The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 04:41 AM PDT

IT'S an organic green issue this month, as the Flavours team reports on visits to farms to see where the ingredients for all the delicious recipes the magazine features comes from.

Wanting to highlight good produce as opposed to the piles of unmindfully raised vegetables and meat in the market in this month that celebrated Earth Day yesterday, the team was humbled by the resolve of the people they met who are trying to care for the planet as they feed us.

Flavours does its part to support such efforts with features not only on people who are providing us with better food options but also on the action plan for sustainable eating. Also in this issue is an introduction to the vegan way of eating healthy.

The featured ingredient this month is the buah keluak, aka the "black truffle of Asia", no less. You'll be astonished at how some of the top chefs use this exotic and still-relatively-unknown-on-the-world's-culinary-stage ingredient.

Up close and personal with award-winning author Tan Twan Eng

Posted: 22 Apr 2013 05:41 PM PDT

On World Book Day today, we celebrate Malaysia's Man Asian Literary Prize winner, Tan Twan Eng.

THE only moment Tan Twan Eng allows hesitancy to show during our conversation is when I ask him how he had reacted to hearing his name being announced as the Man Asian Literary Prize winner. His eyes, low and searching briefly, unmasked his answer before it arrived.

"It was actually a blur. It sounds like a cliché but it was.... The moment my name was called out I was almost on automatic pilot. I said to myself, 'You have to get up. You have to get up.' And I got up, went over and kissed my agent and ... I was still in shock. Suddenly, I realised that I had to make a speech," Tan muses as his soft voice swings to the lower reaches.

Tan had just met fans and responded to questions about his success in a mixture of on-the-job earnestness and jocularity at the Kinokuniya bookstore in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month. A group of 70 had assembled to welcome the 41-year-old Penangite after his The Garden Of Evening Mists had claimed the top Asian literary accolade at an the event held in Hong Kong on March 14.

The Independent was the first British newspaper to review it and its literary editor, Boyd Tonkin, offered that the novel "moves between three levels, which never quite coincide. In the present – given the chronology, the late 1980s – Teoh Yun Ling writes her memoirs before the aphasic dementia that has begun to afflict her reduces language and memory to trackless jungle.

"In the early 1950s, as a rebellious young prosecutor furious that the British rulers of Malaya have done so little to help victims of Japanese war crimes, she fled to the highlands to learn garden design from (Nakamura) Aritomo." As the retired judge dredges her memory to remember her past as a Japanese prison camp survivor, she also learns to construct more than a garden in memory of her sister.

The book had, late last year, been on the shortlist of the prestigious Man Booker Prize too, though that prize was eventually claimed by Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies. Tan explains how, after losing out on the Booker, he had decided he wouldn't win the Asian prize. The night before the Man Asian was to be announced, his agent and a friend asked if he had prepared a victory speech.

"I said 'Why? I wrote one for the Booker and I didn't use it, I crumpled it up. So I'm not going to write (another).' But they kept on pestering me and I wrote a short one – literary two paragraphs."

While Tan has only two novels under his belt, both have impressed internationally, with even his debut novel (about the relationship between a half-British trader from Penang and a Japanese diplomat before the war), The Gift Of Rain, making the Booker Prize longlist in 2007. Yet the one-time intellectual property lawyer demonstrates a refreshing humility laced with self-effacing humour as he shares a generous amount of time to reflect on the creation of his award-winning work.

How difficult was it to describe a period in history that many Malaysians would not be fully aware of?

It was hard because for some strange reason there aren't many books on Cameron Highlands in that era (post-World War II). I didn't find any (on tea plantations), I tried looking for one of (Boh Plantation's books) and they said it was out of print.

I only went to speak to the owner when the book was almost done and I was editing it. I was in town, in KL, and managed to get an interview with Tristan (Beauchamp) Russell (son of Boh Plantations founder, John Archibald Russell). He spent about an hour talking to me and that was about it.

