Wrapping up 2008 in Bangkok

This year has brought many things, good and bad. I had books published in New York and London, and a film option deal for a crime fiction series, and foreign rights deals. In November I was in New York City to attend the National Book Foundation Awards where my friend Barney Rossett received a lifetime achievement award. It was a time to reflect, look back at the publishing world that Barney and others like him created in the 1950s and think about what is left of that world in 2008. The transformation has been beyond what anyone would have imagined.

 

I also had a chance to meet my publisher, editor, head of publicity and foreign rights at Grove/Atlantic while in New York. As one of the last independent publishers in New York, Grove/Atlantic continues Barney Rossett’s tradition of giving voice to the outsider, of publishing books that are literary, books that are about the larger world. Next Autumn Grove/Atlantic will bring out Paying Back Jack.

 

As 2008 ends I am writing an article titled Literary Bangkok for Writers & Poets Magazine. I spent a few days at the Oriental Hotel researching the article. Looking into the archives of writers from the past who came to Bangkok: Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, George Orwell and others. Like the trip to New York, the time at the Oriental Hotel has stimulated my thinking about what we owe to the great authors and publishers of the past, and as we walk into the future, what part of their legacy do we take along with us and what parts are shed like the skin of snake.

 

2008 has also brought to Thailand and many other parts of the world equal measures of violence, uncertainty, and chaos. Political events in Thailand overshadowed the news for months. Demonstrations, occupations of the government house and closure of the airports, with new governments coming and going in rapid successions. The tourism business crashed. People were staying closer to home. Foreigners are less certain about the future, have less money, and with travel warnings, they put off that discretionary purchase—whether it is an air ticket to Thailand, a hardback book, or dinner at a posh restaurant. Stock markets crashed everywhere, entire industries dissolving before our eyes, a crisis in publishing. Newspapers dropping print editions, home delivery, going into bankruptcy.

 

Perhaps the world has always looked like it was unraveling. Economic collapse, the climate fundamentally changing, the balance of power in the world up for grabs, and the feeling that something we can’t quite imagine looms over the horizon. In better days, we assumed something good would be found over the horizon. Now people aren’t so sure. And that in a nutshell is our existential angst. We want to believe things will get better, but have largely given in to the feeling we are about to slip into a void and no one around us has the capability, the resources, or the intelligence to break the fall.

 

A tugboat of gloom is pulling the world through the dark waters of noir. There aren’t enough lifejackets for everyone. People are getting thrown over the side.

 

The challenge for us who write books is to chart that journey. If the world has become one vast criminal investigation scene, we will be spending much of 2009 sorting out the victims from the criminals, evaluating the evidence, considering the motives, reflecting on the special pleas of ignorance, negligence, or special circumstances. Some will go to jail, some will go mad, others to the streets, and others to gather weapons for revenge. The drama of who we are and what we want and how we mediate between our identity and what we possess will absorb our attention. Crime fiction will grow in this environment as authors are stretched to find context and voice to describe and explain a world where clues to the big crimes are traced to the delusions of those elected to protect. 

Mark Twain: Talking and Writing from the Heart

As we soon depart from the world of 2008 and enter the new world of 2009, the question for writers around the world is: how much truth will the people and authorities tolerate? Are modern times less tolerant than before, or have we always lived side by side with the forces of intolerance circling thinkers and writers, banishing writs and decrees, threatening punishments, exile and disappearance from words that speak of things that are decreed to be unspeakable.

 

On Maud Newton’s literary blog, I came across the excerpts from Mark Twain’s “The Privilege of the Grave” which can be found in the New Yorker archives.

 

Its occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege — strictly speaking — but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by civilized peoples.

            * * *

Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are waste, because I can’t print the result…. It does my weather-beaten soul good to read it, and admire the trouble it would make for my family.

Mark Twain would fully understand that free speech in many parts of the world during our times has not advanced beyond the speech restriction he lived with inside his own world. Indeed an argument might be advanced that Mark Twain’s pre-technological world, had more tolerance for dissenting views than our own. But an argument can be made that with the Internet the floodgates to carry expression of all sorts have opened and to contain the roaring rage of words swirling around the earth can no longer be successfully tamed. But for every technological tool that increases the reach of speech, there are new tools to restrict, control, monitor and censor. It is unclear how the tension between the freedom to discuss and dissent and the urge to restrict the scope of discussion and stifle dissent will play out. Like any cat and mouse scenario, we will likely find that the mice continue to take more than their share of causalities.

Asian Godfathers

Many of you who follow this blog will have also followed the upheaval in Thai politics that started with the military coup in 19^th September 2006. One side of the political equation has been referred to as including a segment of Thai businessmen (mostly Thai-Chinese ), joining the traditional old elites and a smattering of new “liberal” democrats. These groups are united in their nearly universal aversion to the former prime minister (and the individuals who succeeded him in rapid succession).

