Random Reviews - Two Welcome Introductions to Malaysia’s Living History

Random Reviews 14 & 15

Two Welcome Introductions to Malaysia’s Living History

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Festivals of Malaysia by Keith Hockton 

(Trafalgar House, 2015 ISBN: 9789834324551)

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Traditional Trades of Penang by Chin Yoon Khen

(Areca, 2014 ISBN: 9789675719172)

I was keen to get my hands on both of these books since I have met both of the authors and knew that each book had been in preparation for some time. (Keith Hockton is also a customer of The Penang Bookshelf.) Each book promised something a little bit more lively than the normal ‘heritage’ fare that has populated booksellers’ shelves since Melaka and Penang were declared to be World Heritage sites a short while ago. In contrast to much else that has been written on the subject, these detailed works would give us an opportunity to take part in the living history that is still around us and, if we so wished, to adapt and develop it further.

Festivals of Malaysia’s useful calendar format points us to events that are taking place all over the country almost every week. Traditional Trades of Penang showcases a range of crafts and products that we can still use every day. Each book took some years to develop. The result is, in each case, a comprehensive introduction to the subject. You are certain to find something that you want to explore further, whether it is a fire walking festival in Butterworth or the Ari’ Muyang (Ancestors’ Day) Orang Asli festival in Pulau Carey. Similarly in Traditional Trades, you might be tempted to brighten up your kitchen with a wire egg basket or add some real colour  in your home with  gaudy kim hua traditional Chinese artificial flowers. Both books, above all, provide lots of ideas for activities or for new products to enjoy. Although much has been said and written about conserving and preserving Malaysia's past, one of the more fulfilling ways to engage with history is to live it. These books will give you an excellent start.

I do however have one niggle about both books - I cannot quite work out whether the books are intended as reference books or guide books. Maybe the answer is a bit of both. If so, they both have a bit of a problem with being neither one nor the other. Hockton goes into some detail, where appropriate, about the history and ritual of some of the events and Chin likewise explains some of the processes involved in the trades described. There is certainly enough information both in the text and pictures  for each book to be considered a basic reference book in its field. However neither shows either enough depth or analysis of their subjects to be considered much more than that.

As guide books they do not quite hit the mark either.  While each book is packed with information, that information is often insufficient when we want to actually interact with the subject that each writer covers. For example Hockton rightly has one of his lengthier sections on Hari Raya, the most widely celebrated festival in Malaysia, but there is no guidance as to how a non-Muslim might be able to participate. Generally there is a lack of clarity in explaining which events are private and which are public. Chin in his Author’s Preface informs us that he wants to document the trades and ‘to provide a starting point for further research on…our living heritage.’ Yet he misses the principal reason why traders the world over exist and will continue to exist, i.e. to sell their wares to earn a living. The rest of the book is in the same vein: there is little or no information as to how to buy what the traders presumably want to sell. Each book almost seems to carry a subliminal message of ‘Look, but Don’t Touch.’

In each case the books could have been made more useful if some of the text in Festivals and some of the pictures in Traditional Trades had been sacrificed to allow for more usable information to be inserted. Despite these drawbacks, the books are still important contributions to their respective subjects. You are not going to find anything more informative on the market at present. There is certainly plenty in each book to stimulate further engagement with each subject. However you are going to have to make a worthwhile effort to start asking your own questions and to have your own adventures, if you really want these books to give you as much fun and enjoyment as I am sure the authors intended. 

Both books are avaialble at The Penang Bookshelf. If you live in Malaysia, it will be easier to use our eBay store. If you live elsewhere, please visit www.penangbookshelf.com

Glimpses of the Past - Wong Meng Voon (Review)

Random Review 13

Glimpses of the Past:

Stories from Malaysia and Singapore 

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Wong Meng Voon

(Heinemann Asia, 1981, ISBN: 9971640279)

After reading about three stories of this collection, I sat up with a bit of a jolt. Something seemed to be missing. Ah yes: none of these stories had any conclusion. I then looked back at the tile, Glimpses of the Past, and appreciated the message. Although the stories are fiction, the author was trying to produce an authentic representation of life. In real life, episodes seldom have the neat conclusions that some fiction writers manufacture. The story instead is just another stepping stone on the journey.

