Ruined Splendour

I enjoyed this book.

Alright, so the three industries aren't really dead yet - just in shambles, thanks largely to the technology that enabled me to post this. But they'll pick themselves up, hopefully, and live on.

Apologies to Justin Cronin and Karl Lagerfeld for any offence caused. The mental cues just ... leapt in there.

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Splendour from ruin

Even broken lives can be beautiful, as this darkly funny novel suggests

first published in The Star, 04 November 2012


Why do KL drivers slow down to stare at multi-vehicle pile-ups? Could there be something ... beautiful about them? Considering the things that pass for sculptures of modern art, perhaps. But such morbid beauty isn't just found in mangled metal.

The pile-up of broken lives in Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins is just as fascinating. The comic-tragic tale unfolds from several directions as the protagonists race towards the inevitable collision. And it's all because of Richard Burton.

In 1962, Porto Vergogna (literally, "port of shame") is a dying Italian fishing town and home to young Pasquale Tursi, keeper of the oddly named Hotel Adequate View. Tursi's daydreams of building tennis courts are interrupted by the arrival of Dee Moray, an American starlet who was supposed to be in Liz Taylor's Cleopatra. It's not long before Tursi starts thinking about a different kind of "love". However, stuff happens and, one day, she vanishes.

In the present day, several people are failing in their romances and careers. Claire Silver, assistant to film producer Michael Deane, is disappointed with her porn-addict boyfriend and the box office bombs her boss made. Shane Wheeler's dreams of being a writer also bombed, along with his marriage and finances. Across the pond, Pat Bender's latest music-comedy act goes belly-up, ending his rock star ambitions.

Hoping for a break, Wheeler pitches a story to Deane, so he's off to meet his assistant, Silver. Wheeler's knowledge of Italian helps when an elderly Italian man, a now-aged Tursi, shows up with one of Deane's old business cards – and a story that moves Wheeler, Silver and Deane to help him.

There's a tingling sense of anticipation that's maintained throughout the novel, the promise of a spectacular collision that only happens during a rare alignment of some major cosmic bodies.

The third-person narrative is mostly the spilling of the characters' thoughts. The jumps in the timeline, punctuated with excerpts from several characters' manuscripts or screenplays, can be initially hard to follow but the dark, often vulgar comedy helps.

Another compelling aspect about Walter's novel is that its backdrop can be considered "beautiful ruins" as well: the film, book and music industries, as represented by the principal characters. Gawk and maybe chuckle at the references to trashy reality TV shows, bad movie ideas and English professors who write popular horror fiction (makes one think of Justin Cronin). Although their worlds are crumbling, the protagonists manage to cling on, just in time for Tursi's arrival. In helping the old Italian find a missing piece of his past, their hope is rekindled.

What one feels about this book is captured by Wheeler's reaction to the present-day Deane, a "lacquered elf" whose obsession for eternal youth has given a 72-year-old man the face of a "nine-year-old Filipino girl" (makes one think of Karl Lagerfeld). "Try not to stare," Silver advises Wheeler.

Like Wheeler, you'll fail. You can't help it. Even if you have almost no idea what's going on, there's no way you can take your eyes off Walter's ruined lives as they converge and finally crash into each other. I don't really fancy how some loose ends are tied up, but at least it rules out a sequel if they decide to bring it to the silver screen.

"Go read this now" would not suffice. The splendour of Beautiful Ruins, like the pyramids and temples of Ancient Egypt, must be personally witnessed to be understood. You will not be able to look away. Be awed at the chaos and brilliance of his work, and be moved by a story of optimism and a decades-old love.

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Beautiful Ruins

Jess Walter
Harper (2012)
337 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-06-220713-5

Growing Up With Ghosts

At first, the idea of the supernatural in the setting seemed interesting, only because I haven't read anything like this. But I'm no 140-plus-books-a-year person.

In the end, though, I felt underwhelmed. This book broke no mould or new ground. That "octopus scene" touted in some promo material appeared gratuitously tacked on. The protagonist's ordeals lent little poignancy to her survival.

Maybe I should've titled it "Growing old with ghosts".

