Friday, October 27, 2006

 

Reading Will in the traffic jam

Many years ago a friend of mine sent me a video tape (that long ago, yes) of a british bbc programme (or was it channel 4?) about book stuff where this lady interviewed a couple of authors in each episode. The reason he sent me this tape all the way from London was because one of these episodes featured an interview with salman rushdie, and he (my friend) knew that I love his (salman rushdie) writings. But - as I slowly began to realize in years to come – salman in person (or tape, or interviews) didn’t come out as a person that I can say I like to make friend with. He seemed a bit stand offish, snobbish, well aware that he is a good author, has written good books…in short big headed. But I was totally fascinated by another author interviewed in the same programme which I’ve never heard before. He had an arresting look. A lanky laconic person all in black with strong features that looked like Dracula and he acted like one. His remarks were ironic, sardonic and almost derisive and a mite insulting to the interviewer and salman rushdie, …at least that was how I remembered it. He was will self.

This was the time before I had internet so I couldn’t google him but I kept his name at the back of my mind and over the years I began to collect his books and writings and now I have a fairly representative of his ouvres – tough tough toys for tough tough boys (short stories collection -1998), Feeding frenzy (collections of his essays and opinion pieces from various papers on all sorts of topics- book reviews, interviews, food columns etc), My idea of fun (fiction) Great apes (fiction) and how the dead lives (fiction).

Admittedly, I’ve yet to read any of his fictions from cover to cover (not because of anything to do with lack of quality or merit but the usual bane of other books intruding and demanded to be read too) and so I only managed to read completely from beginning to end a few short stories and some bits and pieces in ‘Feeding Frenzy’.

I was traveling from kota bharu to tanah merah today to visit some relatives as I usually do on the third day of hari raya but the traffic was jam packed bumper to bumper and half expecting this, i brought along ‘feeding frenzy’ and lucky that I did so as I managed to cool my temper by listening to rai music of khalid, cheb mami etc and reading bits of ‘feeding frenzy’ in the traffic snarl and in fact finished several essays before the traffic finally eased up . will self is one of those writers that love to insult you by throwing all those hard words in your face . He reminded me of martin amis’ writings but more anarchistic . Not surprising this as he was known to have a deep respect for mr amis and his early influence included hunter h Thompson and william burroughs to name just two.

he thinks nothing of insulting and belittling any icons and established names. His rubbishing of restaurants make for a good read and gets all those restaurateurs all riled up I’m sure. I read one article in the jam today about Quentin tarantino’s movie ‘jackie brown’ which I loved but he rubbished mr tarrantino as though he is an idiot. And a somewhat unexpected but come to think of it not surprisingly , in a review of lewis carrol biography he strongly felt that he (lewis carrol) was “ indisputably a paedophile - but not an active one”. Based on the fact that lewis carrol loved to take pictures of prepubescent girls –naked- I think he’s right. Now I need to reevaluate my favorite books alice in wonderland and through the looking glass in this new light.

The blurb of my paperback of ‘feeding frenzy’ said that he earned the tag “the jack the ripper of english prose’ and whatever the hell that means , I agree with it. And I love it. He’s a bit intimidating and he’s the kind of guy I wouldn’t even trust to bring my grand mother home at night but all the same, his writings are frenzied and euphoric. I love them.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

 

gay stuff

One memory snapshot I couldn’t shake off from my mind. One day last winter I was traveling in a London underground and at one stop a gangly young man entered and sat a couple of seats opposite of me to my right. He didn’t look English but may be Italian and reminded me of that actor model in the Pianist, Adrien Brody but a lot handsomer and also a lot shabbier. Didn’t look like a well to do person, a working class guy probably. And I couldn’t take off my eyes from him. But nothing homosexual at all. First thought that came to my mind was if only I can have his look… and at the next couple of stops a couple of young men, may be in their late teens came barging in and one sat beside me and the other beside the adrien brody man . They must have come from some painting job somewhere as they were wearing grey overalls spattered with white paints all over. And here’s the thing. The boy sitting besideme couldn’t stop tittering. They must have been regaling each other some funny stuff before coming into the train. Every couple of minutes he’d look up to his friend beside adrien brody and started tittering and tried his hardest to control it, much like boys whispering jokes at funerals . And this went on until I came to my stop. And that was it. I couldn’t figure out what made the boy tittered so and why I can still see this adrien brody in my mind just like it happended yesterday.

