Month: November 2011

Kyung-Sook Shin, Please look after mother (Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize 2011)

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location of South Korea

Locator Map of South Korea (Courtesy: Seb az86556, using CC-BY-3.0, via Wikipedia)

Two of the Man Asian Literary Prize team have cheated! They read and reviewed Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin before our team was formed, and are showing me up big-time. I bear no grudge though and happily point you to their reviews. We are, as they say, on our way!

Shin Kyung-sook was born in South Korea in 1963. She has written several novels though few have been translated into English – and has won major literary awards in her country.

It’s exciting, in fact, that our first reviews represent a country – South Korea – that many of us (speaking for myself at least) are not well read in. This diversity – with books from such places as Iran, South Korea, and Bangladesh as well as from the bigger countries like China, India and Japan – has to be one of the best things about the Man Asian Literary Prize.

PS Apologies for the unusual rapid fire of posts this week. I promise I won’t keep filling up your inboxes/readers/feeds like this – I couldn’t keep it up anyhow!

Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize, 2011

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Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize 2011 Badge

Image created by Matt of A Novel Approach

This week, to whet your appetite (unbeknownst to you!), I focused my Monday Musings on Asian Australian writers … What, do you say, was I whetting your appetite for? Well, for a plan to review the longlist for this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize, which is an annual literary award given to the best novel* by an Asian writer published in the previous calendar year. The plan involves a team – conceived by Lisa and Matt (see below) – of bloggers who will review, between them, all the longlisted titles.

The longlisted books are:

Our Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize 2011 blogging team consists of

Each blogger will post her/his own review/s and will also post links to reviews on team members’ blogs.

After the announcement of the shortlist next January and before the winner is announced in March, we will, if possible, select a shadow winner. Watch this space (well, not THIS ACTUAL SPOT) for updates.

Thanks to Kevin from Canada whose Shadow Giller Prize Jury inspired our plan. And again, thanks to Lisa for getting our ball rolling and to Matt for creating our logo. We hope our readers enjoy this coordinated approach to providing reviews …

* The novel can be either written in English or translated to English.

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler question

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Howard Jacobson's The Finkler question

Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler question (Courtesy: Bloomsbury Publishing)

Whispering Gums, as you would expect, writes erudite marginalia and so you’d be in for a treat if you ever obtained my copy of Howard Jacobson‘s 2010 Booker award winning novel, The Finkler question. The margins are peppered with my reactions, like, you know, “Ha!” and “Oh dear”. Riveting stuff … and yet, what comments would you make in this book? Ah yes, “stereotyping” is another one, because that, really, is the springboard from which this rather funny book is written.

Do I need to summarise the plot? I feel that I’m about the last blogger to read this book, but just in case I’m not, here goes …  It concerns three longstanding friends: Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler who have been friends since schooldays, and Libor Sevcik who was their teacher at school. At the beginning of the book, Finkler and Libor, both Jews, have been recently widowed. Treslove, the non-Jew, is the “honorary third” widower because he is single (yet again). The novel’s premise is that Treslove would like to be a Jew …

Why, you might ask, would Treslove want to be a Jew (or, a Finkler, as he privately calls them – and hence the title)? It is not an accident that Treslove’s occupation when the novel opens is to be a paid double (or “lookalike”) of famous people at parties, conferences, corporate events:

Treslove didn’t look like anybody famous in particular, but looked like many famous people in general, and so was in demand if not by virtue of verisimilitude, at least by virtue of versatility.

And that’s pretty much how his Jewishness goes too. He might look and play the part but, deep down, can a non-Jew ever really be Jewish? Treslove is about to find out.