I read up a lot on the tea plantations in Assam (in India). I tried to see what the routine was like, I had to learn about growing tea and how they roasted and fermented the leaves. A lot of the stuff was cut out of the book in the end anyway ... a lot of the gardening stuff, Japanese woodblock printing, and tattooing went out as well.

I was trying to put my research to good use so that I didn't feel that I wasted all those days and weeks reading up on the subjects. As a reader, I like learning stuff when I read so when I write, the temptation is to put in chunks and chunks about the history of gardening but in the end, it was just too much – because it is interesting to me, but not necessarily other people.

How do you decide what engages the readers?

I would say gut feeling and editors as well. I've got good editors and they would say that this is too much and that is not enough. I love rewriting; I love editing. I could work on a book for years; it's so nice playing around with words. With each edit, I would cut out more and more and you tend to realise what's not essential.

But there's a danger there as well, because you are so familiar with the facts, you say this is not essential or that I already know that. It's quite a difficult balancing act to do. You tend to think that everyone knows that anyway. I still get comments from readers who say that there were never enough facts and some other readers say that there were too many and it was boring. In the end, you can't please everyone.

What were the other difficulties that you faced while writing The Garden Of Evening Mists?

Trying to make it better than the first book. I felt the pressure but I also wanted to improve as well – each book has to be a growth. In a way, I wanted my writing style to evolve as well, with each book, it has to be slightly different and changed, become more refined and with less description. It was basically trying to write a book that was better than the first one.

That was hard … there was also that awareness. In the first book, by this page, there was already so many things happening and in this one the two are still sitting there and looking at each other.

Eventually, I had to forget the first book, this was a different book but I took a long time to do that.

Tell us about the rewriting and editing processes.

A lot of things you only find out when you're editing the book. Suddenly I need her to be a harder character because of what happens later on or I need her to be softer and more submissive because I want to show a certain growth. So you change here and there.

I love the editing because you already have a work that you can chip away at, whereas with writing, there's nothing there with the first draft.

Once you have the block there, you can start changing the colour and cutting it away to change the shape. I find it very enjoyable and I could go on doing it.

Once I'm satisfied with it, I'll send the manuscript to the editors, they will come back with their comments and suggestions. I'll read them, some I won't like but if I feel that they might help, I'll try it on and give them what they want. I get annoyed, I get furious sometimes but you leave it for one or two days and then you go back to the comments again.

I'll try (to make the amendments) and a lot of times, their suggestions do work so I always give it a try just to see whether it works or not. I'm quite open to their ideas.

I have one or two readers I trust as friends and I let them look at the manuscript and take in their criticism and comments.

It's better to be criticised and critiqued in the privacy of your own home and produce something good in the end than to hand out a piece of garbage and let the world start criticising you in public. That is even worse!

It is really a question of whether an author can deal with that kind of criticism, isn't it? It can either crush you or make you work harder. How did you deal with rejection?

It was a great disappointment. I asked my agent to find out why they rejected it (The Gift Of Rain) and the majority of the comments were that they didn't know how to market it. Their marketing department said this is a tough book to sell and we're passing it on.

There were some who said that this is the most boring book that they have ever read and they really can't bear reading it – yes, there was that as well. But most of it was, they didn't know how to sell it.

I just knew that there was no way I could change their perception and their timidity as well in marketing books. My agent said we would keep sending out the manuscript, as each time there is a change in personnel, they might review their decision. He also advised me to start writing my second book and finish it.

For some reason, I refused to and went back to law – the same company and even same room. That was in 2004 and I was back in KL; shortly after that, this new publisher said that they would like to publish (The Gift Of Rain). They were very new and mine was probably the fourth or fifth book that they signed up. The publisher liked it!

And we have to say, therein lies a lesson for other Malaysian authors: persistence pays off. Thank goodness for a stubborn literary agent, otherwise we wouldn't be able to lay claim to a Man Asian Literary Prize winner.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Selasa, 23 April 2013

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

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