Archive for May, 2006

Bibliobibuli at http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com/ is Sharon Bakar’s blog on everything to do with books and creative writing. She is a British writer who has lived in Malaysia for 20 years and feels at home there - sort of like a counterpart to me (I’ve been in the UK for 30 years and feel at home over here). She blogs on books she has read - and seems to go through one every couple of days! - and on creative writing: as a creative writing teacher, she has many useful and interesting tips etc. Her blog also reports on what’s happening in the creative writing/ arty scene in Kuala Lumpur.

I blogged about cheating in the world of literature the other week (see Faking It - the Viswanathan Case). Plagiarism, theft of another writer’s words, is seen as a terrible crime but there is no law against the taking of another’s ideas (see Holy Smoke, what a relief!).

In art, forgery - the faking of another artist’s work - is the equivalent of plagiarism. Konrad Kujau came to infamy as the man who forged Hitler’s diaries and also was a master forger of many paintings. In the 1980s, Kujau claimed he found Hitler’s diaries and sold them to The Times (the London newspaper) and The Stern (the German magazine) - but he had in fact faked them. When Kujau emerged from prison, he became a media celebrity in Germany - he was invited onto chat shows and became an art sensation in his own right. He would fake famous paintings for buyers, including the signature - but also sign the pictures in his own name - and sell them as "original Kujau fakes".

In a fitting twist the no novelist could have made up, his niece Petra Kujau was recently arrested for faking her uncle’s fakes - as reported in The Times, London on 22 April 2006. She apparently sold them as "original Kujau fakes" and is said to have made more than £380,000, the Kujua signature inflating the price of the fake fakes.

So, in literature, faking it brings you ignominy and shame, whereas in art, faking it gives you fame and glory and a lot of money. If found guilty, Petra will have to do her time and then, she will probably be able to capitalise on it all as her Uncle Konrad had done. For artists, it seems that the act of faking art can be art in itself.

Publishing industry commentator and writer, Jai Clare, coined the phrase Bimbo Publishing on her blog "The Cusp of Something" to refer to books by people who don’t write for people who don’t read sold by the truckload at places that don’t sell books - ie celebrity books sold at supermarkets. Read the whole post at http://jaiclare.com/blog/2006/05/13/real-writers-against-bimbo-publishing/

Many "real" writers - ie those who love reading and writing and literature - would surely froth at the mouth at the vast advances paid to the "bimbo" authors while "true" literary gems are advanced laughably small sums. Whenever writers get together, we always moan about the publishing industry - and there are many blogs by writers baring the heartache and torment of their attempts to get their books published. I like the post by the writer who calls himself the Miss Havisham of writing - he sits alone and waits for the letter to come accepting his manuscript but receives only rejection after rejection. Read his post at http://markpettus.blogspot.com/2006/05/great-expectations.html

But maybe the fault lies with us, the writers. The personality type that turns naturally to writing is someone who prefers to observe than participate, who analyses way too much and who is generally insecure and withdrawn - or maybe that’s just me? No, seriously, it takes a certain type of person to choose to spend months and even years on end alone with imaginary characters in an imaginary world. Our greatest moment of genius may occur when we are sitting very still, alone. Who is there to see it and do the Mexican wave at our triumphs? Compare that to a moment of genius on a football field or singing an aria live on stage or throwing a tantrum on a reality TV show, watched by millions around the world. All those millions of potential book buyers….

The reason the "bimbos" get those vast advances is because their books are virtually pre-sold. It takes a certain talent to claw your way to celebrity stardom or to be the top of your sport - showmanship talents that we writerly types may not naturally have. Their readers are fans of the person not the book - they want a piece of that celebrity and they read Hello magazine for the same reason: to get a glimpse into that person’s life. The trouble about being a "real" writer is that the life of our imagination can sometimes be more exciting than our "real" life!

