Why does Indonesia inspire so little quality literature, except novels about sexy bar girls?
Some days back, on his impressively productive new blog, our own Ross begged the question of why so few of “us” write books about “life here”. By “us” he meant foreigners in Indonesia, of course; and by “life here” he meant the life these foreigners lead in Indonesia – and he was, naturally, alluding to his own role as chronicler of the little slice of grubby bohemia that is Jalan Jaksa. Ross does, it seems, suffer a certain amount of sniping about his books, but all issues of taste, style and politics aside I certainly wouldn’t criticise anyone for writing about what they know, and Jaksa must certainly offer ample inspiration for story-tellers.
However, I’m sure that everyone – the Poet of Pappa Cafe himself included – would acknowledge that the idea of Jaksa and its denizens constituting a meaningful part of the Indonesian scene is debatable in the extreme. And what’s more, books about that particular alleyway (though it is in fact a thoroughfare, in literary terms I might be tempted to call it a cul-de-sac) surely form a sub-set of the genre best known as Asian Sleaze, or perhaps “the prurient expat memoir”. This genre is one of the best represented in the English-language publishing industry of Southeast Asia. Take a look at the “local titles” next time you’re in Periplus – all those dominant-black covers with silhouettes of mini-skirted Asian females beneath the title! Yikes!
For me the question is not why so few of “us” chronicle our adventures here in book form; it is why there are so few serious, informed, interesting and genuinely well-written books about Indonesia itself and its people, in English, by foreigners, for a non-specialist, non-academic readership.
Take a look at the meagre annual global English-language output of mainstream books about Indonesia and it generally looks something like this:
something with a title along the lines of
and – if we’re very lucky indeed – a mediocre travel book full of linguistic and historical howlers, heavy-handed “unity in diversity” references and patronising caricatures of “the locals”, with a title along the lines of
Oh, and something from a regional publisher with a black cover and a silhouette of a petite Asian woman on the front…
Given Indonesia’s richness, its vastness, its sheer capacity for inspiration it’s a pretty poor showing.
Now take a look at the general output of books in English, by foreigners, about another large Asian country – India. (Apologies – I know my habit of using India as a warped mirror in which to view Indonesia is tiresome but it does so often work).
There is an absolute wealth of magnificent, informed, intelligent books about India, still aimed at a general readership and written by foreigners. So high is the bar there that the Orientalist clichés and shameless self-indulgence that typifies even the best output about Indonesia is scarcely to be found. Even the two-bit journalists and second-rate travel writers dealing with Indian subjects generally wipe the floor with almost all the miniscule band who tackle Indonesia.
Some of these India-focused writers are so spot-on, so steeped in the Subcontinental scene and unlikely to drop a clanger – and such good writers – that that they have become virtual adoptees of the country they write about. But where is Indonesia’s William Dalrymple? Where is Indonesia’s Mark Tully? What does Indonesia have to hold up to those colossi? Kerry B Collison?
Indonesia – or rather the body of foreigners who might want to write about it – does of course have some mitigating excuses when this comparison is made. India is, as everyone knows, a partly Anglophone country. Even a journalist or travel writer with no other language besides English can go to the country and talk, directly and without the facilitation of a translator (and all the insurmountable sense of separation and superiority on both sides that such a device engenders) to a far broader sample of people than just tourism workers and the urban elite.
Likewise for those dealing with historical matters. Because of its particular colonial history India as a subject offers a massive, staggering wealth of accessible archival material in English. Fancy writing a biography of a swashbuckling imperial archetype? Or retracing the steps of a 19th Century explorer? Or investigating some totally forgotten but totally fascinating historical episode from the 1920s? Can’t speak a foreign language but can handle old-fashioned handwriting? Then the eternal wellspring of the India Office Records will never run dry.
But to do the same for Indonesia, English will be of very little use, and even Indonesian won’t get you much further. You need Dutch and, to really make headway, Javanese too – and how many non-Dutch, non-Javanese, non-academic writers have those?
This is largely the reason why in the only two recent major books of popular narrative history for which Indonesia is the backdrop – Simon Winchester’s Krakatoa and Giles Milton’s Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, both excellent – the country itself is largely incidental.
However, this excuse alone is not enough to get the English-language writers of the world off the hook. Even with the admitted linguistic challenges Indonesia still offers enormous potential for high quality, literary journalism, reportage, travel writing and cultural investigation. So where is it?
Mainstream books that fit this bill are so few and far between that they send me into an over-compensatory frenzy of delight on the rare occasions that they do appear. The most recent example was Andrew Beatty’s A Shadow Falls, which we discussed on this site, and which I think very highly of. But even that is a slightly odd book, still too rooted in its academic foundations and obscure in its subject matter to have the impact of something like William Dalrymple’s Indian debut, City of Djinns.
And for every A Shadow Falls Indonesia inspires a dozen books about middle-age divorcees finding themselves in Bali, and many honourable attempts that fall hopelessly flat (John Keay, who does very well indeed on Indian soil, missed the mark when he came to Indonesia in the 1990s; Cameron Forbes’ recent Under the Volcano is best left unmentioned).
