As I was concurrently celebrating and recovering this morning (yes, we’re on that efficiency drive again), staring at the weather that suspiciously made me feel like someone did wake me up after September ended, Nor pointed me towards Syed Nadzri’s piece in yesterday’s Hardcopy column in the NST, which was quickly followed up by a link to Stone’s commentary on the article. Reading, the habit or the lack thereof, of Malaysians and Malays. A very much flogged horse ever since I returned to the Motherland in 1988 to find it to be Tahun Membaca, and yet, not quite ready to die. Adults. First they whine because we don’t read enough, and now that we do, they whine about what we read. Anything to get mileage, and always worthy of a blog entry, ha ha.
“Does it matter what you read? Is it not good enough that I am actually reading?” My sister asks me this everytime I give her grief for her preference of mini-magazines named after fruits over the ones our dad forced down the throats of us older siblings when we were her age. Well, yes and no, I suppose. Reading is good, and reading is better than not reading at all, but what you read also matters after a point.
The written word is a powerful medium. The pen is mightier than the sword. Even Googlefight proves this.
You could channel a plethora of mighty ideas through the written word. I remember Jordan blogging about some advice he got once on how to become a good writer: Read, he was told. So what you read shapes your thoughts, your opinions, your ideas, the way you think and your perspectives in life. So yeah, what you read does matter.
But you can’t expect to wake up one morning and find yourself a fan of the works of Pramoedya Ananta Toer, for instance. One’s taste in reading, I believe, has to be cultivated. It takes time to establish a certain palate, and more often than not, this also varies with time. You discover new authors, others lose their touch with you; some you end up revisiting from time to time. There are certain authors on my shelf I would not have considered reading, say, a year ago. I used to not read ethnic authors, or translated works or anything not set in contemporary Britain or America. Then I found out that Kazuo Ishiguro wrote Remains of the Day, I read and thoroughly enjoyed When We Were Orphans and now I am picking up works by Murakami and am looking to read Tash Aw’s Harmony Silk Factory, him being Malaysian and all. It’s almost like food, some you like, some you don’t; fancying Italian food doesn’t make you more sophisticated than the Nasi Kerabu loving man on the street – but both are aeons ahead of the Twisties and Chickadees lot.
So yes, I agree with Syed Nadzri, the penchance for Malaysians to prefer books like the Bercakap Dengan Jin series is perhaps a cause for concern given the level of the content… similarly I am not too happy with my sister reading one copy too many of the Budak Setan variety of Malay novellas. But to say that the Malays’ obsession of the supernatural to be the cause of the high sales may be a bit misleading. After all, isn’t Stephen King an international phenomenon? As is, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, for instance? And not to forget cult hero Neil Gaiman. The same goes for the popularity of Malay sex-related stories that sell like hot cakes at the newsstands – doesn’t quite mean Malays are obsessed with sex: erotica sells everywhere.
I think the major impediment to access to quality written material – whatever the genre – in Malaysia is cost. Or, in English, books are bloody expensive! Quick comparison, taking the Economist’s approach of using McDonalds’ products. A Fillet-o-Fish at a MickeyD’s in England costs £2.39 (I think, I am not a big fan of them); one in Malaysia probably costs RM3.39 (again, it’s been a while). Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera costs £7.99 RRP; in KL it sells for RM42.90. That means by foregoing about 3 and a half Fillet-o-Fishes (is the plural right, wonders Idlan G the Grammar Nazi) you could purchase said book: equivalently in Malaysia you’re looking at foregoing more than 10 burgers. Even second hand books are still quite steeply priced, somewhere in the mid-teens. By foregoing lunch this week and saving a fiver, I managed to purchase Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (yes, I needed doorstops) and Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis hardcover.
Reading habits have to be cultivated. You can’t shove a book at a 30-year old and expect him or her to be a bibliophile thereafter. Kids have to be taught the reading habit from young, and the move by the Ministry of Education to introduce good Malay and English literature in high school is one of their (few) moves that I fully applaud. After all, when else do I get to see Farah tote around a copy of Keris Mas’ Anak Titiwangsa?
But if books are priced out of the pocket-money range of a large percentage of school-going children today, how do you get them into the habit? Public libraries are a disgrace, they hardly ever stock anything worth reading. How does Atan the anak penoreh getah every going to ever have enough money to enjoy the Famous Five – in English or Malay? Yes, there are many Atans today, despite what you would want to believe about the success of the DEB (but that’s another rant of its own). So when Atan grows up, has enough money to spend, he won’t really want to read too many books; he’d be more focused on upgrading his mobile three times a year instead. Can you really blame him though, when he has never had the change to cultivate a reading habit from young?
Something’s gotta be done about the cost of books. Yes, there is the option of online purchases direct from sellers who ship internationally, especially through Amazon; but three issues for the average Malaysian not living in KL, JB or Penang – exorbitant shipping costs, access to the World Wide Web and the posession of a credit card. I think it warrants a study, this book pricing thing. I wonder what the supply chain looks like.. any middle men we can cut out?
Having said all that, yes, it’s fine and dandy for me to talk about things being cheaper here and what not, but let’s put all of this into perspective. The next time we want to gripe about how useless and crap Malaysia is – and let’s face it, I do it twenty million more times than you do, honestly – we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves, we need to compare like for like. Malaysia is a very young nation. We’re barely 50 years old. It’s confusing for those who may have enjoyed life in countries that are more mature in terms of government and age; but we’ve got to let Malaysia grow at its own pace, and, as a side note to the government, not to let it try and be too much too soon. Or I fear we may create too wide a gap between the affluent and the rest of society, which I am starting to see in the social structure today, even from afar.
Of course, some of us can’t wait forever for things to change. So, apa tunggu? Migrate. Hahahaha.
[note : Closing paragraph is meant to be read with various tongues firmly lodged in multiple cheeks. It was not meant to invite a certain genre of comments]