 

What has received less attention is the underlying dynamic of origin and nature of the economic and political interest and how they’ve remained fairly consistent in Thailand for many decades despite the fact that governments and constitutions have regularly changed. This partnership of convenience has an enduring quality.

 

The perception that Thaksin policies threatened to upset this partnership with its existing players, caused a sense of panic, followed by determination to do what was necessary to eliminate the threat.

 

To understand the working relationship between the business community (overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese) and the other big political players such as the bureaucrats, the “old-money” class and men in uniforms, you would do well to read Joe Studwell’s Asian Godfathers.

Studwell does an excellent job of revealing how the Godfathers succeeded in Southeast Asia, including the Thai godfathers contingent. In any Southeast Asia patronage system where concessions, licenses, cartels and other monopoly practices have had a long history, the Chinese were skillful in cultivating the right political connections and exploited them to create a herd of rich cash cows. Whether it was ports, banks, telecommunications, mining, rubber, or timber, having an exclusive right to a monopoly coupled with the guarantee to exclude competition was a surefire way to rake in a large amount of money. The other factor that Studwell identifies as significant to the rise of billionaire Asian Godfathers was access to easy and cheap credit. This allowed them to expand their business interests.

 

As the global financial recession continues accelerate, it will likely eliminate the easy and cheap credit that Asian godfathers have grown accustomed to tapping. How many of the Asian Godfathers have been over-leveraged? As this is a secretive group, probably no one really knows the answer to this question. The same is true of another question— whether the cash flow from the Asian godfathers’ traditional concessions and licenses will see them through this financial crisis.

 

Local economies in Southeast Asia are contracting as well. Less of everything is selling. Having a monopoly over resources or services will be a cushion but will it prevent injury when the fall this time is from such a great height? No one, again, can predict how much of a haircut the Asian Godfathers will be in for this time. The likelihood is, once the dust settles, and the accounts are reconciled, we will discover some heads that have been shaved clean.

112 Reasons to read Crime Fiction

 

The morning stared with a grenade attack at the international airport in Bangkok, leaving one person dead and dozens wounded. This afternoon the Constitutional Court has dissolved the main political party and banned their executives from public office for five years. Close to where I live, over the past one two bombs have been tossed from the flyover onto Rama IV below near Klong Toey market. I heard the explosion. Both times. Police are guarding the flyover this morning.

 

But this isn’t one of the reasons to read crime fiction.

 

It is easy in these circumstances to feel scared, helpless and hopeless about what has happened and may happen next. People are numb with fear. I was at the Emporium, an upscale shopping Mall, and the ground floor is decorated with Christmas trees and White Christmas is playing on the sound system. Some people walking around dazed, staring at the Christmas trees, trying to make sense of what is happening. Bangkok and its people occupy a zone of immense contradictions.

 

But this isn’t one of the reasons to read crime fiction.

 

Smiles and sadness. Friendship and hatred. Hope and despair. You have a choice in life. You can choose to give into the fear or you can find a way to make a difference.

 

Again this isn’t the reason.

 

The chance of anyone in Bangkok being killed or injured by a grenade or bullet is small. Of course, if it happens to you, then that is little comfort. What has placed the current chaos in perspective was a call my wife received from a woman upcountry in Thailand. This woman several years ago started taking in abandoned or abused children. Things like this always start in a small way. Someone hears about a kid who has nowhere to go. She took him in. Housed him. Fed him. Saw he went to school. Another child found her, then another. For the last twenty years, Suthasinee Noi-in has sunk her life saving into Baan Home Hak, which has become a place to feed and shelter 112 children between ages of newborn to 19 years old. She lives in Yasothorn Province. The kids include AIDS orphans, abandoned, who suffered from domestic violence.

 

 

 

The thing is, she’s run out of money. It gets worse. Suthasinee Noi-in has intestinal cancer and is dying. She’s got six months left. Maybe. And upcountry it has turned cold. As everything is upside down in Thailand, she doesn’t really have anyone to help her.

 

Today I received an order for a copy of the Special Edition of A Killing Smile from Bruce Comstock. The limited edition cost $275.00. The money from Bruce’s order has been used to buy 112 sweaters that will be shipped upcountry this week. There are crimes and then there are true crimes. Not helping in a case like this would be, for me, a crime. Money has to have some meaning in life, and part of that meaning is finding a way to see that it gets to the right people and the right time. Bruce, in my eyes, is a hero and my wife and I will let the kids upcountry know that there is one Canadian out there whose money made a difference to their life.

 

During this season, if anyone else wants to offer some help, I will personally see more clothes, medicine, school fees, and supplies reach the 112 children. Think of this as 112 good reasons to read crime fiction. Buy a book. Send a greeting to them for me to pass along. Once long ago someone did something for me, refused any compensation and said, pay me back by doing something to help someone else.
In a small way, I am paying back him back.