Jacobson has a way with words. It was this, together with the endless discussion, using every Jewish stereotype going, of what makes a Finkler (a Jew, remember!) a Finkler, that kept me going through a book that I wasn’t really sure was going anywhere. I laughed at Treslove’s incomprehension of Finkler (the character, this time):

“Do you know anyone called Juno?” Treslove asked.
“J’you know Juno?” Finkler replied, making inexplicable J noises between his teeth.
Treslove didn’t get it.
“J’you know Juno? Is that what you’re asking me?”
Treslove still didn’t get it. So Finkler wrote it down. D’Jew know Jewno?
Treslove shrugged. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

Oh dear! “Julian Treslove knew he’d never be clever in a Finklerish way” but, despite this, he continues with his goal to be Jewish. Meanwhile, Finkler, grieving for his wife and a marriage he still doesn’t understand, tries to dissociate himself from Jews (particularly Zionists) through membership of the ASHamed Jews. And Libor, grieving heavily for his true love, tries to dissuade Treslove from his ambition.

The book chronicles a year or so in the life of these three as each confronts his particular challenge. Treslove falls in love with Libor’s (Jewish) great-niece, Hephzibah, furthering, he hopes, his path to Jewishness; Finkler starts to fall out with the ASHamed Jews though not with their anti-Zionist principles; and Libor starts to fall out of life itself. All of this is told with both warmth and humour. The humour is always there, and yet is never pushed so far that the humanity of the characters is lost. You feel for them, despite their flaws and foibles. You want Julian, the hopeless father and failed lover, to make a go of it this time. You want Finkler to make peace with his Jewishness. And you want old Libor to get over his grief and join the world again. But through all this, you wonder, why? Why is Jacobson writing this story?

I have a few ideas. One may simply be to capture the diversity of Jewishness. Through all the stereotypes that made me laugh (Jews are musical, brokenhearted, rich, clever, comic, and so on), Jacobson shows that Jews, like any other group, are not all the same, cannot all be put in the one basket. Another  reason, though it’s depressing to think it’s needed, may be to defend Jews in an anti-Semitic world, to show their humanity. You care for these characters whose troubles with identity, love and loss are universal. And another may be to explore Zionism, safely. Can Zionism be defended? Has it changed into something more ugly, something that undermines its original conception?

In the end I did like this book because, while I was contemplating the “why”, I was engaged by the characters and their stories. The novel commences with Treslove, the would-be Jew, but it concludes with Finkler, the troubled Jew. Here he is, towards the end:

He was a thinker who didn’t know what he thought, except that he had loved and failed and now missed his wife, and that he hadn’t escaped what was oppressive about Judaism by joining a Jewish group that gathered to talk feverishly about the oppressiveness of being Jewish. Talking feverishly about being Jewish was being Jewish.

Ha! You said it, Mr Jacobson, I’m tempted to say. But that would be too smart-alecky of me because the book is, in fact, as much about humanity as it is about being Jewish.

Howard Jacobson
The Finkler question
London: Bloomsbury, 2011
370pp.
ISBN: 9781408818466

Monday musings on Australian literature: Asian Australian writers

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Brian Castro

Brian Castro (Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

Australia is an immigrant country, with the first immigrants, the original Aboriginal Australians, believed to have arrived 40-60,000 (there are arguments about this!) years ago via the Indonesian archipelago. They established what is now regarded as one of the longest surviving cultures on earth. Today, though, I’m going to write on some of our more recent immigrants – those from Asia. The first big wave of Asian immigrants came from China, during the Gold Rush in the mid 19th century. Since then people from all parts of Asia have, for various reasons, decided to call Australia home – and have enriched our culture immeasurably.

I’m not going to focus on the political issues regarding acceptance, promotion and encouragement of Asian Australian writers because, like any stories to do with immigration, it’s too complex for a quick post here. I hope that things are improving, but only the writers and communities themselves can really tell us that.

As has been my practice in these sorts of posts, I’m going to introduce 5 Asian Australian writers to get the discussion going. After that, I’d love you readers to share “immigrant” writers you know and love …

But first, a definition. My focus here will be on writers who emigrated from Asia, rather than those from subsequent generations. I will not therefore be discussing writers like Shaun Tan and Alice Pung.