So, I wonder, is there a case for making writing more of a spectator sport? Would there be an audience for a Big Brother house comprised only of writers? Would Writer Idol - where writers appear on stage to write and read their novels - be entertaining enough? Will there be a media-hungry writer one day who will write his/ her novel in a glass cage suspended over the Thames…?

PS. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse: I was on my way home from work last week and in London Bridge station was a young man trying to give away a stack of books. Commuters were rushing past him and he had a look of desperation about him. I thought it was one of those promotions where you get a copy of the latest romance novel with Bella magazine or whatever. But as I got closer I heard him saying, "It’s a novel my friend wrote. All I ask is a 1p donation."

My heart breaks…

pic courtesy of purpleslog (flickr)

Desperate Curiosity is Andrew Eglington’s theatre and writing blog at http://writerspace.net/ - Andrew is a playwright, photographer and writer who has lived in France and Japan and is recently back in London. He writes theater reviews and showcases some of his writing. I particularly like his photos which pick out details in an ordinary scene so that you pause and think: I never saw it like that before. I also like his "observations" in the Archive section where he does with words what his photography does with pictures.

Poseidon, the recently released remake of the 1970s shipwreck disaster movie, is being dubbed "Only the Whites Survive". Out of a multiracial cast, only the white characters survive by the end of the film as the others are killed off one by one in the fashion of disaster films. Wolfgang Peterson, the film’s German director, was interviewed on BBC News 24 and challenged about this. he said that it was a coincidence and thaty they (he and the producers etc) did not think about it.

In multicultural Britain and multiracial US, it takes effort selectively to exclude non-whites from your thought. The mix of races and cultures is present almost everywhere - it’s difficult to miss.

When writing my books, which are set in Malaysia, I thought carefully about how to portray the mix of Malays, Indians and Chinese that make up Malaysia. It was important to me to show all the races represented in the book with some good characters and some bad characters in each of the groups. That is reality in a multiracial and multicultural society. In Mindgame, we start out trusting the white American Carson Dean but then we find out more about his agenda…and the issue of race and expectations based on race become part of the story.

Wolfgang Peterson got more defensive when pressed by the BBC interviewer and tried to dismiss the criticism as "political correctness". That phrase is easy to trot out when cornered. What Peterson was really being asked is: what do you think it feels like to be a non-white watching all the non-whites in a movie not have a chance at survival, merely because they are not white and you didn’t think about saving them? Unfortunately, his answer seems to have been: I don’t care.

“>The Day Without An Immigrant earlier this month made me think about how migration has shaped my family.

Our family history can be traced back the furthest on my mother’s side. It goes back four generations to China, when - so the story goes - a young man ran away from bandits and took a junk to Malaya, paying his way be becoming an indentured labourer. Over the years in the thick tropical heat, he worked off his debt and made a life and home in his new country.

My Grandma grew up in pre-revolution China, the eldest daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She used to tell us stories of playing in the rice fields with her cousins and helping her mother to make broth on cold winter nights. Her father was sent as a missionary to Singapore and so, that branch of the family arrived in the Malay archipelago.

My Grandfather, the grandson of the runaway boy, met Grandma when they were studying to be doctors at Singapore University in the 1930s.

Looking back over the generations on both sides of my family, it seems they thrived in Malaya and came to call it home. Grandfather was involved in politics and helped to shape the nation of Malaysia after independence from the British in the 1960s. From copies of his speeches I found recently, I know that he saw Malaysia as his home and felt passionately about its future.

Then in the 1970s, there was a general wave of migration from Malaysia to the Anglo-Saxon countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) by young professionals and their families. These "Western" countries were looking for doctors and engineers and many of my uncles and aunts fit the bill and they saw new and exciting opportunities. My parets are now the only ones of their siblings still based in Malaysia where my father continues to enjoy his work and lifestyle there.

So when we all meet up, my uncles and aunts and cousins and my siblings and me, it is like an international convention. Among us are Brits, Malaysians, Americans, Canadians and Australians - oh, and Dutch. My uncles and aunts have settled comfortably in their new countries but still retain a strong emotioal bond to the country where they were born. For my cousins and siblings and me, however, we are westernised in our values, thinking and outlook and consider our new countries to be home. Yet, Malaysia is in our blood as we are in each other’s blood and although we may be British or Australian or Canadian or American by law, I think we still have Malaysia inside us.