Bearing this point in mind, it was much easier to appreciate the author’s gentle and perceptive style. His writing enables the reader to eavesdrop on the lives of the characters who populate his stories. They were written at a time when labourers belonged to the country; none of the stories has any interaction with people who are not Malaysian or Singaporeans. Although a couple of the stories give glimpses of a more comfortable middle class life, on the whole, Wong’s characters are strugglers, making the best of the hard lot that has been dealt to them.

Once getting used to the nature of the stories, they are readable and engrossing. However soon I felt that there were also a couple of other aspects of life in the 60s and 70s that were missing, i.e. there was not much to laugh about and enjoy. Reflections on childhood were generally happy, but adult life comes across as being fairly miserable. Wong is definitely engaged with his characters in this ‘compassionate’ period of his career. (His later writings have been more satirical.) However it is a pity that he did not feel able to represent life as being more rounded with a few more flashes of joy.

With the exception of one story, Eight Hours in the Sewer, the stories’ characters are all from the Chinese community. Other communities barely intrude. All of the stories are the author’s translations of stories that were originally written in Chinese. So Wong presents a fairly one dimensional view of Malaysia and Singapore of the time. There is no problem with that: it may well be the way that many members of both countries’ main communities lived then and now. However, it was strange that there were probably only one or two references in this collection to religion, whether formal or popular. It is seldom that home life in any community in Malaysia or Singapore does not brush up against belief in the supernatural in some form or other.

Despite these two missing elements, of joy and religion, there is plenty to recommend in these poignant stories, particularly for readers who are not from the Chinese community. The author’s spare and imperceptibly crafted style beautifully show the common thread of humanity that binds all of us. Wong’s characters and the stories they inhabit are ordinary people faced with ordinary events, the true bedrock of any society, despite common misconceptions to the contrary.

 

Fixing Malaysia: In Fact and Fiction

Random Reviews 11 & 12

Fixing Malaysia:

In Fact and Fiction

Can We Save Malaysia, Please! - Kee Thuan Chye 

(Marshall Cavendish, 2014 ISBN: 9789814561235)

and

Green is the Colour - Lloyd Fernando 

(Epigram, 2012 ISBN: 9789810726850)

Although I had originally planned to write two separate reviews, I started to read Green is the Colour immediately after Kee Thuan Chye's book and couldn't help notice how struck I was by the interconnection that I saw between the two. Both books are written by polemicists, one a playwright and journalist and the other an academic and novelist. Both lament the state of life in Malaysia, one in the aftermath of the 1969 riots and the other today. Both authors would like to see a different Malaysia, one a politically different Malaysia, the other a culturally different country.

However, there are of course differences too. Primarily Kee's book is a collection of journalism while Fernando's novel has found its way into a growing body of English language Malaysian literature. Can We Save Malaysia, Please! may well be forgotten in ten years' time, while Green is the Colour is more likely to endure. 

Kee is a witty and trenchant journalist and his contributions could well be a useful record of early 21st century Malaysian history. However when the reader is given nearly three hundred pages covering just nine months' output, there is certain to be repetition. Like any good journalist, Kee writes each article to catch his audience's attention on a first reading. Similarly when he writes another article on the same subject, he fills in a bit of background for the reader. While the style works well on a blog or in a newspaper, it is almost sure to bore the reader when the same article appears in a collection. I checked a sample article in the book against the original on the internet and was unable to find that the original had been edited for the book. So after the first fifty pages, I skim read most of the rest of the book.

Green is the Colour is a racier read. The introduction to the characters at a dewan in the aftermath of the 1969 riots is a little choppy. However the book soon settles down into a pace that makes it difficult to put down. The sketchy introductions to the main characters soon take on more form as we follow Panglima, the 'Malay' purist, his idealistic anti racist counterpart, Dahlan, and Omar and Yun Ming who represent softer versions of the respective extremes. The women, Sara and Gita, are not so strongly drawn and usually play the roles of linking the men rather than driving the plot.

As one would expect, Fernando, the novelist, is more nuanced than the campaigning journalist, Kee. However they do share a common characteristic in that neither is able to paint a picture of  their 'demon' that is convincing. Panglima, the villain of the novel, has few, if any redeeming characteristics, while the Government, Kee's constant target, receives little, if any, praise. There is a danger in adopting a black and white approach in that the writer ends up preaching to the converted. Fernando was, at least, aware of the danger when he wrote of the idealist Dahlan '...Are not Dahlan's opponents committed, too? Is not Dahlan wrong just to bring an idea without asking how it should be brought in for people of different cultures?'