Brian Castro (Hong Kong born in 1950, emigrated 1961)

Castro is one of the most prolific and most awarded writers among those I’m listing today. He came here as a child, and started writing short stories in 1970. He has, to date, published 9 novels, many of them winning major Australian literary awards. Lisa at ANZLitLovers suggests he is a contender for Australia’s next (should we ever have another one) Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1996, in the Australian Humanities Review, Castro said this about Australia and Asia:

The situation currently is that Australia needs Asia more than Asia needs it. While the West seems to have run out of ideas in the creative and cultural fields, relying on images of sex and violence, reviving old canons and dwindling to parody and satire in what can already be seen as one of the dead ends of postmodernism, the Asian region is alive with opportunities for a new hybridisation, a collective intermix and juxtaposition of styles and rituals which could change the focus and dynamics of Australian art, music and language.

Strong words – but they make you think! My sense is that Australia is now seeing (accepting?) some of this hybridisation that he speaks of – not only from Asia but also from our indigenous authors like Kim Scott and Alexis Wright. I wonder if Castro agrees?

Yasmine Gooneratne (Sri Lankan born, emigrated 1972)

Gooneratne is one of the first Asian Australian writers I read. I have chosen her for that reason and for some sentimental reasons: she holds a Personal Chair in English at my alma mater, Macquarie University, and she is the patron of the Jane Austen Society of Australia! Long ago I read her first, appropriately named, novel, Change of skies (1991). Like many first novels, it has an autobiographical element and explores the challenges of changing skies, of migrating to another place. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She has, in the last decade, received a number of awards here and in the South Asia region for her contribution to literature.

Michelle de Kretser (Sri Lankan born, emigrated 1972)

Like Castro, de Kretser emigrated to Australia in her youth (when she was 14) and made quite a splash with her debut novel set during the French Revolution, The rose grower. Her second novel, The Hamilton case is set in Sri Lanka and represents she says her “considered” farewell to her country of birth. Her third novel, The lost dog, is set in her home-city (now) of Melbourne, but its main character migrated to Australia from Asia when he was 14 and struggles to find his identity. Her books are not self-consciously migrant but tend, nonetheless, to be informed by the experience of dislocation.

Nam Le (Vietnamese-born, emigrated 1979)

Nam Le is our youngest migrant in this list, arriving here when he was less than 1! His debut book, the short story collection, The boat (2008), won multiple awards and is remarkable for its diversity of content (setting and subject matter) and voice. I, like many others, am waiting to see what he produces next.

Ouyang Yu (Chinese born, emigrated 1991)

To my shame I hadn’t heard of Ouyang Yu until relatively recently, but I do have an excuse. He has only written three novels in English and two of them very recently: The eastern slope chronicle (2002), The English class (2010), and Loose: A Wild History (2011). He is, however, a prolific writer, of, apparently, 55 (yes, 55!) books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translated works in English and Chinese. He’s translated Christina Stead, no less, and even Germaine Greer’s The female eunuch. If this is not contributing to cross-cultural understanding I don’t know what is.

I’ll close with some words from an interview with Michelle de Kretser in which she articulates rather nicely I think the experience of being a migrant (using the character Tom from The lost dog):

But I think that like a lot of people who come to Australia, Tom is trying to escape something. You know, people come here often because they’re trying to get away from war, or poverty or persecution — or merely from perhaps difficult family situations. And I think Tom coming here as a child simply delights in the kind of freedom and anonymity that Australia offers him, which is a classic experience of people moving countries, or indeed if you go back to the 18th century people moving from the city to the country; the city at once offers this kind of blissful possibility of inventing yourself anew, a kind of wonderful freedom from inherited ways of thinking and being identified and categorised. On the other hand that is also simultaneously — can be — a very lonely and disconcerting experience, again.

