Rattawut Lapcharoensap
My friend Joy told me about Rattawut Lapcharoensap, a twenty-something writer… twenty-five when his first book, Sightseeing, was published.
I scroogled about and found
- At the Café Lovely
- In the Nineties, and
- an extract from Sightseeing
over the wire. The above is my order of appreciation and I think the inverse order chronological as well. Maybe the Nineties came after the Café Lovely.
Khun Rattawut is a very good craftsman. The content is the first thing I think of in each of these three works, but that is because his craft is so supple as to disappear. He’s young, so of course his characters and their stories are young as well. Rattawut is a serious writer and not one to put himself in a position he is not in complete command of.
Try him. You might like him. Or not. I imagine myself seeing 7 cycles in this life and I’m 63 now so I imagine as well that I will have the opportunity to read Rattawut’s stories of middle age. I’m looking forward to it. I’m glad to have read both Café Lovely and the Nineties and am grateful to my friend Joy who introduced me to them. Now I can drop by my own site and read them whenever I want.
Thanks for a very interesting post JFL.
BTW, have you read “คำพิพากษา’ (The Verdict(?) by Chart Kobjitti (ชาติ กอบจิตติ). This excellent novel (IMO)was written a while back and I think there is also an English translation (which is also very good). It was made into film and TV series as well, but I find the most recent flimic version (‘reinterpretation’) of the novel shocking(in fact I was outraged watching it– it’s totally different from my reading of the novel and watching this film makes me feel that the director is dragging a great novel down to the level of common soap opera simply to attract the mass.
Hey, Joy…
…any idea what song that might be?
Hmm..sorry JFL I ‘m not sure what song he is referring too. The last story in this collection “Cock fighter(s?)’ is quite depressing. The story is told from the point of view of a young Thai girl.
From what I can find the English version is called The Judgement, and so is the English version of the Thai film called Ai-Fak (ไอ้ฟัก), and ‘everyone liked it‘.
I’ve found torrents for both the book and film… but they both seem to be dead. I’ll keep an eye out for the book, or anything else by Chart Kobjitti. How about Time (เวลา)? Read it?
I am always eager to hear of anything else you think interesting.
I have heard of ‘Time” but unfortunately I haven’t read it yet. I read ‘The judgement” many many years ago. I think I must find time to read it again(this time I think I will read the English version of it).
I haven’t read the book, but I liked the movie Ai-Fak (maybe thats because it didn’t have subtitles:)
I thought the closing scene was a possible political statement (although that might be with the benefit of hindsight regarding recent events)
btw, I never understood why Fak didn’t just move to another region?
You don’t like subtitles? Was it dubbed? Or do you understand Thai well-enough to have understood the film? Wish I did. Wish I could find the film! Maybe just go to a video shop, eh?
You cannot understand why Fak didn’t just move on… originally (it sounds like) it was filial duty (this from a guy who has neither read the book nor seen the film), and maybe that carried over to his step-mom, who apparently needed help.
Or maybe you’re a different sort than is portrayed in the book/film… most Australians live in Australia, most Americans live in America, and most Thais live in Thailand. Most people are parochial. I remember once meeting a guy who lived in Brooklyn who had never been to Manhattan.
I’ll have to go look for this book/film.
My Thai is way below your level (virtually non existent in fact) – I prefer subtitles, but have watched the movie a few times with help from khon Thai.
IMO it’s one of the better Thai movies, along with Monrak Transistor, Citizen Dog & Tears of the Black Tiger, but will all of the movies I cannot help seeing things from my western perspective and thinking the main characters were victims of themselves as much as of their circumstances. (On reflection though, I see them as victims of their ‘conditioning’)
I think you are right about the sense of duty, and people liking to remain in their comfort zones, however if things are too uncomfortable/depressing in one’s immediate environment, I dont think it would be overwhelmingly difficult for someone to move to another region in the same country.
(although I’m also well aware of the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome, and how often it’s the person who needs to change :)
Well, I got the book, คำพิพากษา, and in just a few short years I will have read it. At this point it occurs to me that the perspective of the writer might not be that of ฟัก, really, but a sort of omniscient perspective, and that the book might really be about the village and of how it perceives the story that unfolds, and the consequences of the village’s perception and judgment for ฟัก himself. That the village is the main character, or at least the entity under observation. That would be contrary to our expectations as well, eh?
I’ll let you know what I find out… in just a few short years. I’m a rich man, I’ve time to spare.
btw, the Thai version of Ai-Fak should be available at any decent dvd rental store in Thailand.
I guess I tried an indecent vcd rental store… I’ll keep an eye out.
Interesting discussion! May I throw in a short comment?
