly Raphael in a statement.

• Slate finally gets a book review section. Followers of Slate should be excited, but if you're a book reviewer, some of the stuff already published may shrink your reviewer's balls to the point of dessication.
• It seems that book publishers in India aren't familiar with the concept of buying rights to sell foreign books, or that books, like music, are subject to copyrights.
• Get your book e-published for a traditional book deal. But would you wanna? Rachel Abbott, author of Kindle hit Only the Innocent, reportedly turned down a deal "because it didn't feel right." But it seems the book needs some ... touching up.
• Nine foreign words the English language "desperately" needs. ...I guess you can call me a "pilkunnussija". More such words here ... is there a book?
• Are painters of Hindi pulp novel covers going the way of movie poster painters?
• Some more tips on pimping your book. Because you can never have enough tips.
• Eight bad book blurbs by good writers, including Martin Amis, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides. Guess some people are just better at long-form writing.
• The "gay marriage" issue of the Archie comic has sold out, despite 'concerns' raised by conservative US group One Million Moms.
  
  Archie Comics co-chief exec John Goldwater: "We're sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people." A-men.
• When writers censor themselves - and why.
• Can writing as a career affect what one writes for art? Personal experience says it does, but I reckon there will be exceptions.
• A new French law passed to deal with the issue of orphan works - "out of print, still-in-copyright books, films, photographs, etc. whose rightsholders can't be found" - makes Google Book Settlement look good.
• "If you’re a book publisher, you’ve got the blues real bad." Crikey rubs it in - with salt.

News: Amazon, E-Book Censors And Seth Godin's Bad Apple

Why Jim Hanas and Others Cried "No More Amazon!"
In the midst of the Amazon vs IPG saga, author Jim Hanas has removed the Amazon "Buy" button from his web site for his short story collection, Why They Cried. The book was one of the titles distributed by IPG and yanked from Amazon's catalogue due to pricing issues between the two companies.

No big deal, right? Wrong, as Hanas explains, "...in my case — since my book has no print edition — it is much worse. My book page has vanished entirely. Reviews, summary, everything."

Hanas is only one of a slowly growing list of those who are dropping Bezos's online shopping behemoth. Oklahoma-based children's books publisher Education Development Corp decided to "stop selling to distributors that sell through Amazon in an effort to cut all ties to the Seattle-based company." EDC CEO Randall White went so far as to call Amazon a "predator" that "doesn't sell anything."

E-book social networking site Copia picked up the ball Amazon dropped by running sales on some of the titles pulled off the Kindle Store.

...But wait, is the "predator" changing its stripes? Or is that merely a diversionary tactic?


The New e-Gatekeepers
Apple, meanwhile, has allegedly refused to list Seth Godin's book in its online store because of the URLs to Amazon in the book's reference section, prompting the author to ask, who decides what gets sold in bookstores?

"First, because the web, like your mind, works best when it's open," states Godin. "Second, because once bookstores start to censor the books they carry ... then the door is open for any interest group to work hard to block books with which they disagree. Where does the line get drawn?" Where indeed.

Though e-books and self-publishing may have freed writers from the tyranny of the traditional publishing model, Apple's decision to not list Godin's book looks purely business-driven. Are these new gatekeepers, partly responsible for this new freedom, now retreating into the bastions of old to hold their positions in a borderless, more fluid publishing landscape?

Online transactions company Paypal has also begun blocking payments for an online publisher for material deemed obscene. "I've always believed fiction writers and readers should have the freedom to explore diverse topics and situations in the privacy of their own mind," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, one of what I think are the affected publishers.

Maybe, but when you start fantasising about rape, incest and the like and put it out in public, don't you...

Oh, right.

...Well, when a work of fiction is entirely about gratuitously graphic depictions of those kinds of things, maaaaybe someone should step in with some guidelines and put the foot down. But I agree with Coker's opinion that it's not Paypal's job: "When you sign up to a financial system you should not be required to look to it to provide you with moral correction."

How much of this has to do with the creeping influence of the far right in the US?