Fernando does not fall into the trap of presenting the characters with whom he has most sympathy as being flawless. Sara is naive in her dealings with Dahlan, while Yun Ming, a capable Government servant, is reckless in pursuing his love of Sara and Omar is a brute in the bedroom. By contrast I did not find any of Kee's articles taking the Opposition to task in the same way as he does the Government.

 

On the other hand Kee Thuan Chye's books clearly do sell otherwise his publishers would not continue to bring out new collections of his journalism. He must have a strong following: a Reader's Digest poll found him to be the 34th most trusted individual in Malaysia. You can see why. When he sticks to the unvarnished facts, as he does in his article 'Mayday for MH370 and Malaysia', he is spot on and hits his target hard. I hope one day a wider readership will better appreciate his journalism in an edited compendium of his quality pieces.

Lloyd Fernando's message is more timeless. His narrative is interwoven with quotes and reflections that can be more easily absorbed by the general reader. Green is the Colour also has a transnational message for any country struggling with national, racial and religious identities. The book does not provide a solution. Each of the characters has her or his own take on that. However Fernando does provide plenty for debate.

Its should be remembered that, despite the time lapse between publication of the two books, both authors were conscious of living in a society where speaking one's mind on 'national' issues was and is difficult. As Fernando puts it ",If a third person was present, ...you speak for that person's benefit. If he was Malay, you speak one way, Chinese another way, Indian another. ...In the end the spun tissue, like an unsightly scab, became your vision of what happened: the wound beneath continued to run pus."

Neither author falls into this trap: both are forthright with a purpose. The purpose is to encourage readers to dare to reveal their own truths more often so as to be an authentic spur to change. Fernando's novel illustrates the pains of change, while Kee's articles emphasise the obstacles. Nevertheless, the prospects for change, however blurry and frightening, are brighter because Fernando and Kee, at least, did not keep silent.

 

 

A Triography - A Review of Three Biographies

Random Reviews 8-10

Triography?

A Review of Three Biographies

Car, Castello & Quill: Experiencing a Biography – Winston Lim

(PB) (SNP Publishing, Singapore, 2008. ISBN: 9789812481863)

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Laugh and Tough It Out – Robert Brinsmead 

(PB) (Irenic Publications, Duranbah, NSW, Australia, 2012. ISBN: 9780646579092)

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No Bed of Roses: The Rose Chan Story – Cecil Rajendra  

(PB) (Marshall Cavendish, Singapore, 2013. ISBN: 9789814408202)

 **The Penang Bookshelf has two main websites, one for shipping within Malaysia and the other for shipping elsewhere. If you live in Malaysia, please click on the link attached to the book title. If you live elsewhere, please click on the (PB) link which follows each book's title. **

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It so happened that my random reading list consisted of three easily readable biographies.  So I’ll attempt to review all three of them at once. All of them are light quick reads and all of them are entertaining, but that doesn’t mean that they’re without depth.

I'll start by declaring an interest and a disinterest. I have met all three authors, but they're more acquaintances than friends. Also I’m not a reader of biographies or autobiographies by choice. Now that I’ve read three of them so close together I know why. The words of TS Eliot come to mind – ‘human kind cannot bear very much reality.’ I’ve come to the conclusion that biographies can often be frustrating as, for one reason or another, they seldom give a full enough picture for the inquisitive reader.

Brinsmead’s biography of Dr Sam Underwood came nearest to satisfying me, i.e. I ended up with fewer questions at the end. This was quite a feat since, like the other two works, it’s  a relatively slim volume. Underwood’s definitely one of Malaysia’s unsung heroes. (Most people I have spoken to had never heard of him.) Normally this would qualify him for a hagiography. However his biographer mostly avoids this trap. He’s equally happy to deal with his subject’s unhappy love life and his gullibility when it comes to investment as he is with dealing with Dr Underwood’s significant successes. 

However, like No Bed of Roses, Brinsmead’s biography contains a considerable amount of padding. In the case of Laugh and Tough it Out, the padding comes in the form of jokes which Underwood sent Brinsmead in the course of a twenty year correspondence. I laughed or at least chuckled at most of them. It’s a clever technique of giving the reader a hint at the humour which has sustained a man who was sentenced to death by the Japanese, later worked with them, then was hunted by the Communists as a collaborator and ended up being one of their few trusted sources of medical help in the ‘Emergency.’

