On What I Am Reading Right Now II
On Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
On the Books I Would Write if I Had All The Time in the World, Part II
What do you do when you have grand plans of writing grand books, but have neither the time nor the discipline to actually write them? You just list down the titles, and berangan that someday you might miraculously find the time to write them, or (perhaps more realistically) inspire someone else to actually take the trouble to write them out.
Here’s another list from my overactive imagination:
- One Must Wait Until the Evening: The Life of Rahmat Harun
- Mahathir dan Anwar: Sebuah Novel Puisi
- Malay Republican: Ibrahim Yaacob and His Legacy
- Candu Rakyat: Pengaruh Konservatisme Islam dalam Masyarakat Melayu di Awal Abad ke-21
- Sesak: Perancangan Bandar di Kuala Lumpur, 1974-2020
- Pak Lah & Endon: Damai Abadi
- Khairy Jamaluddin: Hang Jebat atau Hang Nadim?
- Novel Modern Melayu: Dari Ahmad Rashid Talu hingga Abdullah Hussain
- Monkey: The Life of a Well-Loved Cat
- Bumiputera: The Biography of an Invented Identity
On Writing Everyday
The other day, a friend of mine asked, “Where you find the time to write/update your blog on a regular basis?? Kasi tips sikit!”
I was tickled by this question, because of course writing is writing – you just pick up your pen (or keyboard, choose your poison) and write away.
But then, upon further reflection, I realised that my friend did have a point: after sporadic bursts of writing for more than a decade (and when I mean sporadic, the gap between my writings were usually numbered in months, even years!) I have finally gotten into a regular rhythm of writing. It may not necessarily be elegant or beautiful writing (though I do aim to write well, or at least, progress towards eventually writing better as I get more practice), but this morning I checked my Jetpack app, and it greeted me thus:
“You’re on a 46-day streak on Essays / Esei!”
Astounding, even to me, because this must surely be the most sustained period of public writing I have ever managed in my life.
Of course, I have been writing almost daily in my journal for almost a decade now, but this bout of public writing is a recent phenomenon. I would say two things have spurred this recent turn.
The first is reading Montaigne’s Essays. (Yes, my current blog title is directly inspired by that legendary Frenchman.) Writing in a time of great religious and political upheaval, Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne retired from the turbulent politics of his day to take refuge in his castle and in his books, and began writing a series of essays that has not only enshrined him in the literary canon of the West, but has also inspired legions of similar writings across the centuries, including Francis Bacon and every other blogger today. Presaging the Renaissance, Montaigne made it an explicit aim to focus on himself as a subject of writing – glorying in his own joys and sorrows, his own rationalities and idiosyncrasies. He wrote about friendship and learning languages and parenthood and wisdom and literature and heroes and simple folk and fame and memory and marriage and death. He was certainly the world’s first true essayist, and reading Montaigne today, even in translation, would remind us of how modern his thinking was. Those of us grappling with issues of burnout and consumerism and the meaning of life, would find ourselves nodding vigorously, as I did, on reading Montaigne’s prognostications.
Reading Montaigne (the present continuous tense applies here – I am probably still only a quarter of the way through his voluminous writings) is inspiring to me. I have always wanted to write, and I have always known, since childhood, that I had it in me to write. Certainly not Shakespearean or Proustian levels of writing, but I have stories that I want to tell – like many of us.
It just always baffled me, the art of writing: I would have moments (usually during holidays, when my mind suddenly has the space to roam, outside of the daily strictures of corporate life) when I would be inspired to write about something, or even struck by the idea of a grand writing project – a memoir, perhaps, or a novel in verse about Malaysian politics. As my own paltry output would testify, these were often mere angan Mat Jenin that would take root in my imagination, but die ignominious deaths, out of a lack of any real tangible action.
The problem is that the blank page would always stare at me, almost taunting me: Kau siapa, nak tulis semua ni? Apa kau tau? My own insecurities and lack of courage would embarrass me into silence.
And this is where the second point of inspiration came along. One evening, several weeks ago, while glancing at the permanent pile of books hidden underneath our coffee table in the living room, I glanced at a copy of Carl Roger’s On Becoming A Person. I think I must have just finished a rather well-written book, because my common and ineluctable pattern is that right after reading a particularly satisfying book, I get into a restless and rather flailing mood. Gratified by the recent high of beautiful and profound writing, I would be casting around for another bout of the same intellectual and spiritual high. Often, after reading a very good book, I would be going through one book after the other, flitting through several pages, and eventually casting off one book for another, dissatisfied at not being presented with yet another magnificent read. (I know, it’s rather sad.)