Vale Sarah Watt

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Non-Australians may not be aware of Sarah Watt, unless they are interested in Australian film. Sarah Watt is an animator-writer-photographer-film director who made a small number of well-reviewed films, one of which, My year without sex, I reviewed on this blog.

Sarah (aged 53) died on Friday from secondary bone cancer (diagnosed in 2009), having been originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. Just before her first diagnosis, she made the award-winning film Look both ways (2005) which gorgeously incorporated animation into live action to tell a story about a man (played by her husband William McInnes) coping with a cancer diagnosis. It’s a clever, whimsical, sad (but prescient) film about ordinary lives in an ordinary suburb. Ten years earlier, she had made the film which brought her to public attention: a short animated film called Small treasures (1995) about the loss of a baby during birth, something Sarah and William experienced. It won a short film award at the Venice Film Festival in 1995 – and gave us a sense of what she was about.

In an interview some years ago Sarah wrote of her work, that

I probably make films that are autobiographical more because I think they make better stories because they’re real and therefore more likely to, sort of, touch other people and pull other people into the story and into the drama  … When I go and see films or look at paintings or whatever, I want to be moved and touched and, and usually it’s coming from something personal in the, in the artist, so, that’s why I probably raid my own life a bit to, to make films.

If you haven’t seen a Sarah Watt film, do yourself a favour and go hire one. I can’t imagine you’d be disappointed.

In a recent interview about their jointly written (amazingly titled) book Worse things happen at sea (2011), William paid tribute to Sarah and all those who struggle with cancer. They are, he said, the bravest people I know. I think he’s right.

Vale Sarah … we’ll miss your humour, humanity and beautiful work.

Meanjin’s Tournament of Books 2011, Round 2

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For those interested in the continuing story of Meanjin‘s Tournament of Books, which I introduced in late October, Round 2 has now been played. Here are the results … with a little additional commentary by me.

Match 1, Joan London’s Gilgamesh defeated Helen Garner’s The children’s Bach

Oh, such a hard one. I feel for judge Michaela McGuire, a self-0uted Helen Garner fan who gave the match to Joan London. That takes bravery. I’m sure she had her heart in her mouth when she put those fingers to her keyboard. Anyhow, in the end, she gave it to London for the lovely single sentences (she’s right there) and, as I understand her, the expansiveness of the conception. She admires Garner’s “characteristic elegance and wryness” but “was left wanting”. She decides not to give it to Garner based on her love for the body of Garner’s work but to London based on this work. Fair enough. It would have been a hard call for me, too, and I would like to see London’s beautiful, mesmerising book receive wider exposure.

Match 2, Kate Grenville’s The secret river defeated Christina Stead’s The man who loved children

This may be the shock of the round, methinks. Admittedly the judge, Michael Williams, like McGuire above, bemoaned his lot. He calls them both masterpieces. He argues that both writers have a significant body of quality work. He says literary comparisons are b******t. And so, in a sense, he cops out. He tells us that in 1967 The man who lived childrenwas declared ineligible for the Britannica Australia Award because Stead had “ceased to be Australian”, though he also admits that it took only 70 years for it to assume a strong place in the Australian canon. But, he concludes, “Canonisation is for the dead. Tournaments are for the living. I’m giving this to Grenville“, and then declares his conflict of interest as having been involved in promoting The secret river at Text Publishing on its publication. Not having read Man yet and being a big defender of The secret river as excellent and valid historical fiction, I must, in fairness, stand on the sidelines, but I find this outcome an interesting one.

Match 3, Miles Franklin’s My brilliant career defeated Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi

Sorry, Melina, I did love your book but I feel this is the right and proper decision. Judge Sarah L’estrange discusses the similarities in subject matter between these two books – “strong willed and independent” teenage girls fighting to find their own life against a background of familial and societal expectations. However, she gives the match to Franklin because Looking for Alibrandi is “just too straight-forward in the telling, there isn’t the dazzling dance of words across the page that My Brilliant Career has in spades”. I think she’s right. Alibrandi is locked pretty firmly into the Young Adult genre while Career has a more universal appeal, largely because of its writing and conception.