Cassandra's abilities reminded me of Brian Lumley's Necroscope character, a man who can talk to the dead and raise an army of dead people. Despite this and her toughness, she remains bound by the restrictions from the religious and social mores of her day. She is used, abused, disbelieved and betrayed, particularly by the men in her life.

One would think being a female necromancer would set her free from all that, but perhaps it's due to her reluctance to abuse her gift, or the author's attempts to avoid turning an adult book into some young adult fantasy.

Guess some ghosts are harder to exorcise than others.

This particular time period may yet yield more stories, but I think it's time writers start letting Southeast Asia's pre-war/wartime/post-war era fade into the evening mists along with its gardens, jungles, horrors and other emotional baggage.

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Growing up with ghosts

Don't read too much into this dark tale

first published in The Star, 02 November 2012


In present-day Japan, an old lady searches for a book in a library and finds pages torn from it and a picture of her younger self in it defaced. Then, walking outside, she sees a pair of crows collide in mid-flight. In the evening, she gets a mysterious phone call asking for an interview and, much later, a seemingly otherworldly visitor. Shaken, the old lady reaches for a voice recorder and starts recalling her dark past.

One thing about ghost stories these days is that they seem to be about more than just ghosts – or not at all. There are ghosts galore, as well as undead and nature spirits, in Sandi Tan's The Black Isle but it feels as though their presence is more for effect and atmosphere in a tale about a little girl born in the 1920s, who has to grow up real quick when she's uprooted from her native Shanghai and sent to a tropical backwater.

The girl, Ling, is the elder of a pair of brother-sister twins and the black sheep of the lot that includes her brother Li and a pair of younger twin girls. Her life starts to change when she discovers her gift.

... She sees dead people ... all the time....

Don't bother calling up filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan about possible copyright infringements of his hit 1999 movie, The Sixth Sense. Nothing of the sort here.

The first ghost Ling sees is of her former babysitter, who vanishes after leaving behind a message: That Ling would leave home for a faraway place. It isn't long before Ling is packed off to South-East Asia, along with her dad and twin brother, to help better the family fortunes.

They end up on the "Black Isle"; from the map in the book, it looks like – but is not quite like – Singapore. The island is "dirty" – haunted – and would get "dirtier" when the Japanese come a-knocking.

It's not long before we see hints that her "gift" is more of a bane than a boon. Nobody believes in her sightings as a child, which would later lead her to adopt the name Cassandra, after the tragic princess and prophetess of Troy. But when the Black Isle finally gains its independence, will she also be free of her ghosts?

One observation made about The Black Isle is that the work straddles young adult and adult fiction, which I find is very much the case. The pages breeze along, despite their not-so-bright tone. But I wonder if the novel was set during a time of conflict as an excuse to weave in elements of dark fantasy.

Racism, swearing and lurid descriptions of all sorts of bad behaviour made me feel uncomfortable, even though the whole novel overall was well-written and – perhaps, a little too – well-imagined.

The Black Isle itself is said to be an amalgam of a number of South-East Asian countries whose evolution mirrors Malaysia's. That, as well as the inclusion of elements of regional folklore and myth makes the novel more relatable, albeit well-worn in its familiarity. As a result, there's little compulsion to pick this book up again after one is done with it.

Still, that so much from real life is incorporated into a supernatural tale begs one to seek out hidden messages in the threads of the story.

Old wisdom contends that each place has its ghosts and penunggu (Malay for "guardians"), and the notion that they will rise up against any injustice done to it, just as the Black Isle's did, has a certain appeal. But raising ghosts and invoking the past can be dangerous, especially if it is to inflame passions or advance someone's selfish agenda.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into what could be a simple ghost story set in familiar territory, meant only to be enjoyed on a sleepless night in a dimly lit room. Can you blame me? After a spell on Sandi Tan's shadowy Black Isle, you'd probably start seeing things, too.

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The Black Isle

Sandi Tan
Grand Central Publishing (August 2012)
472 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-4555-1654-4

News: Random Penguins, Amazon, And Self-Publishing Grows (Some More)

Penguin and Random House have merged into what could be the world's largest book publishing firm. Apparently, news of the merger "rattled" publishing ... and kicked off a meme. "Penguin House" sounds like something Owl City would compose. "Random Penguin"? Not so much.

