Archive for May, 2006

In Malaysia a few weeks ago, a heterosexual Chinese couple was found guilty of indecency for kissing in public. In Jakarta, Indonesia, it was ruled that people related to each other could kiss in public but only for five minutes. AsiaNews reports on these two cases in ‘How to Measure a Kiss’ (05 May 2006).

Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Malaysian Prime Minister, in her opinion piece ‘Show of Affection’ in AsiaNews (05 May 2006) wondered if the authorities would go round public parks with stopwatches. She concludes her article:

You have to wonder about the people who think these laws are a good idea. Do they have so little love and affection in their lives that they have to make the lives of others miserable? While some people may say that these sorts of physical displays need not be done in public, surely most of us are intelligent enough to tell the difference between affection and lewdness. Nobody is having sex in public; if they were, there are already laws against it.

But then maybe that’s the plan: first we start with public affection. Next we go after private affection. Love will be banned entirely in this country.

The link to AsiaNews is http://www.asianewsnet.net/epaper.php. The above items do not seem to have individual post links so you may need to search the archive is you can’t immediately see them in the navigation bar.

It used to be when buying a PC, you could have any colour so long as it’s beige. Now, you can get them in black and silver. But don’t you find that the pile of equipment you end up with still makes your home study or bedroom or living room look like an office or a scrap metal yard, especially once you factor in all the cables and additional bits and pieces? For the must-have accessory of the 21st century, PCs really lack charm and beauty.

So, it was wonderful to come across a collection of intricate wooden computers - yes, wooden! And carved and just a pleasure to gaze upon:

   You can find a range of these beautiful machines at www.ecogeek.org/content/view/62/1/

with links to the workshops and craftsmen who made them. This one, aptly, was made by a Russian master carpenter.

Sitting down to one of these would make me feel like a great pianist sitting down to a Steinway - glorious masterpieces must surely emerge from my fingertips….

It’s spring and all over the UK, local festivals are starting to bloom. In my small suburb in South London, the Dulwich Festival is taking place 12 - 21 May. It will be a week long celebration of art, music, literature and local history.

Some brave residents are turning their homes into art galleries, open to the public, to display paintings, sculpture and textiles by a range of artists. Stephen Henden and Neil Ellis are opening their house to show art by Jamie Samuels (metalwork), Joss Smith (stone masonry), Paolo Giardi (fine art) and others. Neil, managing director and founder of Plan (www.planarama.com), a window dressing company, told me: "I work with a lot of creative talent and artists. I wanted to give them a chance to show off their work to a wider audience."

One of the artists, Paolo Giardi, has created a series of sketches of people at parties called "Party People", embellished and crafted with this fine art skills. Paolo says that the series is an ironic reflection on the genre of society portraiture.

Across the road, Ingrid Beazley and her husband Tom are exhibiting sculpture and ceramics, including the work of Iain Nutting. A crane will be delivering two giant metalwork scuptures (a reclining male nude and a howling wolf) to her suburban front garden on Monday. Ingrid told me that she saw the Open House Art project as a way to show the work of local artists she really likes. Some of Iain’s animated sculpture already live in her home - a gibbon leaps onto guests as they enter her living room and a pair of ibises copulate next to her pond!

3,000 brochures for the Dulwich Festival have been distributed across South London so conceivably, Stephen & Neil and Ingrid could find thousands of people trooping through their living rooms…

To find out moare about the Open House Art project and Dulwich Festival go to http://www.dulwichfestival.co.uk/.

Dulwich Picture Gallery has asked me to invite you to an evening with award-winning author Sarah Waters. This is a great opportunity to meet the acclaimed writer and ask her about her books and writing.

See below or find out more at http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats_on/specialevents.aspx

Sarah Waters - award winning author Thursday 11 May 7.30pm, wine from 7pm Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, SE21

With the breathtaking The Night Watch Waters turns her narrative gifts and exquisite attention to period detail to1940s London. This novel draws its readers back in time, with vivid accounts of air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit liaisons and sexual adventure.

Her previous novels, Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet have both been adapted for BBC TV.

£10; Friends £8 including wine & Book signing

Tickets from the Bookshop, Dulwich Village 020 8693 2808 or from the Friends Desk at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

The Sunday Times, London (30 April 06) reports: "Indian-born (Kaavya) Viswanathan was just 17 when she secured a two-book deal for $500,000 (£275,000) on the strength of her first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life."

It all sounds like a happy ending to the long, hard years of struggle to become a writer. Not so. Two years on, Viswanathan’s books have been withdrawn from bookshops and her book tours cancelled. A Harvard graduate, she has been accused of plagiarising another student’s novel. Read the full report at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2769-2157647,00.html

In the Da Vinci case, Dan Brown was accused of plagiarising an idea and there is no law against that. The law protects an authors words and that is what Viswanathan is being accused of. By withdrawing Viswanathan’s books, her publisher has signalled that they believe the accusations to be true.

In the world of literature, creativity and originality are the commodities of value. That’s why plagiarism is seen as such a crime. A writer’s words are all that they have and a writer’s reputations rests on their words. To steal another writer’s words is to steal the results of their blood, sweat and tears. It will be very difficult for Viswanathan to recover her reputation from this.