Hobby said: “IMO it’s one of the better Thai movies, along with Monrak Transistor, Citizen Dog & Tears of the Black Tiger…”
IMO , “Ai-Fak” is not one of the better Thai movies. I rank it as a common soap opera. The novel, however, is really good, and in fact why the protagonist cannot leave his village is not beyond comprehension(for those who have read the novel). I think all he wants is to be accepted by the villagers and he never gives up hoping until near the end of the novel. Fak wants things to be just like before when he was a monk– when people respected him and loved him.
The film-maker tries to make “Ai-Fak’ a (cheap) love story with titillating scenes which are totally out of place ( and none of the cast are good actors/actresses, their acting is so awkward and pretentious!).IMO the focus of the novel is on what’s in the mind of Fak and of course of the villagers as well. It’s no way near an action film or a romance as “Ai-Fak” is! I feel if one cannot make a good film, better not try esp when the film is gonna end up destroying a great novel (sorry for being somewhat ‘blunt’ and ‘judgemental’ .:-)
By the way, JFL have you read “ปีศาจ” by Seni Saowapong?(It was translated into several langauges, English included). It’s a good political novel in my opinion, also a beautiful writing abt the life of Thai villagers in the past.Maybe it;s political message is even more important than its literary value.
Thanks again Joy! I scroogled around a bit and came up with a Bangkok Post article from 1998 discussing a list of 100 Thai books compiled by Witayakorn Chiengkul with 1,000,000฿ from he hustled from the Thailand Research Fund (10,000฿/selection).
Pisaj (1957) – Seni Saowapong’s book on a love tainted by class discrimination.
made his cut. Anything else there you like?
I haven’t actually read all of them yet although many of the books listed there are compulsory for students. I reckon “Sii Paean Din’ is pleasant to read, if you can overlook its royalist tone. Many Thais rank it highly but i think i prefer Pisaj more although it has been attacked by some renowned ‘academics’ for not living up to their literary expectations. ‘Luuk Isan’, is interesting, esp for those interested in the life of villagers in the Northeast in the old days. There is a lot of use of Issarn dialect in this work though.
Maybe it was lucky I hadn’t read the book, or it might have taken away my appreciation of the film:)
Agree it was a little titillating, but the acting seemed OK to me – how does one play a madwoman anyway?
I gave up wanting acceptance in my late teens, so perhaps that’s why I couldn’t understand (adult) Fak. I felt the same way about the ‘protagonist’ in Monrak Transistor (they both seemed like childlike to me:)
I suppose i was too harsh on my judgement of the film! Of course people have different tastes and nothing is wrong with that.
By the way, i don;’t crave for acceptance from others either. I only pay attention to those I like and like me.:-)
You may be interested in Bangkok Dan’s interview with
Marcel Barang .
Thanks, that’s a more interesting interview with Marcel than I’d read elsewhere.
His website looks refurbished too. I’d read a couple of his translations some years ago… Si Paen Din, Maliwan… now he has them available electronically.
I wrote asking for his bank account number, being plastic free.
Dear JFL,
I would love to hear your opinions about the following two poems by the Australian poet Noel Rowe. I believe there are many ways to read a poem, but as I’m not a native speaker of English, I’m not so sure if I really grasp what the poet wants to convey through his poems.
To me, the poet appears like an observant traveller in the poem ‘Songkhla’. He is quite open-minded and seems to want to go with the flow?(although he seems to find it somewhat amusing that the women in the poems are so serious about trying to make the desserts look perfect? And he seems to feel that monks are mere human (with longing and desire). Towards the end of the poem, i think he is talking about the way Thai Buddhism is intermingling with superstitious beliefs?
In the other poem ‘Gasom’, I think the poet feels sorry for Gasom who has to leave home to work as a maid. Life in the south for an Isarn girl like her seems to be lonely and she seems to be missing her life back home?
I would really appreciate it if you can kindly read the poems in yr spare time and give some comments about them. Thanks:-)
BTW, I asked American students to read the poems and they came up with so many different interpretations.
First poem: “Songkhla”
1.
On land your mother owned
you’ve built your home. Inside,
where the white walls are cool,
we are drinking tea with your cousin,
the monk, who has come to talk
about the new temple being planned.
He would like, he says, to see
Australia. His eyes are restless,
but he’s been a monk for twenty years.
“It’s a good life,” he says,
“But lonely.” Up and down the drive
that holds the hot traffic back
your dogs, Diamond and Ruby, play,
with jasmine and purple of bougainvillea
looking for their chance to share the fun.
2.
The night before the festival
the women make the offerings they’ll give
tomorrow to the monks: sticky rice wrapped
in parcels made of palm leaf, ideal for travelers.
The housekeeper shows them how
to fold, turn and tie, as their mothers used to do.
Sometimes they get it wrong – these are not beautiful enough,
everyone will know what house they came from. Beauty, here,
shows respect, so they unwrap the leaf and start again,
letting me know how old this custom is and how good
because it brings people together. Songkhla, they add,
is a peaceful place and they are happy here.
