News: This Earth Of Mankind And All That

Banned Books Week 2012 kicks off in the US. The New York Times volunteered some ideas on how to 'celebrate' the Week. Gosh, has it been a year already?

Though Banned Books Week is a US-only thing, many of us can emphatise with the notion. This year's biggest banned book is arguably Irshad Manji's Allah, Liberty and Love. A local publisher and a bookstore manager were visited by religious authorities in relation to the book. One issue with the 'visit' seems to be more about conflicts between federal and religious laws with regards to print material that's deemed objectionable, not the ban itself, though some may argue that there's no point banning the book anyway.

Another more recent casualty - in China, at least - is Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. The novel became collateral damage in the Sino-Japanese spat over a bunch of rocks northeast of Taiwan, which got China banning or closing everything Japanese. An article on fossils in Japan's Gifu Prefecture was deleted minutes after it was posted on a Chinese web host. And a Japanese-backed cycling team pulled out of the Tour of Beijing event.

A cheerier celebratory occasion this week is this year's Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, happening from 03 to 07 October. Themed Bumi Manusia ("This Earth of Mankind"), after a title from Pramoedya Ananta Toer's first book in the once-banned historical fiction series The Buru Quartet, this year's Ubud Fest is held in honour of the enduring power of storytelling.

Author Michael Ruhlman also had something to say about storytelling, the importance of food writing, in particular. "...telling stories about food and cooking is not only natural, it's necessary for our survival. It's important to understand how something that is essential to our humanity and our well-being affects all other aspects of our lives and our humanity."

Hear, hear.

In other news:

• Penguin seeks repayment of big advances from writers who didn't deliver. Among those being pursued are Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation), Wonkette's founding editor Ana Marie Cox, and Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat.
• John Scalzi's readers recommend some books in what is probably among the longest comments thread on the Whatever. Multiple nominations include Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Jenny "The Bloggess" Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened, Libriomancer by Jim C Hines, The Map of the Sky by Felix Palma and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus.
• Shades of virtual book-burning in the disappearance of Jonah Lehrer's book from various retail outlets and portals? Don't worry about it, says some readers of Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. At least, I think, for now.
• US retail chain Wal-Mart is said to have stopped selling Kindles. Another US retail chain, Target, pledged to take the Amazon e-reader off its shelves this May, seemingly because of the latter's aggressive expansion tactics.
• A fiction writer's heartening open letter to her ... should it be "colleagues" or "comrades"? In short, she says, "Keep writing."
• Things from Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" that are still burning. Will the Middle East 'burn' forever?
• The origin of a "hackademic" book publishing initiative, and how it can help students and journalists.
• From the author of The Lizard King: a sad tale about the role of religion in the ivory trade.
• Punjab's own Interlok kerfuffle was raised when words regarding caste land publishers in jail. The report could've been written better, though.
• The New Yorker commemorates the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the book said to have kicked off the modern environmental movement.
• England's government announces a review on e-book lending in libraries.

News: Price Wars, And A Mallet

I don't think last week was a slow one for books and publishing; I just so happened to be back in my hometown during the weekend, so I wasn't paying too much attention to assorted goings-on.

But I managed to finish a book for review. And I was amazed and a little dismayed at the 1Malaysia bike by Orange County Choppers - when did THAT happen? - which looked a lot less remarkable compared to previous models.

Anyway...


Last week, the much-maligned Apple agency model for e-books (in Europe) started crumbling under pressure from European Commission. In the aftermath, the e-book price war seemingly flared anew, with some discounts going as high as ... 97 per cent? But it seems not all e-books are considered 'cheap'.

The price war may have started hitting the e-reading public in China, as one of the country's main e-retailers announced a 'deal' where customers can, for three months, lend a thousand books for less than US$5. Why? Because "Chinese readers, long used to free content", apparently need time to adjust to the idea of paying more than five yuan (about US$0.80) for an e-book.

No word, however, on the e-fate of Haruki Murakami and other Japan-related books, physical copies of which have reportedly gone missing from Beijing bookshelves as China and Japan fight over a pile of rocks northeast of Taiwan.