But they're going to call it Penguin Random House. Key facts of the two entities from the Guardian here.

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Amazon reportedly slaps British publishers with 20% value-added tax on ebook sales. Not as hair-raising as how it allegedly erased the contents of customer's Kindle without a detailed explanation, though the contents were reportedly restored later. Or the note she received after her Kindle was wiped:

"We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs."

In some dystopian future where Amazon is the only retailer, that would bite.

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EPUB 3.0 now said to help publishing of Japanese e-books, many of which follow a particular format. Will e-books finally take of in the land of the keitai shosetsu?

And Forbes states the obvious: "self-publishing shows rapid growth". For those itching to hop onto that bandwagon, here are some points to ponder before self-publishing your book.

Meanwhile, others ask whether self-publishing authors are ruining it for e-book publishing with dirt-cheap e-books.


In other news:

• Nobel troubles rear its head for Mo Yan, whose accolades raise piracy fears for his books and concerns over fate of his village when the 'Mo Yan theme park' is up.
• Kurdish publishers at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair can't seem to keep politics off the table.
• Fraud-exposing crime writer Jeremy Duns may have revealed another possibly dodgy book reviewer.
• A different point of view on the Bourdain's foodie machismo. The opening line lampshades his writing style: "In Rome, visiting friends in May, I ordered the sweet, unctuous lining of a cow's stomach thrice, and ate it each time in a state of pure gustatory contentment."
• A bookstore guy on what goes into a bookstore.
• Donated hollowed-out book found packing heat. Origins unknown.

Language Pollution And Le Mot Juste

first published in The Malaysian Insider, 24 October 2012


Some time ago, some linguistic Paul Revere came riding out of a foggy night, lantern in hand, yelling, "The Britishisms are here!"

Apparently, some common British terms are creeping into American English, thanks in part to British-made entertainment drifting from the other side of the pond.

I'd like to think the New York Times article was written with some tongue in the writer's cheek, but in case it isn't, here's the irascible and oft-quotable John Scalzi's classic response to it. Yeah, "silly, silly article."

Creeping foreign influences on language, I guess, is everybody's issue. Especially when one's country happens to be an important crossroads along key trade routes, part of or originator of an empire, or some combination of the afore-mentioned. The need to invent words in one's native language for some foreign object or concept can be seen as one attempt to keep things "local".

As it becomes easier for the world to creep (or barge) in, that gets harder.

During Japan's Meiji era, the country adopted the best of the West: banking, industry, defence and so on, a practice that continued well into the present day and made them a world economic power.

The case for borrowing and incorporating foreign words to speed up the enrichment of a language to make it more global, therefore, seems solid, especially when a bureaucracy is stretched beyond its limits by other needs to invent new words in a "native" language that convey exactly what an object, idea or concept is ― or come close to doing so.

Some nationalistic elements, however, claim this type of borrowing dilutes rather than enriches the "native: culture and identity. In Malaysia, for instance, these elements appear wilfully ignorant that certain words in the vocabulary have origins in Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese and Sanskrit, among others.

From the photo, it's tempting to assume that Gustave Flaubert's
(1821-1880) receding hairline is due to the pressures of finding
le mots justes. How stressful was it to write books such as
Madame Bovary?

To some extent, language is malleable, and the way some societies shape words and ideas to communicate better and more concisely is not too different from how our ancestors shaped stone and bone to hunt and fish. But there's always the urge to brand the tools and tool-making technique as one's own, fuelled by the need to forge a unique identity.

What got me thinking ― not too deeply, though ― about this was, for one, the complexity in editing several cookbooks. Some ingredients, such as "asam Gelugor", lack what I feel are more concise English translations or equivalents and, as such, one can only fall back on the Latin-based (ha) naming conventions invented by Carl Linnaeus.

I had a harder time when I wrote a piece on herbal teas. For instance, some sources can't agree on whether "beizicao" ― or "bukcheechou" in Cantonese ― should be written as 北子草 ("northerner grass" ― kinda) or 北紫草 ("northern purple grass"), or if the herb is known as such in mainland China.