So it was in this mood that I discovered Carl Rogers, and sat down to read through his philosophy of client-centred therapy. His approach, apparently radical for his time, was almost laughably simple: he believed that the main task of the therapist is to provide a safe and non-judgmental space for the patient to fully express herself, to find within themselves the courage to try to live out their own unique individual self. Carl Rogers taught me, as he has certainly taught many others, that the path towards truly living is to have the courage to explore one’s own authenticity, and to embrace all sides of one’s self: the good, the bad, the sad, the happy, the glorious, the mean, even the most shameful parts of who we are. Being truly human is to accept our humanity, in all its ineffability.
I have written about Carl Rogers earlier, and I should not belabour the point. But what reading Carl Rogers did to me, was to encourage me – literally, to give me courage – to embrace who I am, and to decide: I want to make this journey towards better acceptance of who I am. And I want to use my writings as a means to explore this.
And so I picked up my blog, which has been around since, oh maybe 2012, but had lain fallow through long periods of abandonment, and I promised myself: whatever and however my day would be like, I would make it a point to find time through the hours and days to make sure that I write enough to be able to publish something, every day. It would be wonderful if every day I could publish something profound and meaningful and elegant and beautiful – but if on some days, or many days, I don’t, that would be okay. I just need to write, and use that space to discover who I am, and this world that I live in.
So that’s it. That’s the “tip”. I simply decided that of all the things in my life, this exercise in writing would take precedence, and be up there in my list of daily priorities, like taking a shower every morning, and praying five times a day (not always succeeding on this one, tapi bro cuba), and telling my wife everyday that I love her. And part of achieving this is also to let other, less important things, drop out of your life. I try to cut out TV and Netflix from my life. No more computer games – even Marvel Snap and Mini Metro get little time on my calendar now. I don’t go out much at night, except to have dinner with close friends and family, and even in that latter, it is mostly just spending time with my wife. I get into bed around 10, often even earlier.
It’s nice to know that it’s been 46 continuous and unbroken days of trying to write more honestly, more openly. In the same way, I am trying to be more honest, more open with my own self. To accept my failures and disappointments, as much as I take comfort in my “achievements”, however grand or meek they may seem in the eyes of others.
Some years ago, bereft in what was certainly depression, feeling disappointed at how my life had turned out, I took refuge in a series of books about palliative care and mortality. I remember reading the final pages of Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, tears streaming down my face at two in the morning. I came out of that particular period of reading with a determination, almost grim in its steely grip, of wanting to learn how to live well, so that I could die well. I wanted it so that when I finally come to the final moments of my life, I can look back at a life well lived.
These writings are part of that project, and perhaps that also explains the tenacity of these past few weeks. To use the much-loved metaphor of a much-beloved mentor of mine, if this is my “Game of the Impossible”, then I want to play it well. I want to be present for every inning that each new day presents to me.
And this is how I find time every day to write.
On Mat Som
One of the injustices of modern Malaysian culture is that so little regard and respect has been given to what I personally think is one of the top works of contemporary Malay literature: Lat’s singular graphic novel, Mat Som.
Perhaps it is because we associate Lat predominantly with saccharine cartoons on national unity, or nostalgic depictions of kampung life (both of which, of course, remain as indelible contributions from Lat to the Malaysian public discourse.) Maybe it is because we do not have any real tradition of the graphic novel as a legitimate and respectable vehicle for aesthetic expression and cultural commentary. The graphic novel, in the Malaysian mind, is too easily mistaken for its adolescent cousin, the comic book.
This is why there is hardly any discussion in the public space about the contributions of Mat Som to the narrative of modern Malay culture. Even amongst Lat’s abundant oeuvre, Mat Som is so often overlooked.
For more astute readers of Malay culture, Mat Som is an invaluable and singular artifact of a fracturing Malay polity, forced to undergo one of the most rapid and dizzying socioeconomic transformations of the modern age.
Within just a generation, thousands of poor young Malays were taken out of their villages, and handed the keys to education that would unlock opportunities beyond their wildest dreams. Many were sent overseas to learn the secrets of modern science and technology, and told to come back to serve the nation. Most of these young Malaysia came home with burning ambition, but were also deeply confused: they were told that to study overseas, and to go to the cities and get a corporate job and to enrich themselves beyond their parents’ imagination, was a noble vocation – but as they sought to find their place in their new urban settings, they were also told that many of the habits they had taken to be emblematic of what it meant to be “modern”, were shameful and to be castigated. The very modernity that they were told to seek, was labelled as “budaya kuning”, worthy only of disdain and censure.