In the case of No Bed of Roses, the padding, roughly 179 pages of a 279 page book, comes in the form of recipes for Rose Chan’s favourite foods, some of which are meant to be aphrodisiacs, and long chunks of imagined dialogue, in the style of Roddy Doyle, illustrating various events in her life. Rajendra captures Malaysian English well and in a saucy rambunctious fashion, but in the end I found myself skim reading some of the later sections. I felt the book would have benefitted from fewer of such sections which could have been replaced by more succinct passages of prose. If you’re a foodie, which I’m not, the recipes may serve the same role as Underwood’s jokes. Cooking and food were obviously very important in Rose Chan’s life, so this could be a way of illustrating an aspect of her character.

All three of the authors have distinctive styles, Brinsmead’s is a well controlled and a no nonsense one and, as befits a published poet, Rajendra’s is certainly the most flowery of all three, but not oppressively so. Winston Lim’s style, especially considering that this was his first published book, best conveys the gentle ribbing relationship between author and subject. All three biographies had the co-operation of their subjects, but in Lim’s case the author intrudes more than do Brinsmead and Rajendra. This is appropriate because Car, Castello & Quill, besides giving one an insight into Raymond Flower’s life, also charts the changing relationship between author and subject. Flower’s a VIP  at the hotel where Lim worked in guest relations, but as the book progresses, a friendship imperceptibly develops even though Lim finds it hard to drop the respectful, “Mr Flower” as his form of address.

In fact, Lim’s biography which includes an account of how Flower tutored him to start writing, is the most gentle, even genteel, of all three biographies. Both author an subject are gentlemen which is conveyed by Lim’s relaxed and unobtrusively polished style. Flower is one of a dying breed of cosmopolitan Englishmen, who seem to glide effortlessly from running car businesses in England and Egypt, racing cars in Europe, dealing in and enjoying property in Italy and holidaying in Penang to writing best selling non-fiction including one of The Penang Bookshelf’s Bestsellers, (PB) , The Penang Adventure. (PB) Rose Chan and Sam Underwood appear to have seen more of the rough and tumble of life.

In contrast to the biography of Flower, where nothing shocks the gentle flow, both Laugh and Tough it Out and No Bed of Roses have plenty of drama and not a few shocks as well. The centrepiece of No Bed of Roses is undoubtedly Rajendra’s  erotic description of the bawdy party organised by Rose Chan to raise funds for UMNO, Malaysia’s the ruling party, at the time of Malaysian Independence. It’s described in meticulous detail with a few of Rajendra’s poetic frills. In Laugh and Tough It Out the two chapters on Underwood’s views about Malaysia’s politics and about religion generally may well be the most startling. None of it hasn’t been said before, but because Brinsmead deftly steps aside and allows his subject to do the talking, we get a better glimpse of the passion that drives this remarkable man.

Indeed it was passion, or rather the absence of it, that was the main unanswered question in all three biographies. If I can’t get to grips with what drives a person, I find it difficult to understand them. In the case of Car, Castello & Quill, I had the most questions. However I don’t think Winston Lim intended to ask such questions in a book which is primarily a narration of a relationship with biographical frills. It never claims to be more than that. Nevertheless I was left wanting to know more about how Flower supported his lifestyle and who were his intimates. He hasn’t ever married, so with whom does he really share his deepest thoughts and emotions? Maybe there isn’t anyone.

As for Rose Chan, she was obviously a consummate artist at titillating men, but what on earth titillated her?  She had five husbands and scores of lovers, but No Bed of Roses hardly gives us any hint of those relationships. Maybe her consuming passion was food. That’s why the book has so many recipes.

With Sam Underwood one assumes that it’s mainly his work for the community that drives him. He was the first foreign trained plastic surgeon in the country, once ran the largest private medical clinic here and is more qualified and experienced than most medics in Malaysia who make far more money. Yet he devotes himself to the community around Kuala Kangsar in Perak in relative obscurity. That said, there must be something else in his life other than providing scholarships for the underprivileged to study overseas.

So all three biographies have something to recommend them. If you're a reader of biographies, I would recommend all three. Their contrasting styles and the devices the authors use to engage their subjects, may help should give you an instructive insight into this form of writing. If you're looking for a good story, with chuckles on the side, I'd choose Laugh and Tough it Out. If you're looking for an amusing and charming read, try Car, Catello & Quill. If you're looking for a glimpse of bawdy Malaysia just before and after Independence, choose No Bed of Roses.