In other news:

• Five questions for a literary agent. The usual 'indie/small press thrives among bones of traditional publishing' thing.
• "Shelf preservation": Why it's better to read 3-D editions of certain genres.
• Are books the "ultimate new business card"?
• A papyrus scrap refers to "Jesus's wife", but too early to say Dan Brown was right.
• Ten questions to ask yourself before commenting on a blog. Good advice from the author of what could be one of the best-policed blogs around - I mean, who doesn't want a Mallet of Loving Correction?

News: Privates, Padlocks, and Price Reductions

Private matters
Everybody seems to be all abuzz over Naomi Wolf's, uh ... privates. From the news portals I've been surfing, Wolf's Vagina (snrk) got more brickbats than bouquets since it was released. Critics cited bad science, Orientalism, unintentional self-parody, betrayal of feminism, etc.

And, of course, there's the title, which opens up plenty of opportunities for punsters, as Jessa Crispin suggests. "Although from reading the excerpts and the horrified reviews, it seems like the publishing company just kind of let Wolf run herself into a tree in all kinds of ways with this one."

Maybe because the publishers knew the kind of buzz it would create?

Even those who question the criticism Wolf's been getting can't help slipping in a crack or two. "And I can't help wondering if this isn't just a little bit problematic, and if it doesn't, just a little bit, make Wolf's point for her?"

Wolf has responded to these criticisms, and I think her arguments are sound. I'm once again reminded of Howard Jacobson's assertion that readers these days - as well as critics - can't seem to handle certain books.

At the time of posting, Zoë Heller's article has an NSFW picture. Do not click at work.


A bridge too far
Know that old chestnut where, in Rome, lovers can seal their relationship by writing their names on a padlock, clamping it to a lamp post of the Milvio bridge and throwing the key into the Tiber River? That little tradition, inspired by Federico Moccia's 2006 novel I Want You, has been banned by officials in Rome.

The bridge's popularity led to posts being installed on the bridge so that others can have a shot at happiness, but officials are concerned that the weight of all those padlocks will collapse the ancient bridge.

Moccia is apparently "nonplussed". "The removal of the locks is inconsiderate," he said. "Rome is handing Paris the 'bridge of love' tradition, which was born here and should stay here."

Even at the expense of a piece of history? Pompeii and Herculaneum, arguably two of Italy's most famous archaeological sites, are in danger of disappearing, thanks in part to tourists. Some traditions shouldn't be preserved.


Well, that was fast
In the aftermath of a settlement with the US Department of Justice over allegations of e-book price-fixing with Apple, publisher HarperCollins inked new deals with Amazon and other retailers. Days later, HarperCollins titles were said to be selling at Amazon at discounted prices.

HarperCollins, along with publishers Hachette and Simon & Schuster, settled with the DoJ days ago. It's possible that e-book retailers will soon be lowering prices of books from the other two publishers. And them fingers keep a-pointin', mostly towards traditional publishers.

In somewhat related news: A Waterstones staff reportedly trolled an author who self-published with Amazon for leaving promotional material for said book at the Waterstones outlet. Bezos's jungle may have emerged the victor in the latest dust-up over e-book prices, but it looks like pockets of resistance can still be expected.

Also: Would writers have to keep telling stories a la Scheherazade to survive in the Kindle era?


Other news

• Is it ever okay to pirate books? Even if the copies are from books you already own and for private use?
• Is Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema the acerbic non-person Ruth Bourdain? Sietsema says no but, for all we know, he could be muddying the waters a bit, possibly abashed at how it came out so quickly. We probably wouldn't have known that Waiter Rant is Steve Dublanica if he didn't shed his anonymity to promote his book. Both these guys seem to be good writers, but I feel Dublanica's warmer, more open.
• "Radioactive" online comments are poisoning civil discourse in cyberspace. So here are some tips on how to argue online and avoid becoming a cyberspace-polluting troll.
• A literary agent was attacked in her car, possibly over a rejected manuscript. The Huffpost entry suggests she was tracked down via a social media app. Getting rejected isn't the end of the world. Now, violently rejecting a rejection, however...
• "Is this book bad, or is it just me?" The book review is dissected.
• Art of War meets Mad Men? China's popular "workplace novels" weave career advice into soap opera plots.
• Plan to burn "Fifty Shades" conjures fears of censorship and totalitarianism.
• For Wikipedia, Phillip Roth, it seems, is not a credible enough source on a Phillip Roth novel.