In Mat Som, Lat would dramatise the rapid social change of the late 20th century amongst the Malays, but from a more rooted perspective: that of the young Malay from the kampung who makes his way to the city to earn a living with words. The young journalist finds himself attracted and entranced by the whirling pace and the glittering lights of the city, but is repulsed by the crass commercialism and the capitalistic striving of the rising Malay middle class. Lat, in Mat Som, romanticises the poet, the working journalist, the common Mat on the street.
Mat Som puts into stark focus the cultural confusion of the Malays of that generation, forced to choose between traditional values and the modern world that threatens to unmoor the Malay from familiar ground. If Umno’s Revolusi Mental and Mahathir’s Malay Dilemma were loudly exhorting the Malays to change their mindsets and embrace modernity, to discard old-fashioned values that were seen to be holding back the community, then Lat’s Mat Som was a cri de coeur for the common Malay man – that the way to traverse the rapid currents of social upheaval was to hold fast to the wisdom of old.
To be fair, Mat Som was not a blind rejection of modernity – Yam could be at ease in a baju kurung, or wear a pair of jeans if she wanted to. But the ideal Malay, in Lat’s telling, was someone who was not merely throwing the baby out with the bath water, when it came to the values that would anchor and centre the Malay. One could be modern, and still be Malay, without merely aping the West.
Lat’s genius, of course, was to wrap all this cultural commentary within a simple and heartwarming story of a young man trying to find his way, and his heart, in a city that can often appear heartless and cruel. Bridging that gap between modernity and tradition is still an ongoing dilemma for the young Malay today, and Mat Som reminds us that there is a path through the thicket of confusion, if we only remain clear-eyed about who we are and where we came from.
On What I am Reading Right Now, Part I
I am currently reading a few books in parallel (beware, there may be spoilers ahead):
- Robert Caro’s Power Broker – this is one of those books that I have been reading for some time – years, in fact! – but got shelved as I got distracted by other books. Also, the size and heft of the book means that I often only read this in the evenings and on the weekends. Right now the book is heading into an interesting turn in Robert Moses’ life, as his benefactor Al Smith leaves the Governor’s Mansion in Albany, and FDR – whom Moses had pissed off many times over – takes over. I am keen to see how he managed to parlay the powers he had already gathered through the State Park Commission, to become the powerhouse of New York City that he eventually becomes.
- Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin – I am reading this Byronic verse-novel in fits and starts. The English translation is really enjoyable, and apparently well captures the metre and rhyme of Pushkin’s work. Tatiana, having mourned Onegin’s retreat from her life, is now settling into society life in Moscow. I was not expecting the duel, or Lensky getting shot and killed, and I am expecting only further tragedy ahead.
- Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I – another one of those books that I am picking up again, in keeping with my vow not to buy any new books this year, and to go through my current stash of books lying in wait at home. His prose style is erudite and mannered, and his current exposition of early Christianity in Rome leads me to think that he is not all that enamored with institutionalised religion. This is, of course, a classic work of history that I have always wanted to read, especially since it famously inspired Asimov’s Foundation series, which is one of my all-time sci-fi favourites.
On the Books I Would Write if I Had All The Time in the World, Part I
A random assortment of the titles of books I would write if I was independently wealthy enough to just spend all my days writing books:
1. The Trip: From Kuala Lumpur to Oxford in the Summer of 2018
2. UMNO: A Biography of Malaysia’s Grand Old Party
3. Kanun Sastera Melayu: Menelusuri Khazanah Persuratan Bangsa dari Tun Seri Lanang ke Usman Awang
4. Sakau: How Najib Razak Destroyed Tun Razak’s Legacy
5. The Tattered Hibiscus: Poems on and about Malaysia
6. Reformasi, 1998-2022: Suatu Penilaian
7. Tan Sri Asri Muda: Sebuah Biografi Politik dan Peribadi
8. The New Economic Policy: Achievements and Failures in Malaysia’s Bumiputera Policy
9. How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Other People and Pay Attention to the Prospect of My Own Impending Death
10. Essays: A Decade of Writing, 2023-2033
On Becoming a Person ( or A Book Review of Carl Rogers’ 1961 Classic Book on Psychotherapy)
This classic book by Carl Rogers, first published in 1961, will likely be the most important book I read this year.
