Journal

Local Literature

I was at the Singapore Writers Festival on Saturday and I actually bought a book by a local writer, the first time I’ve done this in what must be eight or nine years. The last one, I believe, was Kit Chan’s I Write A Page. I’ve always wanted to buy Wena Poon’s Lions In Winter, but instead of that I bought her new book The Proper Care Of Foxes the BooksActually station there. Happily got it signed. Thanks, Wena!

It’s been a while since I’ve read any local literature. And while it might seem as if I have some peculiar aversion to local writers because of their uhm local nature, that’s not really the case. Part of it is down to tastes. I’ve just not been particularly drawn to anyone’s work. Which is not saying anything against our local writers, since I don’t read as much Woolf or DeLillo as I probably should. It’s just a matter of preference.

That might be changing. I don’t know. I’ve got this new book, for one, and the newest (or at least, I think it is) Cyril Wong book with the long title and the nice drawings actually quite appeals to me. Maybe things are changing and it’s shifting towards something that suits me better.

The other big reason I don’t read local literature very much is because I think that I’m too weak to avoid getting drawn into someone else’s Singapore. I don’t want to get sucked into thinking, Yes, this is a good way to do a Singapore, and I’ll do it this way too. I don’t think that’s very healthy, and it wouldn’t be very me either.

The shape of the market doesn’t exactly make it look like my type of market either. From what I can tell (which I reckon shouldn’t be trusted), we have a growing poet population, with some sort of tradition and plenty of younger poets showing what they’re made of. I think we have capable playwrights, though admittedly, I am hopelessly impoverished in terms of theatre, especially when it comes to plays by local playwrights. My staple food remains novels and short fiction. Short fiction isn’t so bad. There are some writers practising that form here. But novels… are few and far between. So when I go into a bookstore, there actually isn’t very much that catches my eye on the local writers shelf, much less captures my heart.

But it looks like it’s changing, if very slowly, and I’m glad for that.

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© 2009 a modest odyssey.