I will be writing more about the individual immigrant stories in my family in future posts.

Not many people know this but I was born again once. It was during a difficult and troubled period in my 20s when I hoped that God might save me from myself. I fell in with some American evangelists based in West London - wholesome, clean cut and corn fed young men and women from the mid-West who all looked like they had stepped out of a Doris Day movie and might break into song and dance at any moment. They were great ads for cheerful, healthy living - and perhaps that was what drew me to them. They attributed it to the blessings of the Lord but it might just as easily have been a healthy diet, the love of their close-knit families and lots of fresh air and exercise.

So I hung out and enjoyed their community activities - or fellowship, to use the correct terminology - but, after awhile, I died again. However, a delight that still remains in my life from that period is Sunshine Tea. Anna (not her real name) was one of the lay leaders. Her role was to evangelise and mentor the young women who came to the church. She was wholesome and charming in that open prairie and "Oh, what a beautiful morning" way that only Americans can be. She talked to me about many spiritual things but the only thing I can remember is her recipe for Sunshine Tea.

In the summer, her Mom would put a jug of fresh water with two teabags out in the morning sun (and here, I’m picturing one of those white wooden houses with a porch and a swing). The sunlight would filter through the tea and after a couple of hours, Mom would put it in the fridge (presumably one of those giant ones with the ice machine in the front). And when the family came in throughout the day (okay, now it’s the Waltons running through the house in dungarees), there’d be iced tea without the scum on top if you had used hot water.

At that time, I lived in a flat in Central London and if I had put a jug out on the balcony, I would have got Carbon Monoxide Tea. So I skipped the sunshine part and put it straight in the fridge - and that works fine. I’ve also adapted it, using herbal teas instead of regular tea - strawberry or blackcurrant and vanilla work very well.

I still make Sunshine Tea now in the summer and it’s great after a long day out in the prairie working in the garden. Since I died again, I don’t go to church or sing happy clappy songs and I don’t call it praying but when I’m in my garden or walking in nature, I feel the tranquility of it all and that’s God enough for me.

Birmingham Words at http://www.birminghamwords.co.uk/
- is a hub for readers writers based in the Birmingham and Midlands area, UK. It has news and articles as well as members blogs.

Birmingham Words is an online community for readers and writers. The site has two main aims:

• To build community between writers, readers and all those who love words.
• To publish on-site articles, reviews and criticism as well as new writing and artwork in our Birmingham Words downloadable pamphlets.

The other day, I told the story about an Englisman who was hoping to marry a demure Chinese girl and got his mum to introduce him to my mum so he could meet me as his potential bride - see my discussion of The Flame Tree here.

I have just come across a hilarious fake mail-order bride website created by a bolshy Chinese-American woman that satirises the whole Oriental girl as demure, passive beauty thing. Be warned, though, that while there is strong language on the site (but no nudity or sexually explicit pictures) - see http://www.bigbadchinesemama.com/home.html

I had a good laugh and may be tempted to send in a pic of myself on a bad hair day during "that time of the month"….

Benjamin Yeoh at http://www.benjaminyeoh.com/ - A British-born playwright and creative artist.

Ben Yeoh’s third play, YELLOW GENTLEMEN, has recently won Arts Council backing and will be performed at the Oval House Theatre in 2006. His latest play, ON THE EVE OF THE COLLAPSE, has been commissioned for a reading at Soho Theatre by Talawa. He initially trained as a behavioural neuroscientist at Cambridge, before studying play writing and dramaturgy at Harvard. He has participated in various new writing programmes and workshops (Royal Court, Soho, Paines Plough, Talawa, BBC radio); his first play, LEMON LOVE, premiered at the Finborough Theatre and his second LOST IN PERU was at Camden People’s Theatre