Useful and enlightening, Carl Rogers’ approach to psychotherapy resonates with what I believe to be my own take on life: that humans are deeply unique, and that one of our most primary tasks in Life is to give full expression and flowering to the most singular and delightful aspects of our human existence.
Unlike other luminaries of psychotherapy such as Freud and Jung, Rogers believed in a far more grounded and almost ridiculously basic approach to therapy: that the primary responsibility of the therapist is to provide a safe and confidential space for persons to learn to listen to themselves, and to fully experience the entire spectrum of their emotions. His belief was that when patients rediscover what it means to become and be themselves, they will learn that they already have the resources within themselves to recover their own dignity and self-worth.
Most importantly: Rogers walks the talk. Through his flowing and honest prose, the reader gets a sense of who he is – humble, curious, empowering, democratic, authentic, sincere, perhaps even a touch naive.
Rogers also brought two novel approaches to psychotherapy. The first was his conviction that the efficacy and usefulness of what he called “client-centred therapy” or “person-centred approach” could be proven scientifically, through rigorous experiments which were carefully documented and published in the leading psychology journals of his day. His other innovation, which was to grow to become a leading preoccupation for him in his later years, was that the basic principles of his approach to psychotherapy had real and vital applications in fields far beyond the therapist’s room: in the classroom, amongst married couples, and even in the drawing rooms and conference halls of high diplomacy. He was certain that the greatest problems of his age could be solved by an appeal to the fundamentals of human creativity and decency.
Most importantly, from my point of view, his perspective on human communications suggests that we already have the tools we need to form a better life for ourselves:
- The faith that every single human being is, at their core, a decent and dignified human being, and that rediscovering that core humanity requires us to actively work towards listening to and understanding ourselves and others.
- The courage to be sincere with how we feel, at any given moment, and to embrace the implications of those emotions in how we deal with others.
- The curiosity to truly listen to what others have to say, to fully experience the words and the tone and the music with which others communicate themselves to us.
- The commitment to constantly work towards becoming better versions of who we are, to lean into our self-knowledge and self-understanding and bring ourselves to the fullest flowering of our unique and indivisible selves.
Some books come along at the moment when you most need them. Reading this book gave me further validation that the way I see the world is a way that could work well, and I finished the book with the hope that here was a roadmap that I could walk in my every day to become a better person.
In other words, this was a 5-star read that I would highly highly recommend to anyone interested in an engaging and coherent approach towards living a Good Life.
Book Review I (2023): Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
I’ve been on a Cormac McCarthy binge in the past few months, having read Blood Meridian (his most celebrated work, and probably his best), and also having finished his most recently-published books, the literary duet of The Passenger and Stella Maris. These books, like the rest of Cormac McCarthy’s oeuvre, carry within them a heady concoction of stoic characters, cinematic vistas, Faulknerian complexity, biblical cadences, and elemental violence. So, I suppose it was natural that I would move on next to reading Suttree.
Some of his fans think of Suttree as his best work. I would probably beg to differ, but Suttree is certainly McCarthy’s funniest book that I have read so far, and probably the most merciless in the way that McCarthy puts his main character through the most harrowing episodes: that bit with typhoid fever had me shaking my head in pity and disbelief.
Suttree tells of the adventures and travails of Cornelius Suttree, who makes a living as a fisherman on the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee. Throughout the novel, Suttree makes his way through life amidst poverty and squalor, as we meet the vagabonds, ne’er-do-wells and po’ folk that make up his community. The writer hints at an educated man who chooses this hard life, descending down into the Hades of the American South to swim with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. He makes many bad choices, but is ultimately saved by the constancy with which he keeps faith with the friends that he surrounds himself with, and the wry amusement with which he views the world and its happenings .
As always with McCarthy, the joy is in his inimitable style of writing: frequently cinematic, sometimes ethereal, often garrulous, and never shrinking from the bare-knuckled truths of human existence.
It is often said that Suttree is the most autobiographical of his novels, and I can only surmise, after having read Suttree, that most of this book must have been written from personal experience, for it to be so searing and achingly painful. The violence and drama is often leavened by humour – mainly from the capers of the memorable Harrogate – but for the most part, this is not a book to be read while you are holidaying by the beach.
I would give this book a 4-star rating: the writing is muscular and also beautiful in the way that only Cormac McCarthy can make it, but also painfully merciless, that by the end, the reader is almost glad that Suttree’s suffering would hopefully come to an end.