And another snapshot. Several years ago I read Allan Hollinghurst “the folding star” . I’ve never heard of this author before, but “Shortlisted for Booker Prize 1994” on the front cover clinched it for me. And it was the first out and out gay fiction that I’ve ever read and I must say that I was mildly surprised that I liked the book a lot. It was a beautiful book. I read it while I was traveling in Jordan and finished it while I was in Beitulmuqaddis ( see April 19 05 post on Jerusalem ). And here’s the thing. The old quarters are full of souvenir shops along the narrow alleys and side streets selling all kinds of trinkets, faked antiques, potteries, Christian icons and paraphernalia and I entered one of these . There was no other customers and so the young boy shop assistant in white robe came to me and begged me to buy something but I said no , perhaps next time. And he hold my hand, looked up and pleaded ‘you’ll come again tomorrow, yes ?” and he looked exactly like a young girl pleading to her boyfriend not to leave her. Did I imagine it? May be, as my head was still full of the ‘folding star’ at the time.

I don’t have any personal prejudice against gay men (or women) and certainly not towards gay writings although the image of men doing it to men is repugnant to me (but not women to women although it’s ridiculously more impractical). A couple of months back I walked into the gay quarter of pat pong in bangkok for the first time and that was also just by accident. The place was not as rowdy as the hetero sector and looked rather subdued with some old whites sitting in the bars drinking with a gaggle of thai boys Not my kind of scene at all. Many years ago when I was in my teens I was always hard up for pocket money but some of my friends had a lot which they obtained from one well known old Englishman lawyer who had a practice in my home town. This old man would cruise through our village at night, especially on the weekends and my friends would whistle and he’d stop, picked up a few young boys and off they went to his home. A few hours later he would drop the kids back in the village again and these boys would have big grin on their faces and needless to say also very sore bums and dicks. I actually never exactly know what they did as I was never part of this caper. And none of these boys are gays too. They just did it for money.

And lately by some strange coincidence I’ve been reading quite a few gay books again…what do all that mean ? nothing most likely apart from the fact that some of these gay writers write good books and I happen to like these books …last week I bought a book on the controversial gay artist the late Robert Marplethorpe , a biography by Patricia morrisroe. Several weeks back read Edmund White’s essay “my first European” in Granta (vol 84). And I’m still not finished reading Alan hollinghurst’s 2004 booker winner “line of beauty’ …it’s been gathering dust again as other books intruded into my reading queue , one of which is a memoir ‘Becoming a man’ A National book award winner by Paul monette in 1992 for non fiction. And I’ve been searching high and low for that book which I’m sure is hiding somewhere in my piles of books, a story about a guy converting to hinduism by Christopher isherwood . One of these days i need to archive and rearrange my library properly. It’s getting quite out of hand and i have bought the same books again and again far too often now.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

 

Global Public Intellectuals

A day after the nuclear test by north Korea (which may turn out to be a dud after all) our minister of something or other hamid albar made a press statement saying that this is a dangerous thing blah blah blah…in short a carbon copy of what America wants to hear… and in my opinion just silly rubbish which Malaysia doesn’t need to get involved in…

Malaysian politicians are not known to be shining example of intellectual finesse or paragon of virtue (in fact some are arguably outright criminals and corrupt to the gills – if ‘money politics’ in the umno is any indicator)…and while I’m at it, I strongly believe that any country that wants to be seen as modern, progressive and belong to first world club absolutely has no justification to have political parties along racial line…racist parties such as the current backbone of Malaysian government- umno, mca, mic and all those dayak parties in east Malaysia should be kicked out into oblivion…these are shameful reminders that our thinking here are nothing more than merely tribal…

It might not be a bad idea to go the Thailand way…get a general to do a coup and claim that our Agong is behind it and kick out all these divisive political parties once and for all, and from now on, only multiracial parties are allowed (so keadilan, DAP and PAS…you guys are ok…) and we start from new…

The only problem with this is that there are two main reasons why it will never happen … one, our generals are most likely not as idealistic as thailands’ and probably as foggy as our politicians and number two, the mention of “agong” or “sultans” will not elicit any reaction whatsoever for many and not a few might even bend over double laughing their heads off….

I believe the current Malaysian government should just stick to building roads, providing water and electricity , ease traffic jams and flash floods and the like and shut the fuck up when it comes to anything else…which brings to my main point here. Prospect a relatively new UK monthly (Politics. Essays. Argument) published a result of an interesting poll they conducted listing 100 “global Public Intellectuals” (selected among the long list suggested by the magazine) in November 2005 issue. And I feel it funny that Noam Chomsky was anointed the number one and by far garnering the most votes. If you recall he is the favorite of Hugo chevez the Venezuelan president , the very person who called george W the devil ( while not meeting him he can still smell the sulphurous fume bush left in his wake) in the UN recently … Umberto Eco was second and Richard Dawkins third. All very worthy winners these.

