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.

Publishers' Miss Becomes A Hit

Patricia O'Brien's The Dressmaker, a work of historical fiction about a seamstress on the Titanic, was rejected 13 times based on the poor performance of her previous book.

So she submitted it for publication under the nom de plume "Kate Alcott".

After three days, someone bit. The Dressmaker by "Kate Alcott"? Oh, YES OM NOM NOM D PLOOM. It reportedly received rave reviews, and translation rights for the novel were sold in five countries - a first for O'Brien.

This is not about whether to use a pen name and which pen names would sell, although the subject is worth diving into. O'Brien had to hide behind an alias because the traditional houses who published her before were judging the success of this book based on what can now be considered an invalid benchmark.

Its success is one more reason for writers to bypass the well-known, lumbering old-school institutions.


Publishers be damned?
Then comes Anthony Horowitz's lovely piece on whether authors still need publishers.

For the foreseeable future, they do.

Despite being a best-selling author, one self-publishing phenom turned to a conventional publisher to do her editing, marketing, cover designs, etc so that she could be free to write books. A good publisher she's happy with, one presumes. For the kind of stuff she writes, doesn't she deserve the best kind of editing, packaging and publicity? Not that she needs much of the latter these days....

It seems the bigger the publishing house, the more it'll be hamstrung by its business model, and the socio-political climate of the countries it operates in. Far be it from publishers to challenge the ruling governments on what is fine to publish, however.

Publishers, therefore, can reclaim some of the ground they (think they have) lost by upping the quality of what they make and do. But will they pony up the kind of money for first-class editors, covers and marketing strategies? If they're willing to, will they end up overselling mediocre books, or not do enough to promote the better ones?

Every manuscript they take on is a roll of the dice, but one in which they can influence an outcome, i.e. make a product that's a bit better than the original 'script they got. I chafe at people who say things like, "What's one or two dozen typos in a 600-page book? It's not as if readers keep track of things like that." Or, "Did this country have phone booths with doors in the 1990s? Dunno, but don't lose sleep over it. No one's going to care."

Half a century ago, maybe. With readers now armed with Google and pay-per-view documentary channels, they are now demanding factual accuracy in books, particularly those that feature real-life people and places. If book reviewers can't find anything else to fill the obligatory space, they'll start hunting for nits to pick. And no amount of savvy marketing can hide the awfulness of a book from the multitudes of grassroots reviewers (book bloggers), who will make their displeasure of a crappy book known.

The self-published route may seem bumpy at the moment, what with dozens of badly edited and jacketed books flooding the market. With time, the small guys will improve and things will really start swinging then. The big marquee publishers will no longer be able to count on their history, traditions and the like to remain relevant. With every "meh" book - and the related typos - they produce, their cachet goes down to the point where they can't be distinguished from their small indie counterparts.

Guess who future authors will turn to when that happens.


Crowding out the old
I'm partial to crowdsourced publishing as part of the future. In this country, for instance, the creative pool of talent publishers crave is likely to comprise eccentric, anti-establishment personalities. But they're also the ones who are most likely to come up with concepts and content that surprise. After a job is done, they can choose to stay with the collective or move on to other things.

(Not to say that talent doesn't exist elsewhere.)

With the crucial elements of publishing: editing, layout design and marketing spread all over and connected by the Web, publishers can't claim to be the sole gatekeepers of literary tastes and harbingers of reading trends. Nor do we need critics of a Kakutanian bent to proclaim the best and worst of each book from rarefied heights like at the New York Times, not with the colourful and unrestrained outpourings of the Amazon/Goodreads crowd.

Of course, there's a chance that history will repeat itself; some of the now-monolithic publishers started small. With fame comes expansion, in operations and maybe heads.

The artists who designed a funky cover for a zine or a chapbook could grab the eyeballs of a big-name sponsor. And stories pop up every now and then about unknown writers who are lifted to prominence by discerning, renowned literary agents. Certain expectations would have to be met once they enter the mainstream. What happens when the independent artisan becomes a slave of the market?

That's when hard decisions have to be made. Grow big at the cost of quality and the personal touch, or stay the course and (metaphorically) starve?

The onus is then upon the indie writer/editor/designer/marketeer to lay down the law regarding the services he/she offers. Compromises have to be made to allow the artisan to consistently churning out good work while giving him/her the time to improve and live. It is hoped that the good client will understand.


A shapeless future
No longer will the rigid storied institutions determine how things are or should be. Many will be replaced by amorphous collectives, comprising seemingly disparate groups or skilled individuals, that fill similar socio-economical niches and redefine the rules of the game.