In contrast, celebrity novels and books are often ghost-written but passed off as the celebrity’s own work. The ghost writer is rarely credited but walks away with a big cheque. Why is there no outcry about this? Perhaps there is an unspoken understanding that no-one expects a celebrity (especially if they are a footballer or popstar) to have the wherewithal to write their own book. Readers of such books don’t want originality and creativity but the story and the glamour of the celebrity aura so it doesn’t matter who writes it. Celeb books are like celeb perfume - no-one expects the star to have concocted the fragrance themselves. And similarly, the original writer - like the perfumiere - has been paid off for their silence.

So perhaps there’s a cynical lesson here for potential plagiarists out there. Make sure you pay off the writer whose work you take the credit for.

And get them to sign a confidentiality agreement.

For more on plagiarism, you might also like to read The Guardian’s article on plagiarism, with links to related plagiarism issues eg plagiarism at universities - see http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1767928,00.html

I am pleased to report:

>> The Search facility for this site is now working smoothly. Type any keyword into the Google searchbox in the sidebar and select "Fusion View", click "Search" and you will find a listing of Fusion View posts containing that keyword. (You can also search the Web from here by selecting the "Web" option in the searchbox).

>> For subscribers, I have set the email notifications to come to you once a week from now on, with occasional notifications of any hot news topics in-between. I hope that you will find this more convenient. You can still check back in between to see what’s new on Fusion View.

I would be happy to hear from you with any feedback as to how this site can be improved.

Many thanks.

John Baker’s Blog at www.johnbakersblog.co.uk - UK based crime writer; I love the different random literary quotations that pop up each time you visit his site. His Technorati profile reads: "UK based novelist pondering the craft of writing and living and dying and rock’n'roll. Poetry and quotations and learning to live in an age where politicians use paranoia to their own advantage without any sign of shame."

I migrated to the UK about 13 years ago from Malaysia. Many of my friends have come here from Canada, South Africa, Malaysia, America and other countries. I know other people from the UK who have migrated to New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore and all over the world.

A recent report found that migrants from Eastern Europe are settling and integrating well in the UK and it is because of them that interests rates are as low as they are here, which is a good thing for the economy.

Immigration remains a hot political issue in many countries all over the world, notwithstanding that it is generally found that immigrants are good for the host country in many ways. I was fascinated b the rallies last weekend in the US where immigrants came out in force to show what would happen to the economy without them.

Bloggers were of course at the forefront with photos and personal accounts of the May Day rallies - take a look for yourself at http://www.boingboing.net/2006/05/02/la_daywithoutanimmig.html.. There are links to rallies in different cities across the US, including New York and San Francisco.

The photos are amazing, showing the wide city streets heaving with people. There are also personal stories of immigrants taking part.

You can also watch video footage of the rallies at http://mediarights.org/may1/. (For filmmakers amongst you, this is also a site where you can upload and publicise your own film of a local event - it seems to be US based but may be of interest nonetheless.)

I’ve had some great feedback on the Micro Short Stories entry - take a look here.

Maruthi asked if I knew of any haiku websites. Unfortunately, I don’t but I thought I’d put the query out to my readers to see if anyone could help with this query.

If you can, please add a comment!

Pamela, a student who is studying The Flame Tree at Uni wrote to me to ask a literary question: "In what way does the novel seek to rewrite the cliches of the diasporic Bildungsroman? Do you think irony is prevalent in the novel?"

I’m posting my thoughts on this on the blog as my other readers may also like to be involved in this literary discussion.

Hi Pamela

I take your reference to "diasporic Bildungsroman" to refer to the fiction of overseas Chinese which focus on growing up and coming of age, much like those of Amy Tan and others. "Cliches" is strong word for the overall arc of those stories but I think you are getting at the general image of one gets from those books of a young Chinese girl growing up in difficult circumstances within a Chinese tradition that disempowers girls and women, enduring much suffering and heartache in the process.

While those stories are important and need to be told, and have been told by many talented writers such as Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, they do tend to dominate the bookshelves and thus, tend to disproportionately represent Chinese women as downtrodden, suffering and hard done by - ever the victim. It was very important to me to represent a modern, young Chinese woman that you might see every day in South East Asia or the West - one who is empowered, educated, articulate and financially independent. I like to think that my two books at least in their small way add a counterweight against the predominant image of Chinese women as victims.

Many year ago, in the ’80s, an Englishwoman who came to know my mother arranged to have tea with her and brought along her son, a young man. During this tea, it turned out that the young Englishman was looking for a wife and they had heard that my mum had a daughter of marriageable age - namely, me. He was looking specifically for an Oriental girl as he wanted a wife who was not like those power-suited, outspoken, shoulder-padded Western women. My mother came home laughing uproariously. She was sensible enough about his safety that she did not arrange for me to meet him - or I would have bitten his head off for his presumptious, patronising preconceptions.

Within the framework of The Flame Tree where Jasmine is a dynamic, modern woman, she is still the object of other people’s fantasies - Harry has an idea in his head about what she should be like. This fantasy taps into the archetype of the controllable, colonialised oriental female which he plays out in the scene with the prostitute. For Jasmine, while she is a modern woman, she is also caught within the "good daughter" expectations that her mother and Chinese tradition generally foists onto girls. Her journey is to emerge from those expectations of others, individuating to becoming her own woman.

As for irony, I guess it’s not really irony if I have to explain or point it out so I’ll have to leave you to look into that one for yourself. Just one pointer, though. The role of Mrs Fung is steeped in irony that many people generally miss.