the laburnum trees like grapes on a vine. In Maha Bandoola Park there is an obelisk, the Independence Monument. "Look at it closely," said my Burmese friend.
I looked. "Very pretty."
"Look again," he said. "You see? It's not straight. It bends."
The remark was, I decided, profoundly political. He had said that he drank beer once a year, one bottle. I asked whether he had had this year's bottle yet, and when he said no, we went to the Strand Hotelâboth of us for the first time (but he had lived several blocks away for thirty-five years)âand squandered three dollars on two small bottles of pale ale. A few hours later the palm court violins were playing a melody from "Bittersweet" and down Strand Road clattered a 1938 Nash.
The Novel is Dead, Allah Be Praised!
[1971]
The guest lecturer has at least two things in common with a condemned man, the experience of enormous meals and the knowledge that whatever outrageous thing he says cannot matter much to his fate: he'll be gone in the morning. A lecture-tour through Indonesia by an American professor of literature preceded my own by several months. But the professor was not forgotten; he had, it seemed, a standard spiel which made a profound impression on Indonesian students and writers who repeated it to me on many occasions in Sumatra and Java. After my own talk had ended, skinny brown arms shot up, and the signalling questioners usually asked the same thing.
"Sir," one would begin, "I have enjoyed very much the talk you have given us today about novels. But I am confused. Don't you think the novel is dead?"
Fighting down "Don't be ridiculous!" I said, "Not exactly" and explained in a hasty summary of the lecture I had just given why I thought it wasn't, ending, "What gave you
that
idea?"
"Professor E said the novel is dead." This inspired nods and murmurs and many beatific smiles, of the sort that accompany the ejaculation, "Allah be praised!"
The first time I heard this I had a feeling Professor E might be in the audience, an expatriate lecturer whose judgement had run amuck (Indonesia is the home of that word) in the stifling heat. I was patient and conceded that while the novel was far from dead, the form was certainly changing; and I waffled on about Sterne and Joyce and the dazed Frenchman whose novels, with unglued bindings, can be shuffled like a pack of cards. When I learned that Professor E had been a visitorâindeed, was now back in the Statesâand that I needn't worry about demoralizing his students, I denounced him. Still, the professor's academic rope-trick, his vanishing (to the applause of simple folk) along a feeble strand of literary argument that defied all logic, was a hard act to follow.
And God help the person who follows me. During one of the first lectures I gave I confessed that I knew very little about Indonesian writing; afterward, a friendly Javanese lady put a book into my hands and
said I should read it. It was titled
Six Indonesian Short Stories
(New Haven, 1968), and that night before going to sleep I read all six. Five were undistinguished, but a sixth, called "Inem", by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, had many virtues. At the lectures which followed this discovery I mentioned the writer's name, praised his vision andâbecause my mention of the man provoked only silenceârecounted his story. I thought it was strange that such a good writer should be neglected. One evening I found out the reason. I had been enthusing about him and urging the students in the audience to read him; then I asked, "Is Pramoedya still alive?"
There was an uncomfortable silence. I asked the question again. A man in the front row said, "Yes, he is alive. Butâ"
"But he is in prison," another added joylessly. "He has been there since 1966."
Not just behind bars I read later, but on the remote prison island of Buru, east of Celebes, in the Banda Sea. He had been jailed by General Suharto; in 1947 he had been jailed by the Dutch.
The writers
I looked. "Very pretty."
"Look again," he said. "You see? It's not straight. It bends."
The remark was, I decided, profoundly political. He had said that he drank beer once a year, one bottle. I asked whether he had had this year's bottle yet, and when he said no, we went to the Strand Hotelâboth of us for the first time (but he had lived several blocks away for thirty-five years)âand squandered three dollars on two small bottles of pale ale. A few hours later the palm court violins were playing a melody from "Bittersweet" and down Strand Road clattered a 1938 Nash.
The Novel is Dead, Allah Be Praised!
[1971]
The guest lecturer has at least two things in common with a condemned man, the experience of enormous meals and the knowledge that whatever outrageous thing he says cannot matter much to his fate: he'll be gone in the morning. A lecture-tour through Indonesia by an American professor of literature preceded my own by several months. But the professor was not forgotten; he had, it seemed, a standard spiel which made a profound impression on Indonesian students and writers who repeated it to me on many occasions in Sumatra and Java. After my own talk had ended, skinny brown arms shot up, and the signalling questioners usually asked the same thing.
"Sir," one would begin, "I have enjoyed very much the talk you have given us today about novels. But I am confused. Don't you think the novel is dead?"
Fighting down "Don't be ridiculous!" I said, "Not exactly" and explained in a hasty summary of the lecture I had just given why I thought it wasn't, ending, "What gave you
that
idea?"
"Professor E said the novel is dead." This inspired nods and murmurs and many beatific smiles, of the sort that accompany the ejaculation, "Allah be praised!"
The first time I heard this I had a feeling Professor E might be in the audience, an expatriate lecturer whose judgement had run amuck (Indonesia is the home of that word) in the stifling heat. I was patient and conceded that while the novel was far from dead, the form was certainly changing; and I waffled on about Sterne and Joyce and the dazed Frenchman whose novels, with unglued bindings, can be shuffled like a pack of cards. When I learned that Professor E had been a visitorâindeed, was now back in the Statesâand that I needn't worry about demoralizing his students, I denounced him. Still, the professor's academic rope-trick, his vanishing (to the applause of simple folk) along a feeble strand of literary argument that defied all logic, was a hard act to follow.
And God help the person who follows me. During one of the first lectures I gave I confessed that I knew very little about Indonesian writing; afterward, a friendly Javanese lady put a book into my hands and
said I should read it. It was titled
Six Indonesian Short Stories
(New Haven, 1968), and that night before going to sleep I read all six. Five were undistinguished, but a sixth, called "Inem", by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, had many virtues. At the lectures which followed this discovery I mentioned the writer's name, praised his vision andâbecause my mention of the man provoked only silenceârecounted his story. I thought it was strange that such a good writer should be neglected. One evening I found out the reason. I had been enthusing about him and urging the students in the audience to read him; then I asked, "Is Pramoedya still alive?"
There was an uncomfortable silence. I asked the question again. A man in the front row said, "Yes, he is alive. Butâ"
"But he is in prison," another added joylessly. "He has been there since 1966."
Not just behind bars I read later, but on the remote prison island of Buru, east of Celebes, in the Banda Sea. He had been jailed by General Suharto; in 1947 he had been jailed by the Dutch.
The writers
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