Enthrallingly English

An enchanting Sunday afternoon roast at Albion KL

first published in The Star, 15 September 2012


Melody leads a charmed life. She gets to travel to exotic places and eat at fabulous places for work, like this modern English bistro in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

From this establishment, she smuggled a bit of macaroni and cheese home in a microwaveable container, presumably to taunt me – again. The M&C was cold and had congealed into a lumpy mass, but it was glorious. I suspect the added bacon had enough time to infuse the leftovers with its savoury, smoky flavour on the way home.

We agreed we had to go back there. If their mac-and-cheese is this good, what else can they do?

Melody wanted the Sunday roast, so she e-mailed ahead for details. Yes, they had roast beef or lamb on the Sunday we'd planned to drop by. I wanted the lamb, a meat with more character. Her e-mail response was a heart-rending, "But I want beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeffffffffffffff and it is my birthdayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."

When she's like this, there's no point arguing. So "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeffffffffffff" it is, even though her actual birthday had passed a while back.

Tucked inside the Changkat Bukit Bintang area, the red-painted façade of Albion is a beacon for visitors with a poor sense of direction. One is embraced by a palpable kind of Englishness upon entry. On a wall is an arty portrait of Sir Winston Churchill chomping on a cigar. Classical English court music wafted through the air as we pored over the menu, a subtle reminder to always, among other things, mind your P's and Q's and sipping (not gulping) your tea within the premises.

Manager James Grierson guided us through the selections and portion size (typically Malaysian, he suggests). We decided to go with Albion's Greek-style Salad and a serving of roast beef to share, with mini Yorkshire puddings. Dessert remained a question mark for a while.

Several warm buns were brought to our table in a tiny basket, with slices of softened butter and what I assumed was the “spiced tomato jam”, while our orders were seen to. The appetising tomato jam, a mixture that included anchovies and olive oil, was surprisingly delicious when eaten with buttered buns but it left us hungrier than before we walked in the door.

Then the salad came.

We felt the price of the Greek-style salad didn't compensate for the abundance of feta cheese in it. The sharp-tasting tangy and salty cheese, together with the olives, mushrooms and various greens, made for a rich, satisfying appetiser.

Definitely more than six cubes of feta in that lush Greek-style salad

Albion's chef, Colin Yap, explained that they came up with this version after trying another one that had "about six or so tiny cubes" of feta, but Albion's had all the ingredients that made it a winner. The flavours came together really well.

Despite assurances that the portions were manageable, we still gaped at the roast when it arrived. Some slices of medium-done roast beef, greens, roast potatoes and a pair of mini Yorkshire puddings. The Yorkshire pudding was a light, crispy pastry that's best eaten warm and useful for wiping up the leftover gravy, spilled meat juice and fat. It was the first time I'd ever seen or eaten one.

Melody tried to wheedle some secrets about making Yorkshire pudding out of the chef. The whole business is tricky, the chef said, like making soufflé.

"It's a temperamental thing," he added.

No fluffy, light and buttery pastries coming out of my little oven, then.

The Sunday Roast may look standard, but it's lovely

The roast was lovely. We tried slices of beef with the light and subtle horseradish sauce and the assertively pungent, sinus-clearing English mustard.

"Laave-leh," I drawled in an exaggerated Englishman's accent when I could breathe through my nose again. "Simply brilliant."

Some may feel differently – it's just roast beef, they might say – but in this cosy nook in the middle of the city, it's also where you eat it and who made it ... and maybe what they're playing on the sound system.

Still, the meal didn't feel complete, like a story without an ending. After sitting around for a while and sipping the rather good coffee (gasp!), we settled on the English-sounding Trinity Burned Cream with Raspberries to round up a lovely lunch.

The dessert, essentially a crème brûlée, turned out to be a good choice. Under the slightly burnt layer of sugar was a bed of rich (unburned) custard cream covering what looked like raspberry compote. One serving was just right for two waistline-watching Malaysians to share and still come away fully satisfied.

We stayed long enough to wait for teatime, but we didn't want to ruin the experience by taking in too much of this delightful place at one go. Reluctantly, we peeled ourselves off our chairs. We'd be back.

And we are having laaaaaaaaamb the next time around.

---

Albion

31 Jalan Berangan
50200 Kuala Lumpur

CLOSED FOR GOOD

Betrayed

One of the first books I've read this year kind of surprised me, even though it wasn't light reading. Great début by Wiley Cash.

