The quibble over Man Asia

From Tahelka.com

The first prize has not been awarded yet and you would have probably heard that Nury Vittachi, co-founder of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and initiator of the prize, has been reportedly sacked from the festival's board due to his 'vociferous' opposition at the way the judges have been chosen - while the judges include men and women of Asian origin living in the West, few are Asia-bred and none live in Asia.

Another quibble: large parts of Asia have been excluded from the prize - Mongolia, Iran, the former Soviet republics and the Middle East have been excluded from the list. The comments by Peter Gordon, head of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival was quoted in the report: "Lines need to be drawn somewhere. If West Asia were included, wherever one draws the line - for example at the Red Sea - it would go through the middle of the Arabic-speaking world. It didn't make sense to have Jordan but not Egypt. As for the Central Asian countries, their literary traditions had ties to the Russian literary tradition and the current geopolitical borders might also cut across literary borders. Russia itself is geographically, and to some extent ethnically, as much Asian as European. We felt that a strict adherence to geography led to more inconsistencies than a partial adherence would."

Fascinating doublespeak! (You had a committee to draw that up, didn't you?! Now, for your next assignment, define a banana.)

Something has been bottled up for years, but I think there is a need for it to be said. We are too polite. 'Thou shall not criticise the efforts of others' is a religiously held commandment in the arts and literature, though bitching and backbiting is allowed. I suspect I am going to make myself enormously unpopular in certain circles. But Gordon's statement above requires some response.

I have never been to the Hong Kong Festival. Actually, I must confess, I have been avoiding it, especially after hearing comments from a prominent journalist who lived a major part of his life there. When asked (this was some years ago), he dismissed it as 'silly expatriate angst'. I was in Ubud for the first festival and I realised what he meant. An American writer, whom I had met earlier at the KL Fest, said to me, "Raman, tell me, am I the only one feeling out of place here?" This same sentiment was also reflected by another English couple (from Malaysia). I noticed it the first time I entered the door but I was too polite to say anything. It was like being invited to a function at a private club: sorry your father can't come in because ... er ... he is wearing a dhoti. (There is another story about the treatment of Indonesian writers during that festival but it is too distasteful to be repeated in print here, even for me.)

I am sure there are wonderful people behind Hong Kong and Ubud, and I have met some of them. But obviously there are some people who don't 'get it'. Hong Kong is China. Bali is Indonesia. And Mongolia is in Asia. Get use to it.

But I do like the concept of the Man Asia prize itself, though. All entries must have been previously unpublished in English. That should eliminate all that lobbying and campaigning by publishers, not to mention names of the usual suspects. Let's hope this award throws up some interesting ones.

By the way, Chinua Achebe has won the Man Booker International prize against a bunch of the usual suspects.

Full story: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main31.asp?filename=hub160607The_babel.asp

A place in the dictionary

From The Guardian

These are some of the new words in Collins.

muffin top - the unsightly tummy bulge protruding over low-rise jeans
celebutantes - young heiresses who morph into celebrities
size zero - a model with a super skinny look
man flu - the male tendency to exaggerate the effects of a cold
manbag - the male version of the handbag
McMansion - a large, modern house with a mass-produced look.
McJob - (take a guess, it is a pejorative)
Gitmo - slang for Guantánamo bay

(Other words, thanks to Al Gore, include new phrases such as 'carbon footprint',
'carbon offsetting' and 'season creep')

Full story: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2094602,00.html

Most definitive books of the 20th century?

From Guardian Unlimited

According to the results of a national survey announced at the Hay festival today, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four topped the survey to find the book that best defined the 20th century. This public vote was done online at Guardian Unlimited Books. They had to choose from a list of 50 books.

The top 10 books (in order of publication) were:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Strangely The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, the only book not originally written in English, is on the list. None of the other 'originally not in English' books made the cut. Not even Kafka's The Trial.