Match 4, Henry Handel Richardson’s The fortunes of Richard Mahoney defeated Cate Kennedy’s The world beneath

Another judge complaining about comparing literature! Makes me wonder why they signed up for the job! Anson Cameron makes me laugh though. Of Richardson‘s big book he says “Fat books, like fat people, die young unless they have huge hearts” and concludes that “only very good books age this well. Only very good books have the architecture to withstand great changes in the world. Of Kennedy‘s book he writes that it is “a Garnerish, (Garneresque? Garnery? Garnerly?) type novel in that it is imbued with a the kind of everyday insufferable domestic pressure Helen Garner excels in and it’s rendered in a spare, accurate prose reminiscent of her”. Not that he says it, but perhaps that’s a good enough reason for it to lose, perhaps it is too “Garner” rather than something original. I’m afraid I wouldn’t know as this one’s still in my TBR pile. Richardson would, I think, have the body of opinion behind her so Cameron has probably chosen well … and anyhow, if Garner was going to win, I’d rather it be Garner (if you know what I mean).

Now onto the Semi-finals …

In three of the four matches in this round, a classic was pitted against a contemporary, and the classic won two of them. I’m surprised the third one didn’t win too. Does this mean I’m a reactionary, old fuddy-duddy of a reader? Or does it simply mean that the classics have proven themselves as stayers over time? I prefer to think the latter … which suggests that if a contemporary novel wins the tournament, it will surely move one step higher on its climb to classic status.

I will be reporting again …

PS: I planned to list the semi-final matches here, but the numbering of the matches above does not accord with the numbering on the initial tournament plan, so I’m not sure which book will be pitted against which. Has some match-fixing been going on? Surely not!

On the titling of books

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Forget about judging books by their covers, what about titles? How important are they to you? Do you ever decide to read a book based on the title alone? Do you always (never, sometimes) consider the title when thinking about the meaning of a book?

Title Puzzle Clker M

Titles: They're a puzzlement (Courtesy: M, via clker.com)

It seems to be a fraught issue, this book titling business – and it makes me wonder just what import to ascribe to titles. Who decides on the title? Do authors always have the final say in the titling of their books? Well, no, they don’t … so, how much can/should we readers think about the title when discussing or thinking about the books we read. Is it worth wasting our time bothering about it as, for example, readers did with Wolf Hall. Why, many of us wondered, was Hilary Mantel‘s book called Wolf Hall? I had an answer, and so did others, but is it worth even bothering about if we don’t know whether the author created the title? This may be a bad example though. Hilary Mantel was an established author when Wolf Hall was published, so it’s likely she had more clout in the titling of her book than a first time author has. Hmm, then, how am I to know when an author has chosen the title and when he/she hasn’t – and therefore when it might be worth my while considering the title and when not?

And what about books which are published under different titles in different countries? Think Miss Smilla’s feeling for snow versus Smilla’s sense of snow. This is a tricky one though because, like The outsider versus The stranger, it is a translated book, so there’s a double whammy here. Not only has the title been translated, but it’s then been translated differently. Are these difference due to translation decisions or marketing ones? A better example might be Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone versus Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone. What’s that about*? Marketing, of course. (And, I can’t help wondering whether the book might have met with less opposition in the USA if the title had not been changed to “sorcerer”?) Again, where does this title confusion, oops variation, leave we readers, particularly regarding our wish to understand and analyse what we are reading?

For an interesting discussion of book titling, read Caroline Baum’s article “What it takes to title a book” in the Sydney Morning Herald back in 2003. It answers some of the questions I raise above and gives some great examples, but it doesn’t really consider where the reader sits in all this (except as the target for marketing).

What say you on the book title issue?

* Rhetorical question. Reasons abound, some from Rowling herself, on the internet. My concern is the general issue, not this specific case.