There are, of course, plenty of very well-versed foreigners writing very seriously about Indonesia, but they are almost all academic historians or anthropologists, and few of their books turn up amongst the Asian Sleaze in Periplus. MC Ricklefs and Dr Peter Carey are very fine historians and decent writers (and the former gets at least some attention beyond the library shelves, having written a “standard text”); the work of the late Clifford Geertz had some real literary merit, and Adrian Vickers would certainly cut it as a non-academic writer. But it seems unlikely that any of them ever will take the time out – and lower their brows – to pen a colour-filled travelogue or a vibrant narrative history for the masses.
And that mention of the masses leads me on to a possible – and thoroughly disheartening – final explanation for this paucity of proper literary books about Indonesia. It’s all very well penning a magnificently researched, impeccably structured and informed and very well written book about Indonesia – but then you have to find someone to publish it. And publishers are, being concerned with the business of making money, loathe to put out something that no one will buy. Is that the problem? Is it the market itself, not the writers, who keep so much of the Indonesia-focused output so near the level of utter dross? Is that why those with literary capabilities and a genuine knowledge of Indonesian subjects either don’t bother at all or concentrate on purely academic efforts?
India has an advantage in that it has a huge English literate – and English literary – class; William Dalrymple almost certainly sells more books in India than in his native Britain. But there are clearly still thousands of outsiders buying all those books about India – backpackers, tourists, armchair travellers and idle observers willingly consuming weighty tomes (and non-English-reading China and Japan still manage to inspire a respectable output of respectable books too).
But I have to ask myself, how many Jakarta resident expats or Bali-bound tourists would happily pick up a copy of an Indonesian equivalent of The Last Mughal or India: a History, or Liberty or Death, or even – poke me in the eye and call me a hypocrite – A Million Mutinies Now?
Many? Enough for even a small regional publisher to justify putting such a book out? Any at all?
In truth, I really don’t know the answer. I hope many; I hope I’m not the only one with such complaints, because otherwise the only option is to head down to Jaksa, crack open the Bintang and start making notes for something called “Jakarta Velvet” with a backlit image of long-haired bargirl in a miniskirt on the cover…
Dutch guy who came to Bandung for a while after working in Bali for 6 months, he put out this cd, it was for sell in distro’s in Bandung and Jakarta, All the music is his and all the rappers are from the Bandung scene:
http://madrotter.blogspot.com/2009/01/mutant-fusion-of-vision.html
I think that there is quite a market in the West for the type of books that you described. I am always being asked after one of my trips for a less scholarly book than the ones that I will pursue. Not very many that I can recommend.
Thanks for the article, I will read some of those books that you mention.
Bit off topic for this newsgroup but is anyone else concerned with the media reports that there are many women awaiting to be stoned to death! Also reports that several boys and girls have been whipped for doing what their Western cousins do without any such drastic punishments.
women waiting to be stoned to death? here? in indonesia? where did you read that?
The editor has kindly alerted me to this debate and timdog’s rather mean little puff for A Shadow Falls. A few thoughts…
Apologia pro vita sua….er, My own trumpet.
An original experience told in a new way is not likely to fit neatly into the travelogue genre, but it’s an error to see A Shadow Falls as obscure or academic. (Where are the endnotes, references, explanations, theories, jargon?) Faber & Faber would not have looked at it if that were the case. And none of the emails I receive from Javanese or Westerners conveys that impression. Think of it as a story about people: if it seems “slightly odd” to timdog, that’s probably because he has never met such people or tasted their world. But do you want to enlarge your experience or merely confirm it? Do you want to fill a 2cm gap on your travel/history/exotica shelf or think about putting up a different shelf?
Publish and be damned.
Timdog’s suspicions about the publishing market are spot on. India and subSaharan Africa occupy very big, exclusive niches in the British imagination. And not only there. Institutionally, in the literary establishment, up- or downmarket, the empire strikes (or strokes) back. Almost anything with a Raj, ex-colony or migration angle is bankable and backed by big marketing budgets and newspaper coverage. Now there are – literally – curry memoirs. The big names mentioned by timdog are riding this wave. (Good solid authors, but none of them comes close to the dread Naipaul for subtlety of vision or quality of prose.) But Latin America? Southeast Asia? Forget it. No top publisher will touch anything on Indonesia now because they can’t recoup their outlay. My book squeaked in before Black Wednesday (or whenever) which forced the publishing industry to tighten its already anorexic belt. I hope that A Shadow Falls will ease the path for the next author (or my book on Nias!), but who knows? We need all the encouragement we can get.
Anthros do it better.