Traditional publishing houses will eventually have to adapt to an equally amorphous future, where an author can "redefine" himself/herself just by changing names. Institutions are much harder to change than individuals (some may disagree), but what's the pain of change when compared to the pain of irrelevance? Or oblivion?

Writing under aliases isn't a new thing. However, even the most flowery noms de plume can't hide the stench of bad writing.

News: New Village, (Maybe A) New Book, Peter Mayle and Libraries

After weeks of trawling the web, finally! Some big book news from home.

Headman of New Village
Feeling upbeat for See Tshiung Han (is that how it should be written?) and his New Village project. Check out their web site here.

Masthead for the New Village zine (Issue 0, July 2011), and one of the pages

It's definitely not your... usual kind of fiction. Given the risk-averse nature of the mainstream publishing industry, maybe it's a good idea to strike it out on your own. Self-publishing is becoming the rage, after all.

Congratulations to the New Village team and all the best with the project. ...Wonder if they're taking (literary) contributions?


Coming soon?
The distributors have informed me that they'll be distributing a book by artist Boey Cheeming. He'd e-mailed us sometime back to see if we can help him get what appears to be his illustrated childhood memoir into the local market. Would be thrilling if this comes to pass. In the meantime, read Ah Boey's (sorry, couldn't resist) graphic-heavy journal.


So-called "sex book" banned
One not-so-great news is the ban on Peter Mayle's Where Did I Come From?, a book that's been around when my age was still single digits. I remember reading an ex-neighbour's copy and... well, if the book makes you horny, I think you have some serious issues.

Sex sells, but put sex and Malaysia in the same sentence and you have a legion of news agencies who I presume want to bump up page hits by reporting on the same ban.

When will we ever get into the news for all the right reasons?


Other news

• Meanwhile, Kenny Mah sussses out some book cafés in Japan. Reminded me of Hoxes at Damansara Perdana, a little hideaway that eventually closed just as soon as I got comfortable.
• The Librotraficante (Spanish for "Booktrafficker") Movement is opening "underground libraries" in the face of an alleged ban on books on Mexican-American culture.
  
  Some time ago, the city of Tucson, Arizona banned the teaching of allegedly divisive, ethnically-biased Mexican-American studies in schools. Some see it as part of a wider plan to marginalise the Hispanic community by a state that's increasingly hostile to immigration, specifically Latino immigration.
  
  Why am I following this? It's just so... suspenseful! I want to know what happens next. And I do hope that there would be no book ban - or any ban whatsoever.
• Mercer County libraries add e-books to their shelves - but not without hiccups. As reported days ago, some of the big name publishers have stopped selling e-books to libraries. And some old fogies still aren't used to e-readers.
• New York payphone booths turned into "guerilla libraries". Would it work in Malaysi- no, it won't. But I guess it depends on what kind of books you'd put there....
• Survivors of the Bosnian war in pictures: The literary treasures of Sarajevo's centuries-old Gazi Husrav Beg Library. Pretty books, pretty pictures.
• Amazon does it again. The firm that's shaping up to be the Death Star of publishing and bookselling has pulled 5,000 titles by Chicago-based distributor Independent Publishers Group from its catalogue over sales terms. It's Amazon vs Macmillan all over again.
  
  Meanwhile, another boycott - by Barnes & Noble on Amazon titles - hits a number of books, including Penny Marshall's My Mother Was Nuts. It just means that it won't be displayed at B&N's network of brick-and-mortar shops, where new books are usually showcased. But is this a smart move?
• Satire, serials and shorts: Publishers are trying out variations of the e-book. Okay, e-books may be democratising publishing, but I still think you need people to make them better.
• Did you hear about Paramount Studios suing the Puzo estate to prevent more "Godfather" books? The suit claims that a previous Godfather novel "tarnished the legacy" of the film and "misled consumers in connection with advertising, marketing, and promotional material related to the first and second sequel novels".
  
  Just so happens that I have one of these books on a list of tentative titles to review later. Now I really want to get my hands on it.
• Speaking in tongues: Aravind Adiga's lingusitic journey. "...it was common for a boy of my generation to speak one language at home, another on the way to school, and a third one in the classroom. ... Kannada, which I spoke at home, and Hindi, which I had to learn in school, belong to different linguistic families and are as dissimilar as, say, Spanish and Russian."
• A shortlist for the Diagram prize for oddest book title of the year. Gotta love the standfirst.
• Oh, and Anthony Bourdain's book imprint Ecco announces new authors and books.

Yes, yes, JK Rowling is writing a book for adults (whatever that means) and US comedian Stephen Colbert is coming up with a children's book. Like I care a whole lot about either.