There are many unknown names to me but there are some familiar and well deserved names too. Some famous writer winners include Salman Rushdie who was voted at tenth place, Camille Paglia 20th, Mario Vargas Llosa 29th, Chinua Achebe at 38, JM Coetzee at number 44, Germaine Greer at 49, Orhan Pamuk , the current nobel laurette at 54th place, Amos Oz 59, Wole Soyinka 66, Gao Xinjian 69, Ha Jin 86, Peamoedeya ananta Toer 95.

Among the top “bonus ball” – those that were not present in the long list and the voters believe should be included in the long list were Arundhati Roy at third place, Gore Vidal at 12 and Gabriel Garcia Marquez at 18.

So, seems like many people view fiction (as in literary fics) quite seriously and I’m glad this is so and I’m doubly glad that the voters here are a much mature lot unlike those in say BBC top 100 reads that have that lady who wrote “harry potter and the chamber pot” or was it chamber of commerce? I can’t quite recall and the rest of the potter series at close to the very top….but this is not to say that this poll is above some shady votings…for example , according to this issue of Prospect , some acolytes of Chomsky and the journalist/critic Christopher hitchens linked this poll to their websites and soon enough in the case of Hitchens the votes started flooding in and eventually hitchens got to number five.

There were some from the political spectrum but the only president voted in was Vaclav Havel at fourth place and Bill Clinton who was 5th in Bonus Ball section. And I’m happy that some of my Islamic extremists are represented too! Ali Al-Shistani the Iraqi Syiah spiritual leader is at 30th, Yusuff Al-Qardawi at 56, Tariq Ramadhan 58 and to even it up Pope Benedict XVI was at 17th.

In the same issue there was a little article mentioning that the French also listed their version of 25 great thinkers in the left leaning weekly Nouvel Observateur but disappointingly the names were not listed apart from the mention that theirs is completely different than the one in Prospect (not surprising this) with only six names common to both publications ( Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum, Antonio Negri, Peter Sloterdijk, Richard Rorty, Amartya Sen,and Michael Walzer – none of whom I have the foggiest idea who they are) and none from Nouvel Obs come from France itself which I think is a brave thing to do.

I recalled quite a while back our NST came up with the list of Malaysian Intellectuals too but sadly I did not keep a copy (could still be there in the online archive). A few names I remember distinctly anointed as Malaysian intellectuals were Amir Muhammad (yes the last communist guy), Nik Aziz (the PAS spiritual Leader) and Shahnon Ahmad (the Malaysian national laurette who famously wrote SHIT), and Farish Noor.
Can’t recall if Dr Mahathir was listed but certainly not Abdullah Badawi our current PM that is lead by the nose by his son in law…at least that’s what Dr M claimed. In his speech in kota Bharu several months back Dr M famously stated that he chose Abdullah as his successor but not his family too. But that’s for another time and place….

Thursday, October 12, 2006

 

Abrahamic religions’ rivalry

As we enter the second half of Ramadhan I think it is appropriate that I look inward and think things spiritual …in my own way…

Everybody knows that the most bitter fights are not between strangers but among people closest to each other…best friends , lovers or siblings…and so it is with religious conflicts.

Anybody who has read Karen Armstrong’s ‘history of god’ will understand that Judaism, Christianity and Islam is basically one religion and merely fissioned into three dangerous entities out of normal evolutionary process from the basic monotheistic religion originally brought by Abraham…as much as Christians hate the word “ALLAH” and sometimes make fun of it let it be known that in the Indonesian bible (injil) and for christian arabs Allah is the term used for god…and there lies the muslims’ disgust and abhorrence when Christians view jesus as the one and only begotten son of god…son of Allah? That gets muslims flipping mad…now we are getting warmer see?…

And the jews?…say the word “jesus”, and the jews are doubled over laughing and think it hilarious that jesus was considered the anointed one, let alone a son of god metaphorically speaking or otherwise…why, jesus was not even a historical figure ! or at best a minor brain addled jew who did not merit a mention in any reputable historical tracts of the day…or a minor irritant that need to be stopped and crucified…now we are really getting into hot water…

But queer dogmas & kooky theologies aren’t the half of it…now consider these religions as a soccer game if you like…the jewish version of the real soccer game is this: only jews can play because we are special see? Bugger the others, they can go and play rugby or aussie footie if they like for all we care. And when we play, we must follow certain rules. No playing on Saturday. At intervals you can eat only kosher stuff and while playing, there are certain punishments for fouls, stoning for harsh tackle in the penalty box for example… we have the soccer rule books the Talmud etc.