Then one of them asks, “Are you happy here?”
“Yes, “ I say: because for the moment I am,
a traveller grateful for what has been offered,
a guest whose duty is to recognise the beauty here,
to know whose house it comes from.
3.
Out the back your housekeeper builds
an open fire where, late as it is,
she’ll boil the offerings, cooking rice
until it feels the flavour of the leaf.
She’s tough. Before this she worked
construction sites, hard among the men,
with three small sons she wouldn’t give away.
Yours was the last house she helped to build.
You call her Gop (in English “frog”).
Now her sons are standing next to her.
One of them has put his hand up
to stop the smoke getting to his eyes.
4.
The dark is different here, close
as the sea that is drawing over me
a memory of warm and salty skin.
Somewhere just outside the window
an unknown bird is making prayers
I repeat beneath my deepening breath.
So I sleep undisturbed, although I know
there is a gecko clinging to the bedroom wall,
ready to crack the knuckle of the night,
although I know that out on the unceasing road
there are, there always are, the motorbikes.
Their smoke no longer makes its way into dream.
If I wake at all it will be to hear your dog,
Diamond, barking, guarding you with a sound
that rings the house, resounding like a temple bell.
5.
I will abandon myself to the rhythm of a day
that starts with drums, drums drawing buddhas
down the country roads, through the city streets,
buddhas carried on the back of old and battered utes,
buddhas lifted high on trucks made up to look like boats,
boats beautiful as pieces broken off and drifting down
from a brightly papered heaven.
I will abandon myself to the rhythm of a day
displaying everywhere on yellow flags the wheel,
the wheel of dharma being set in motion, a day
remembering Lord Buddha coming down, after the rain,
coming down to earth, coming down a stairway
made for him by the King of Heaven, coming down
into the circle his disciples made warm with waiting.
I will abandon myself to the rhythm of a day, Lak Phra,
that comes, as always, after the rain and its prayers,
drawing monks with buddhas into town, monks who seem
to me correct, pious, sleek, satisfied, disciplined and wise,
until I find the one I’m looking for, the one who’s learned
how not to care, the one who’s laughing as he scrubs
my hot head with a blessing made of sticks and water.
6.
When I’m taken (as everybody is)
to see the mermaid’s statue on the beach,
the story I’m told starts to sound familiar.
One night she came up out of the sea
(the waves are gentle here) and sat upon this rock.
All she wanted to do was wash her hair, but
a sailor – he would have been
young and handsome – saw her and fell
at once and of course hopelessly in love,
so in love he tried to catch her, to hold her,
and had he done so would probably have said,
“You are mine.” And then he would have kept her
safe from harm. But she had never seen
a thing with speech and legs, and so was frightened off,
scurrying back into the surf. Never seen again.
The sailor, silly bugger, couldn’t let her go.
He spent the rest of his life combing the seas
in case he got another chance to have her hair
run between his fingers. He never stopped
to think she might be happy where she was;
as far as he could see where she had gone
was dark; she’d only have the sharks for company.
I have my photo taken sitting just in front of her.
7.
After the house was built,
before you could come to live in it,
you had, for seven nights, to stay somewhere else.
You chose the temple where, as a boy,
you were taught that nothing lasts. Nothing does:
time is a worried cloth that hangs over the place
and cannot hold itself together.
When, in the night, there is a storm,
it can’t be kept outside:
the rain comes to make you wet, the wind
to make you cold, to make you think
of poverty until to show the heavens more just
you decide to build another temple here.
That night your dreams are bound
upon a wheel of noise.
Yet the monks in the morning say
there was no storm; what you heard
was the spirits saying they were pleased.
Second Poem : “Gasom”
Gaysom: everything she does
is slow. She doesn’t think
clearly enough, she dreams.
Here to clean the room, she stands
instead beside a wooden goose,
secretly she strokes its wings.
Issan, she came, two years ago, South
to cook and clean for foreigners.
Now she touches wood because
it takes her home again, up-country,
where the geese are real and used
to clean the fields of insects.
BTW, and in part 6, when the poet talks about the mermaid… I suppose he is making comments about human nature in general— about the desire to own/possess and to decide for others? (the sailor wants the mermaid for himself and believes the ocean is a dangerous place with nothing really interesting, but the mermaid might have a totally different views abt things)
Well this seems interesting! I’m off to the countryside this morning. I go to a village in Wiang Chai from Tuesday through Thursday each week… try to help out with English at school there… so it may be a few days before I can answer you.
I must say it is very nice to find a human being and an actual communication amongst the spam!
Thanks, Joy!
Thank you jfl. No rush at all. Enjoy the teaching!:-) In fact, it’s great you offer to teach the kids English. They have to start learning the language from an early age otherwise it could be too late.
