Saturday, 8 January 2011
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About Me
- guat
- I write, mainly fiction and occasionally some poetry. Writing is something I do, not something I write (or talk) about. But sometimes I have thoughts about writing, reading, and literature--and there's something attractive about the idea of putting my thoughts down in some kind of order and sending them out to an unknowing universe instead of having them swirling around chaotically in my head.
Where to buy DAYS OF CHANGE, ECHOES OF SILENCE & THE OLD HOUSE
- Amazon.com
- MALAYSIA
- Borders, all 4 outlets
- www.kinibooks.com
- Kinokuniya @ KLCC
- MPH
- Popular @ Ikano Power Centre, PJ
- Popular @ Sunway Pyramid
- Popular @ Gurney Plaza, Penang
- Popular @ Megamall Pinang, Penang
- Harris (Popular) @ Tebrau City Jusco, JB
- Silverfish, Bangsar, K.L.
- UM Coop Bookstore, Perdanasiswa, Univ. of Malaya K.L.
- SINGAPORE
- Borders @ Wheelock Place, Orchard Road
- Kinokuniya @ Takashimaya, Orchard Road
- National University of Singapore (NUS) Library
- Select Bookstore
- Times Bookstore @ Centrepoint
Blog Archive
-
►
2009
(30)
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►
September
(8)
- Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--Favourite...
- Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--What I Li...
- Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--What I Li...
- Readers' Responses to Echoes of Silence--Introduct...
- The Aim of Literature is to Combat Stupidity
- Thoughts From a Disappearing Island
- The Problem with Writing 6
- The Problem with Writing 5
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►
September
(8)
Labels
- Malaysian Lit-in-Malay (14)
- Echoes of Silence (9)
- Malaysian Lit-in-English (7)
- New Manglit Voices (6)
- On Reading Novels (6)
- The Problem with Writing (6)
- Malaysian Lit-in-Chinese (5)
- Sarawakian literature in English (4)
- Story-telling: East and West (4)
- Malaysian Lit-in-Tamil (1)
- Malaysian women writing in English (1)
- Manifesto (1)
- On Writing (1)
2 comments:
Days of Change may be "wordy" but I unlike other wordy novels, I'm finding it extremely readable. It's like a very personal conversation.
Thanks, gnute. As another reviewer (Umapagan in New Straits Times)has noted, Malaysian readers and writers have little patience with the novel form.
I personally find it a rather lame and below-the-belt way of finding fault with a novelist, of all things. If a novelist can't be wordy, then who can? Significantly, too, the example of wordiness he uses is from my disclaimer (i.e. a legal statement) about the novel being a work of imagination!
However, it must be said in the reviewer's defence, he does admit that the wordiness has a purpose; it serves to reveal not only the content but also the method of Hafiz' thinking.
I have nothing to say in my defence, but am reminded of Nabokov's opening paragraph in his novel, Laughter in the Dark:
"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome."
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