---

Hope in faith

When those we trust fail us

first published in The Star, 14 September 2012


I remember being aghast at stories of child abuse at the hands of religious figures. So it's no surprise that I found the premise of Wiley Cash's debut novel compelling: what happens when religious figures fail to live up to their ideals?

The novel was inspired by the tragic story of an autistic African American boy who'd been smothered during a healing service in Chicago in the United States. "I was bothered that a group of people, including the boy's mother, could stand by while something like that took place," said Cash in an interview.

A Land More Kind Than Home takes place in a small North Carolinian town populated by generally God-fearing townsfolk. Some of them, however, fear something else, too.

Elderly midwife Adelaide Lyle is haunted by the death and subsequent cover-up of the time a churchgoer dies during a snake-handling ritual presided over by the church's newest pastor, Carson Chambliss. The incident prompts her to take the children out of the church.

Despite her efforts, young Jess Hall's autistic older brother, Christopher, lovingly nicknamed "Stump" by his father, becomes the church's next victim as his mother stands by and does nothing. As the case unravels, this story of family, faith and secrets unfolds through the perspectives of three people.

There's Lyle who, as a young girl, survived what sounds like the 1918-19 global Spanish flu outbreak and helped bury a long-deceased relative. This fortitude helps her bear the secrets she has to hide but the weight would eventually prove too much. Too old to actively resist Chambliss's corruption of the church, she mostly watches from the sidelines.

Jess Hall, meanwhile, has to deal with his brother's death, which he feels somehow responsible for. The return of his grandfather Jimmy doesn't help. Instead, Jess retreats into the safety and comfort of memories of him and his brother, despite the adults' efforts to help him cope.

And we have Sheriff Clem Barefield, a survivor of his own family tragedy who has the unenviable task of battling small-town reticence and the church's code of silence to solve Stump's case. There's also a bit of unfinished business between him and Jimmy Hall.

Cash wanted to write the story of the failed Chicago faith healing, but he wasn't familiar with the city or the community. So the North Carolinian set the story in Madison County in his home state. "Once I did that, the story came alive; it became real."

And it did. Cash has done his research well, judging from how one is deeply immersed in the atmosphere of the town, with the sweet aroma from drying tobacco leaves at the Halls' farm and the "ain'ts" and double negatives in the locals' speech. In this day and age, such a stereotypical portrayal of a small American town may be frowned upon, even as one believes that such places still exist in that country, rotary dial phones and all.

We are shown how the decay of religion in a slice of the American heartland can affect its people. We feel the characters' pain, caused by alcoholism, domestic abuse and betrayal by those they trusted, as well as the plight of the lost searching for meaning or something to fill the void in their hearts.

We seethe at the seemingly aloof wickedness of those who prey upon the insecure and desperate to achieve power and influence. We are crushed, slowly, as we watch a family come apart. Even before the conclusion of this well-written novel, the slimy preacher will leave one more scar upon the lives of the protagonists.

Yet, the novel offers hope. Lyle still believes the church is the town's pivotal institution and that it will again be the beacon and safe haven it's meant to be.

"The living church is made of people," she says, "and it can grow sick and break just like people can, and sometimes churches can die just like people die. ... A church can be healed, and it can be saved like people can be saved."

We somehow find comfort in these words, even as we cringe at the on-air antics of today's Carson Chamblisses. And we hope that our religious institutions will eventually become a place more like home where those we trust with our lives – and souls – will never let us down.

---

A Land More Kind Than Home

Wiley Cash
Doubleday (2012)
306 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-857-52070-8

Well Done

Though he's left the kitchen, everyone's favourite trash-talking chef is still dishing out food for thought


A bitter and angry chef, resigned to remain rooted behind a stove until he dies, lets it rip in an over-testosteroned rant-fest of a memoir dedicated to his ilk and pokes fun at TV chefs, vegans, and the like. He's confident that the book will never get him on TV, take him to exotic foreign locales, or hook him up with more famous, qualified chefs.

Anthony Bourdain has eaten a lot of things since then, including his own words; check out his other books: A Cook's Tour and The Nasty Bits.

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook is the book fans have been waiting for since That Book, Kitchen Confidential. Profane and profound, his take on all things close to his heart are a joy to read, especially in countries where freedom of expression also comes with a hefty rulebook to safeguard presumably fragile egos.

