So we had another, 'aw, shucks, why don't we have a Great Malaysian Novel' article in a local newspaper. Again. 'Aw, shucks, why doesn't someone in Malaysia win a Nobel prize, aw, shucks, why don't we win the football World Cup, aw, shucks, we are such a great country, aw, shucks ...'
Unfortunately 'aw, shucks' alone is not going to cut it. Maybe that's what we do best - daydream. We have the (once) tallest buildings in the world not because we built it, but because we bought it (and paid a bunch of foreigners one hell of a lot of money for it too - boy, they must really think we are suckers), so let us not kid ourselves. We have had Malaysians parachute down the North Pole (we bought that), a Malaysian man is scheduled to be in space soon (we have paid the Russians a lot of money for his ticket) and we probably have more shopping malls per square kilometre than any other place on earth (or the universe). Money we can manage - we have not been known as Suvarnabumi for nothing. Work is another matter.
The Great Malaysian novel (or the great Malaysian anything) is going to happen when somebody does it, not when somebody talks about it, or we wait for a government grant, or organise another competition (which we are so fond of) ala Akademi Fantasia. It will happen when the air we breathe becomes less poisonous. It will happen when we are willing to open our windows and let sunshine in. It will happen when we stop patting ourselves in our backs for coming out 189th in a class of 200. (Look, there are people worse than we are. Aren't they disgusting?) It will happen when media stops self-emasculation for profits and political largesse and starts reporting news again. It will happen ...
You make some interesting and powerful points. A great novel, among other things, often comes out of a great sense of one's history. If one feels ambivalent, even resentful, about one's history ( and we are talking on a national level), then the chances of the great novel is that much less.
ReplyDeleteBefore the "great" Malaysian novel is identified, it must exist (as Raman points out). But what if somebody wrote a pretty good novel set in Malaysia - and nobody bothered reading it, or even noticed? Happened to a friend named Guat - bet she still has a mountain of "Echoes of Silence" stashed in a storeroom...
ReplyDeleteI have read Echoes of Silence.. and I loved every bit of it! I don't know why I did, but something made me pick it up when I was browsing for books for leisure reading in my school library. I remember telling myself that was one of the best Malaysian novels I'd read. That.. was in 1995.. 13 years ago. Malaysian writing have come a long way now, but I'm convinced it will just continue to get better.
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