I read the two poems and wrote my impressions. They’re ok :)
They struck me as East meets West . I like Gary Snyder in that vein. He was a kind of reverse missionary, going to Japan and studying zen and bringing it back to California. I’ve extracted a piece on language itself, from an extended essay on Zen Buddhism called The Practice of the Wild (pdf) that I like, too.
He wrote a piece I liked wherein he synthesized the strong points of each, I thought.
He’s in his eighties now, still alive and enjoying life in California.
Yes, we do have to start young. I’m afraid I haven’t been very effective, so far. But I haven’t given up… next year’s another chance. And all’s not hopeless… I’m still studying Thai in my old age :) It’s not as though I cannot learn a lot… I’ll just never be bilingual, in this life.
Thanks for sending on the poems. You know I like to read.
Thanks a lot JFL.
sorry I forgot! You prefer ‘jfl’. I suppose poems are very personal things. Different individuals read the same poem differently, and I think if a person knows the poet, this will also affect how he/she reads the poem. Also, for poems written in English, they will be much harder for non-native speakers, compared to prose.
The poems are very pleasant, Joy. It’s just that I interpreted your request as having to do with the ‘meaning’ of the poems and that led me to the poet, and the circumstances of his life together with the poems led me to wonder if he weren’t yet another westerner copping a ‘superior’ attitude to the east, in this case Thailand… and that sort of soured my opinion of the poems.
It’s not even west-east actually, it’s anyone taking such a parochial stance as I imagined here. It sounds like you knew Noel Rowe and liked him, and I’m sure he was a wonderful man. My radar is probably too acute in the case of the real or imagined hauteur I ‘divined’ in the poems.
And its only my opinion in any case… and what do I know? Not much.
I’m just now reading The Politics of Ethnopoetics (pdf)
I love that kinda talk. It’s only thirteen pages. You’ll be sorry when you finish it.
Hi jfl,
I haven’t got to read ‘The Politics of Ethnopoetics ‘ yet but will try to read it soon. Many thanks for the short stories. Will post the link to the stories on the blog soon. BTW, the following poem (also by Noel Rowe) is quite funny IMO and the message is applicable to all poets/writers i think. I will try to type up the whole poem in the future, but for now I will type only the lines i found particularly clever and funny :-)
“Great Writer Goes to War with Bluthorpe”
….
Now his favourite coffee shop has let him down. He feels
he should be reading Genesis. Instead, he has another note
from the famous poet, accusing him of bias,
of indefatigable bias, and promising everlasting banishment:
even after his (the author’s) death Bluthorpe will be allowed
no entry to his (the poet’s)works. Disturbing the single piece
of rocket, Bluthorpe ponders the possibilities. Will the poet’s wife
be posted at the gates of poetry with a flaming sword?
Or has the poet persuaded all the last avenging angels to organise
their flexi days so that at least one of them is always waiting, armed
with a critic-seeking missile? And what despair would make
a great writer commit to spending nunc stans attached to time’s unhappy
acts?
Not that it matters much. The bigger boys
have all gone to war, America’s president deciding
it is better for democracy, our way of life,
if one evil Arab die(this one isn’t played by Conrad Veidt).
A thousand and one bombs are blooming in Bangdad;
…..
Maybe ‘The Politics of Ethnopoetics” isn’t your cup of tea… :) Noel Rowe is more nearly contemporary… I saw a review of a contemporary collection of short stories by an American author at a site not known for its literary critical flair, so was interested, and found the book over the wire before reading the review itself. I hate to read reviews before reading what’s reviewed… I remember my Aunt Elizabeth and I once smiling together over a description we read of a woman “Who read reviews like they was books”… and I have met people with that same habit.
Here’s a story extracted from Daniel Woodrell’s The Outlaw Album (epub) that I like… if like is the word. I think that Christine Schofelt at the World Socialist Web Site has very aptly compared Daniel Woodrell to Flannery O’Connor.
What do you think, Joy?
Can’t really appreciate the context of the quote… I googled the poem’s title and found an essay by Rowe entitled Poetry, Theology and Emptiness (pdf)… maybe that will help ground me.
The reference to Bluthorpe therein is…
I’ll have to read the whole essay to discover what’s up. I don’t know the state of your Latin… but mine’s a little rusty… been that way for some time now, was never very sharp to begin with… I find
http://archives.nd.edu/words.html
very helpful for little phrases like nunc stans. Old priests love their Latin. Old ex-priests all the more so :) “Beware the past bearing gifts”… we all ought to take our own advice.
I always wondered how Lear got to be King, as ignorant of the basic workings of life… even to his own family… as he was. That’s the problem with being king… you don’t apply for the job, it just falls to (or on top of) you, and then everyone in the kingdom’s suffers through your on the job training, not least of all yourself.