Hunter S Thompson may be the father of gonzo journalism, but it's this chef-turned-author and travel show host that many of us with an opinion and a shtick to bandy about want to be one day.

From Medium Raw, we learn a bit more about what happened to Bourdain since That Book came out. Why he became a father at fifty. The new targets of his ire. The Top Chef contestant anonymously featured in That Book. The deal behind David Chang, who could be the next Angry Writing Chef. More tantalising are the latest updates about the prominent personalities featured in That Book, and why Bourdain called that restaurant reviewer a dirty name.


Burning bridges
We also learn, in spite of all he has now, why Bourdain doesn't seem happy. In his jottings one still senses the jitteriness of someone who had lost something good when he least expected it - and constantly looks out for the next such catastrophe. If he's not burning bridges, one suspects he's checking to see if someone else will burn them, or if the bridges spontaneously combust.

Probably explains his apparent gusto for the life he's leading now; if he concentrates on going forward, he can forget about looking over his shoulder.

In the prologue, we get a sense of how different things have been for Bourdain since Kitchen Confidential, published over a decade ago. The clandestine gathering of world-class chefs at a secret dinner capped by a taste of the controversial ortolan dish is worlds apart from his old life. He not sure why he's here, other than being a guest of his best pal, who sounds suspiciously like the Michelin-starred chef of Le Bernadin, Eric Ripert.

UK edition of Medium Raw from Bloomsbury with new
cover (left) and US edition from HarperCollins/Ecco

Sure it's fun, exciting. But he also sounds unsure, lost, out of place. Maybe a little guilty. I shouldn't be having this much fun, he seems to be thinking. This is not my circle, which I left - or rather, abandoned - for a more cushier gig.

Is that why he flagellates himself so ruthlessly in the first few chapters of Medium Raw? "Heretic", "sell-out", he calls himself. He compares himself to a prostitute, drops names of chefs who've taken similar paths and explains why they did it, as if it's something needing justification. The calamitous Caribbean island getaway with a crazy rich chick, after the end of his first marriage, must've been very painful to recall.


Paid his dues
He gets over it, though. He's paid his dues, I think, and his new jet-setting life now is much better suited for his age. "If I go back to the kitchen now, it would break me," he confesses in The Nasty Bits.

Besides being less angry, he's also more neutral, finding silver linings in the same subjects he used to run down. Such performances, however, feel forced, like in the chapter on US chef and food activist Alice Waters, the "Pol Pot in a muumuu". And he's still shining the shoes of British chef and Parkinson's disease sufferer Fergus Henderson. It made sad reading.

Similarly forced is the chapter devoted to food porn. Though formulaic, it still had enough mojo to drive one into night markets, looking for placebos to lush descriptions of chicken butt yakitori.

Foreign audiences outside the US, however, may have problems with his references to obscure pop and food culture. He doesn't explain, in one chapter, why he considers Mario Batali and Eric Ripert heroes. When this book was first published, Ripert chaired a New York-based charity that rescues unused food to feed hungry people, and Batali was active in charities for children.

...Well, it is said that he says a lot – and says it damn well, too – about the things he feels strongly for.

In the ten years between Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw, he never really left us at all. He's still slinging it, commenting on more than just food: in the news, online, in the airwaves, on TV - seemingly one of the last honest people out there who speaks his mind with little thought of the repercussions, because some things have to be said.

Keep talking, Tony. We're all ears.


Another version of this review was first published in the July - September 2012 issue of MPH Quill. This review was based on the 2010 Bloomsbury (UK) edition of the book.

---

Medium Raw

A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

Anthony Bourdain
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (2010)
281 pages
Non-fiction
ISBN: 978-1-4088-0934-1

MPH Quill, July - September 2012 Issue

...is very damn late. I know. But it's out.

I've heard talk about changes in direction for Quill, but no clues about that so far.

Okay, let's see what's inside.

...Luke Clark, editor of Discovery Channel Magazine, on the mag's
relaunch (right)...

...Adam Jacot de Boinod speaks about weird words and his books
about them...

...profile of Dina Zaman and her short story collection, King of the Sea...

...Ellen Whyte spends a night at the Szechwan Opera in Chengdu...

...and more. Of course there's always more.