Dawn of the Niche Press
How can small publishers can get a leg up on the big ones? Hint: go niche, like small press Allium in Chicago that's reportedly filling a gap by producing fiction set in that city.

Small presses can also take big risks, which can pay off big. British publisher Hesperus Press, for instance, has acquired the UK rights to a Swedish bestseller with sales figures nearly as long as the title. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is a "laugh-out-loud funny, page-turning" novel that was turned down by some publishers (not named in the Guardian report). The MD of Hesperus thinks it might have been the "poor" quality of the original translation.

Niche-playing may lead to bigger things. Literary journal McSweeney's, for instance, is now an indie publishing house.

So...is it time for French-style niche publishing in India?


Google Slashes eBookstore Affiliates
Google as announced cuts its e-book affiliate programme. It appears that the number of referrals are too low, and Google is now limiting the number of affiliates to entities that are most likely to bring in the most hits.

Under this programme, affiliates: retailers, bloggers, publishers and other web site owners get between 6 and 10 per cent of a book's selling price, depending on the number of sales referred to Google's eBookstore. This rate is said to be higher than the Amazon counterpart.

Dear Mr Wolfgang Stockhausen...

First, let me thank you for your comments ("Amerigo's the man", 26 February 2012) regarding my review of Laurence Bergreen's Columbus: The Four Voyages.

Alas, I could only remember one reference Bergreen made to Vespucci in the book: near the end, where he states that the "New World" was named after the Florentine explorer. However, I can't recall if he explains how that came to be. I believe Bergreen was trying to keep his writings from straying too far from the book's central figure, so not much was mentioned about Amerigo Vespucci.

My wayward pen tends to run away when reviewing things, so I try to keep my piece within the perimeters of the book itself, and not the subject. Unfortunately, this also means that some salient points, such as the origins of America's name, are likely to escape notice. My thanks for pointing that out (this is why people should write to newspapers).

The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller is believed to have named the new continent for Vespucci in 1507. By the time Waldseemüller had second thoughts, a large number of maps had been distributed with the name, so it stuck. I don't think it occurred to Vespucci to give his own name to the New World.

Nor was Columbus on the look-out for a new land mass. He'd promised his royal Spanish patrons the fabled riches of China, India and maybe Japan: gold, spices and the like. From the book, one feels his fear of failing to live up to their expectations as well as his own.

Although Bergreen suggests that Columbus may have eventually realised that he stumbled upon a whole new continent, others posit that the Genoan mariner died believing he'd reached the shores of Asia.


I'd written this reply about six days earlier and sent it to The Star first; they published it on 11 March 2012.

In this version, the second paragraph is restructured, and the last line in the fifth paragraph is removed.

"It's An Election Year..."

So many voices have been raised over this matter that I felt mine wasn't necessary. My problem, however, is that I can't seem to keep my mouth shut.

Despite the financial and logistical problems that I'm sure will crop up, Erykah Badu responded with incredibly good grace towards the government's 11th-hour-and-58th-minute cancellation of her concert which would've taken place on Wednesday.

Badu also left a Facebook message about the ban, and I couldn't help chuckling sadly at the last line: "It's an election year." Or something like that. Did you see it?

Hailing from the US, Badu should know about election years. This year's campaign waged by George W Bush's party to replace Barack Obama is perhaps the dirtiest I've ever witnessed. The blatant racism and misogyny, the smug, self-righteous snootiness of the rich, the lies, half-truths and money being thrown around... Outsiders would wonder if the "United" in USA is mere rhetoric.

I pull my head out of the computer screen and, whaddya know, it's election year here too. At least, it feels like it.

Publishing the photo may have been "irresponsible", but so are the threats of violence and death to the purported 'offenders', and suggestions that the paper did it on purpose to inflame passions.

"Oh no, the cancellation will not affect our country's image at all."

Yeah. Right.

And when - or if - Badu plays in Jakarta, I can imagine the number of tweets dari seberang gleefully chortling at our missed opportunity.