And then come jesus…he thinks the game is a bit faulty…rules need to be changed. For a start you can eat anything during interval, pig even. And anybody can play the game. Nobody is special, in fact we must invite everybody to play soccer…aussie footie or rugby , or god forbid… cricket…are bleahhh!! No good! We must teach all the people of the world to play the NEW soccer…spread yea far and wide… spread the good news to the savages in papua new guinea, and congo, the yanomami Indians in the brazillian jungle…go forth ! spread the beautiful game…and to make it more attractive…we shall cancel all the rules, it’ll be free for all, no penalty kicks, no off sides, play any which way you like. hell, why not, even gays can become captains…and lets not restrict to just one rule book, lets have four, mr mark, mr luke, mr john and mr matthew, and oh, ok lets include the old jewish soccer rules too …err for reference only…and oh may be book of mormons? And you can play any style…you can sing with guitars, clap your hands , or say solemn hymns or trash about on the floor or whichever way you fancy…the main thing is just to play soccer and no other games…

Then Muhammad came along…he is a worldly guy, very savvy, very political…he thinks this new soccer is way out of hand …too much…what’s this?, the captain and the referee becomes the one and same , became one in the flesh and spirit?…and the game is completely out of whack…everybody doing their own thing! Ridiculous! needs to revert to the original game…but with new updated rules… rules are BACK… in fact there will be rules and codes for EVERYTHING! …everybody should conform to proper dress codes for example…can only drink orange juice before during or after the game , in fact at all time..no more eating filthy pigs you hear? ... and there are other codes…..and we have rules of engagement with anybody who mess around with our game …we call it jihad….and from now on there will only be one rule book…from now to eternity. We call it the Qur’an…now don’t laugh , and beware of the consequence if you insult our game!!…

But the basic fact is all three still play the same basic game…namely a soccer game. But the sad fact is each think his is the best game and they start ridiculing each other and try to force each other to play their particular brand of soccer…and they start fighting…and continue to do so till now…


Now Buddhists for example ..they play an entirely different game...their game is something like that game in alice in wonderland… a very laid back game…rather attractive… no compulsion for anybody to play it…all you do is make a circle (no need to be perfectly round) , anybody can come in and run along the circle and when you are tired you can stop, we understand no worries…. And if you are really very strong and a good Buddhist you can run and run in circle until you drop dead…we call it attaining nirvana… but those that stop, no worries, just join in again when you are rested and not tired anymore, and you can run and run in circle till eternity… everybody wins...and if you don’t like the game , no problem, you’re welcome if you want to play soccer….or aussie footie or rugby…we don’t care…nice religion Buddhism, if you ask me….

Monday, October 09, 2006

 

pyongyang has the bomb

strange and uncertain days ahead...
so, now north korea finally announced that they have successfully conducted a nuclear test and how do i feel? not exactly elation but certainly not unhappy either.

why should anybody fear north korea anymore than the US for having nuclear bombs? after all the only country that ever dropped nuclear bombs on human beings is the US. if truth be told, my other wish is for north korea to have missiles that are long range enough to hit anywhere in the world (and let it be with pin point accuracy if you please, thanks)...

am i crazy? don't think so.... i don't think north korea is mad enough to start thinking of exploding WMD like so much of firecrakers ..in fact if there is any chance of anybody hitting anybody it would be the US or the israelis conducting pre emptive strikes on other potential nuclear sites , in iran may be (a bit too late for north korea now , the only country in the unholy trinity of axis of evil countries that today officially become an unwelcome member of nuclear power states)...

ah...i hear shouts of danger of nuclear proliferation as other neighbouring countries will now start thinking of having their own toys too...japan, south korea, middle east countries...and oh heavens...things will certainly get out of hands...we'll get dirty bombs soon...and oh dear, soon al qaeda will get their hands on the bombs too!...in short this is the standard thinking of people with cnn as their default setting in their brains...

but think carefully...why is it acceptable for the US and other countries including israel (that don't even sign non proliferation treaty) to have the bombs and others not? when i posed this question to one of my american collegues his answer is " do you trust a crazy guy like ahmadinejad to have his hands on nuclear bombs?" my answer to this is that " can we trust that idiot bush not to use it when push comes to shove?"..but i did not say this to him, but that's a real possibility as they have done it before.

US alone can blow the whole world ten times over with it's nuclear arsenals, another country having a few bombs will not make a difference in term of world safety in this sense, if anything it'll even the playing field a bit...we should all have the bombs ar we should all scrap them... as simple as that...and while we are at it we should also scrap land mines and in fact all weapons...

why do we have to fight? why have humans not progressed in term of their territoriality behaviour and belligerency towards each other since the first humanoid walk on two feet?
i've told many people that the reasons why the big imperialists (read the US and it's lapdog tony blair's UK) are so hated is because they use their might to subject others to their whims and to top it up they gloss this over as so much benign succour to the less fortunates of the world and impose their views as the sole acceptable moral standard of the world...

if the US really want to be liked the easiest way is for them to bomb the likes of afghanistan and iraq with bread instead of fire...and they could easily do this too...US is a very rich country....

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