So there you have it. According to the survey Bridget Jones more defined the 20th century than Kafka. Or Lady Chatterley's Lover, for that matter. (Oh by the way, From Russia with Love was also in contention. Yeah, JamesBond rocks! Did you see the last movie?) See the full list of 50 titles readers had to chose from here (for a good laugh):

http://books.guardian.co.uk/pilsnerurquell/story/0,,2059060,00.html

Full story: http://books.google.com/books?q=Books+that+defined+the+20th+century&ots=0lt41w08rJ&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title

May 13 -The book

The distributor of the book asked if we had been harassed by the Men-in-Blue. I said, "No. No one has been here inquiring about the book except for buyers." According to him a certain mega bookstore of the city has been having daily visitations, and bookstore staff have been asked to sign forms admitting that they have been selling the book. (I wonder if I should feel a bit slighted. I guess, we have to accept the fact that we are a small bookshop, lor.) If true, that does sound a lot like harassment, doesn't it? Can you imagine Men-in-Blue or conspicuous plain-clothes hanging around bookstores, observing what customers are buying? Or, if not true, what kind of state have we been reduced to - seeing shadows and conspiracies everywhere? What will it take to regain public confidence, or has that been quite irredeemably lost?

Also according to the same distributor, one major bookshop chain has, apparently, made a management decision not the sell the book. And another does not have it on its shelves because they do not have an account with the distributor. (Yes, it is all a bit complicated.) Otherwise, it is selling reasonably well. The distributor says that 11,000 copies have been printed and distributed. I think we should take that with a pinch of salt. It is selling, yes, but it has not been selling that well. Appears to be more like wishful thinking. But no matter, with constant rumours about the 'high probability' of the book getting banned (yes, that shadow of Mordor looms ominously), sales should be good for a while more.

[Just as I was posting this, three DBKL personnel in maroon jackets walked into the shop. Dina Zaman and Din Merican were here - Din listening intently, pretending to look elsewhere. They ask me for my 'lesen premis'. This is something I have been inquiring about for the better part of the last 8 years and I have been told by all the lawyers and company secretaries I have consulted that there was no such requirement for a bookshop in WP - but all other states, apparently, have such a clause. I told the gentleman that. He asked to see it in writing. Of course I didn't have one in writing. So he said he was going to give me 'saman'. I said, okay. I have since called my company secretary, my lawyer and the DBKL, Jabatan Lesenan - sorry, no names for now - and none of them were aware of such a requirement or undang-undang pertaining to the operation of a bookshop. My lawyer is going to get a copy of the Undang undang - no clause mentioned, mind you - quoted in the 'saman' before deciding what to do. (Both DBKL and the Government printers have said that they do not have a copy of the undang undang mentioned, adding a Kafkaesque dimension to the plot - we can't tell you what exactly you are being charged with, it's a secret.) Only after I do that will I be able to tell if I have been targeted for harassment or if this was part a normal DBKL 'operation'.]

So what is the book about? Read this: http://www.silverfishbooks.com/2007/05/politicshistory_31.html

Man burns books in protest

From an Associated Press.

A man in Kansas City has decided to set fire to his entire collection of over 20,000 books to protest against 'society's diminishing support for the printed word'.

"This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today," Tom Wayne reportedly told spectators outside his bookstore before he set fire to the first lot. (The Kansas City Fire Department put out the fire after 50 minutes because Wayne didn't have a permit to burn his books. Wayne has promised to get a permit
the next time.)

Tom Wayne says he will continue to burn a bunch of books every month until all his stock is exhausted to attract attention to his cause. Many customers took advantage of the book-burning to hunt for bargains. One man bought a stack of books, including an antique collection of children's literature. He said, "(Wayne has) made the point that not reading a book is as good as burning it."

The report also says, "... a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982."

This appears to be more a marketing ploy to get people into his shop, Prospero Books, and attract attention to himself. No true lover of books will even contemplate, let alone carry out, such sacrilege. There are other ways to save a business.

Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070528/ap_on_re_us/book_burning