A shout for the profession. I’m sad to see the late great Clifford Geertz patronized as “having some literary merit”. Maradona had some skill with the ball… (See my article on Geertz in Makers of Modern Culture, or email me and I’ll send you a copy.) For all their solid archival research and access to important people, even the best popular historians and journalists can’t match anthropology’s insight into the lives of ordinary people in unfamiliar settings. Two, three, or four years living among – not near, but actually with – the people you write about, speaking their language, and sharing their lives is vastly different from securing an interview with a VIP, mingling in the crowds or chatting in coffee shops. And the theory-backed understanding of how societies work and cultures evolve – knowledge which may be muted in the finished product – is of a different order. So here are a few more suggestions for the holiday reading list: Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, which begins with the immortal line: “I hate travelling and explorers.” Anything by Hugh Brody, but try The Other Side of Eden, Oscar Lewis’s Pedro Martinez (Mexico), Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land (Egypt). These are all brilliantly written anthropological books that any intelligent reader will enjoy. And if you really want to understand India and fancy a mind-blowing intellectual challenge, Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus. Curry will never taste the same.
1 Timdog, thanks for the kind words. I agree with the general thrust of your original piece, but I think you are asking for the impossible: “a colour-filled travelogue or a vibrant narrative history for the masses” which is also a “proper literary book”. Can’t be both. So I recommend you do that book on Nusa Tenggara, and the hell with royalties.
2 I misunderstood you about Geertz.
3 Naipaul is un-PC, but his prose is peerless. “The Enigma of Arrival” rather than the travel books.
4 You pose an interesting chicken-and-egg conundrum of the sort Javanese mystics like to discuss over a late night bitter coffee. Why isn’t there a market for good books about Indonesia? Is it because people aren’t writing them or because nobody would buy them (therefore people aren’t writing them)? I don’t know, but blogs like this help to generate interest, so keep up the good work…
5 I last visited Jalan Jaksa in 1981 when I stayed at Nick’s Losmen (run by a charming Chinese called Hermann). It sounds a lot more interesting than I remember it. Must do some serious research there next time around.
Sorry for that error, and the delay in replying. I had misread my paper. The sentence will not now be carried out but she will probably be hanged instead. Which must be a great relief to her!
“I think the lack of decent books about Indonesia is just a symptom of a general lack of awareness of Indonesia. Remember the thread about movies set in Indonesia? Not very many. For the world’s fourth most populous nation, Indonesia is almost invisible in the world’s eyes.”
Ding Ding Ding, folks we have a winner!
It’s not rocket science, we’ve discussed this in other forums related to travel and news coverage of Indonesia, for 90% of the population of the world Indonesia features on their radar somewhere below Paraguay, except that most people probably have a fair idea of where Paraguay is.
This is not helped by the fact that Indonesia doesn’t have a literary tradition, people in Indonesia simply don’t read books, unless you’re Chinese and you need to buy the latest business management guru, personal enlightenment fad or of course some nice book about Jesus. I remember reading somewhere that being fluent in Bahasa Melayu (Indonesian) was the equivalent of having the key to an empty wardrobe, if Indonesians can’t be bothered to read and write about their own country why should anyone else?
Just for the record however here’s a few choice fictional and non-fictional extracts from my bookshelf, not all of which I enjoyed but which should be of interest to some people here.
Firstly of course, Christopher J Koch’s “Year of Living Dangerously”,
John Hughes “The End of Sukarno”
Theodore Friend “Indonesian Destinies”
Joseph Conrad “Victory”
eds Hellwig and Tagliacozzo “The Indonesian Reader”
Richard Lloyd Parry “In Time of Madness”
Keith Loveheard “Suharto”
John T Sidel “Riots, Pogroms, Jihad”
Nigel Barley “In Raffles’ Footsteps”
Geoffrey Bennett “The Pepper Trader”
and I suppose if you really must you could read Pram’s stuff.
Timdog: you don’t need to convince me about William Dalrymple, a terrific author. He is also, by the way, a great force for tolerance and keeps up a steady flow of rational, effective journalism. Gets my vote.
BB: On the intellectual dearth: Indonesia in the early Sixties must have been one of the most exciting places in the world. Great things could have emerged – and I don’t mean a PKI government. But Suharto performed a national lobotomy. You can’t rebuild in a couple of years. It might take another decade or two before it makes up the lost ground.
On Indonesia’s invisibility in the West: file under national disasters. The only time I’ve seen Indonesia as lead item on the BBC News (and it was Nias!) was the earthquake that followed the tsunami. But the little things that pass notice are ultimately more interesting.
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well, Periplus also put out quiet a few really good books written in the colonial time by Dutch writers, maybe you’ve read a few already, E. Du Perron’s Country of Origin is a pretty amazing book, also translated in English are the books from Madelon Lulofs-Szekely (which caused quiet a storm in colonial Indonesia)…. But when it comes to modern times you’re right, not a lot is being written. Kerry B Collison always gets a bad rap but I kinda enjoyed some of his books, he’s no Hemmingway for sure but I’m surprised they sell his books here, seeing they mainly deal with corrupt generals, politicians and businessmen and the destruction they cause…
Last year I met John Chester Lewis in Bali at the house of a friend and he put out a book with his poems, selling them in the same way that Ross does:
http://madrotter.blogspot.com/2009/05/john-chester-lewis-templo-de-la-luna.html
There’s Westerners all over South-East Asia doing stuff, putting out stuff, writings, music and other forms of art but mostly it’s in very small amounts (it’s kind of a nice idea for a blog, Stuff Put Out By Expats In SEA)