More recently, a colleague had some trouble translating "tingle" into Malay. The given Malay equivalent in a bilingual dictionary is "(rasa) gelenyar", though I have no idea when it got in there. We settled on "gelenyar", more because there doesn't seem to be anything else.

While some may argue or lament that certain quarters are unnecessarily borrowing foreign words or substituting local words with imports, those processes shouldn't be seriously curtailed or stopped entirely for the sake of protecting the purity of one's mother tongue or national language.

As the feisty Erna Mahyuni stated in The Malaysian Insider, "You don't "protect" [the national language] by discouraging the mastery of other languages." She was commenting mainly on the state of Malay-to-English translation, but I feel that mastery of languages is also crucial in developing one's lexicon.

Many of us may not be as anal-retentive as Gustave Flaubert when it comes to the quest for the right word. However, a wordsmith's bag of tricks can never have too many items.

If the word fits, use it.

News: Endings, Man Overboard, And Timing Is Everything

At last, Newsweek ends its print edition. Andrew Sullivan isn't all that crushed about it, comparing print mags to "horses and carriages" that exist "as lingering objects of nostalgia." Someone wrote a rebuttal of sorts but I forgot the link. Also going out of style: cookbooks.

What else has been going on?

• The Man Group stops sponsorship of the Man Asian Literary Prize. They'll keep the Booker Prize running, though.
• How to write a letter that sells your book. Of all the queries that have come my way, few had good cover letters. Before you do that, check out some things you may want to do before self-publishing.
• In publishing, timing can be everything. Several cases of both good and bad timing are highlighted, including one author's very unfortunate novel.
• Stephen King nearly busted for vandalising books - his books - with his signature.
• The V-word keeps Rachel Held Evans's A Year of Biblical Womanhood out of a Christian bookshop. From the looks of it, they probably don't sell dictionaries, either.
• Hay in the Parc, a lit-fest in a lockup that's contributing to rehab of young prisoners.
• A "short" defense of verbosity in literature. Because, why not?
• In Wales, the publishing industry is under a cloud.
• Do e-reader manufacturers and publishers need to do more for the blind? Eventually, yes.
• 21 authors attempt to write 140-character novels. The results are ... interesting.

Mostly Melancholy

This is no spicy literary pick-me-up perfumed by the kind of exoticism generally associated with the Indian subcontinent

first published in The Star, 21 October 2012


When buying books, warning flags to observe include author names that are bigger than the titles, "Winner of the Booker/Man Asian/Nobel/Whatever Prize" - "... brings a cool eye to friendship, love and the idea of belonging in its movements through old and new worlds..." - and abstract-sounding back cover blurbs.

The adult life of Leela Ghosh, the protagonist in Anjali Joseph's Another Country, begins in Paris, where she teaches English and goes about the business of negotiating "the world, work, relationships and sex" to find "some measure of authenticity".

The author once stated that Leela's migratory path mirrors her own: Joseph moved to Britain when she was seven because of her father's job; she lived in France for a year after graduating from Cambridge, teaching English at the famous Sorbonne; and she moved back to India, "a little accidentally", when she was 25.

It's hard to believe that Joseph's second novel is a complete work. Stretched across 31 short chapters, the collage of snapshots of Leela's largely uninteresting early 20s feels like an avant-garde art film in which details trickle in but never form a whole picture, even at the end.

Characters and places abruptly come and go, leaving nary a trace on the reader's mind or heart. Nothing strikes a chord with me. You can put the book down for a break and pick up where you left off easily.

As for the overall tone: "Sharp, funny and melancholy" says the back cover blurb? Mostly melancholy, methinks.

Leela's presence is almost as ephemeral as the rest of the supporting cast, an odd trait for a lead character. She strikes me as aloof, self-absorbed and a little mordant, radiating little warmth with her cloudy disposition and sterile, clinical observations of people and places as she flits from one chapter to another. One is hard-pressed to sympathise with her when, for instance, she gets thrown out of her boyfriend's flat at three in the morning.

But maybe we're not supposed to care too much.

In an interview, Joseph spoke of a kind of "unsettledness" which is probably felt by "a lot of people who live in many places and without a clear sense of how their own sense of self fits within national or regional boundaries". People such as Leela Ghosh and, perhaps, the author herself.

The displaced tend to feel disoriented; far away from home, comfort and stability are sought within the familiar while adjusting, during which some sights, sounds and such feel more important than the rest.

What's not important is blocked out, numbed down and closeted somewhere in the mind to fade away like a traveller's footprints on a beach.

The apparent gaps in the narrative seem to illustrate this but, overall, one feels rushed through a series of half-done dioramas in a museum exhibit put together by an impatient curator.

So the dry, barebones depiction of a young person's life in Another Country feels quotidian. Maybe that's the point – this is no spicy literary pick-me-up perfumed by the kind of exoticism generally associated with the Indian subcontinent. Real life for many of us already has enough drama, so why ramp it up into a full-budget Bollywood song-and-dance?

Joseph's open-ended tale of a migrant's journey would, perhaps, click better with other fellow wanderers: displaced, unsettled individuals seeking stability beyond their beginnings. However little one feels about this book, it's hard not to wish its protagonist all the best in her search for home and self.

For the world-weary wayfarer, there is no greater release than the feeling of coming home.


This review was based on an advance reading copy.

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Another Country

Anjali Joseph
Fourth Estate (2012)
265 pages
Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-00-746278-0

Late, Late News: Bring Up The Bodies And All That

I was holding out for the results of this year's Man Booker Prize before posting but, in the end, a Malaysian favourite lost out to a foreign heavyweight. Oh well....

Hilary Mantel's second Booker win for the sequel to her first, Wolf Hall, was apparently expected. Was the choice too obvious?

"I merely wanted novels that they would not leave behind on a beach," said Sir Peter Stothard, who led the judging panel and may have ticked off a bunch of book bloggers for what he reportedly said about them.

Leave a novel behind on a beach? La sir! Do you know how much they cost these days?

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The digital revolution in publishing was expected to be a hot topic at Frankfurt Book Fair, where the mood appears clouded by economic woes in the Eurozone.

More clouds forecasted for writers, in light of the concerns raised over Google's deal with publishers regarding book digitisation. Related to this is a judgement in the US favouring a "digital preservation effort" by a bunch of research libraries based on material scanned by Google. Getting harder to not be evil each year, hmm?

Meanwhile, a Jewish reading site complains about Saudi and Iranian presence at European book fairs. Uhm... yeah.

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Chinese, but different fates: Nobel Literature prize winner's books, predictably, fly off the shelves after announcement. A Chinese forestry official turned environmental activist, meanwhile, may be jailed over book on environmental protection.

The Guardian offers some visuals on, among other things, how getting shortlisted for a major literary award is enough to boost sales. Everyone's a winner!

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Somebody at Forbes begs to differ (a little) on a listicle on the already stale topic of ten ways to save the publishing industry in the Guardian. Will the debate never end?


In other news

• Rich Dad author Robert Kiyosaki may be US$24 million poorer for allegedly reneging on a deal. Those who were helping themselves to some sweet, sweet schadenfreude jumped the gun.
• "Forget the money and write." Good advice that may apply even if there is money involved.
• Those who bought Kindle books (between April 2010 and May 2012) to get refunds.
• Hay in the Parc, a lit-fest in a lockup that's contributing to rehab of young prisoners.
• Johnny Depp to launch his own book imprint with HarperCollins? Is HarperC cultivating a stable of celebrity publishers?
• Famous authors and their favourite foods. Agatha Christie sipped Devonshire cream? And how the heck does one make a "tomato soup cake"? No prob - recipes included.
• A "short" defense of verbosity in literature. Because, why not?

Last but not least: Can't get enough of Boey Cheeming? The author, styrofoam cup beautifier and former animator will be meeting fans this Saturday, 20 October, at Popular Bookfairs at 1Utama (2pm - 3.30pm) and Paradigm Mall (5.30pm - 6.30pm); and Sunday, 21 October, at Popular Bookstore, Sunway Pyramid (3pm - 4pm). These may be his last appearances in Malaysia for a while, so don't miss it.