A case for literary contamination - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 18: In the Neighbourhood
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Jane Camens
YET THE LITERATURE BOARD OF THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL this year ceased funding an Asia literature touring program managed by Asialink, which bills itself as ‘Australia's leading centre for the promotion of public understanding of the countries of Asia and of Australia's role in the region'. Asialink consequently had to stand down its literature program manager, so no one at the centre now focuses on literary cultural exchange. The Council's rationale for stopping the program was twofold. Asia is not one of its current priorities (Europe and North America are), and Asialink failed to sell in rights of enough Australian writers to Asian publishers. The first of these reasons is short-sighted, and the second unrealistic, given the nature of much of Asia's publishing industry. Rights need to be bought from Asia.
For these reasons, I read with cynical amusement Prime Minister John Howard's comment last year in Ho Chi Minh City that, ‘Australia has ... done a very good job of reaching out to the region, of seeing herself involved in the affairs and the future of the region and sharing the hopes and aspirations of the hundreds of millions of people that comprise the Asia Pacific region, of which we will forever be a part.' His statement contradicts observations by long-standing Foreign Minister Alexander Downer who, at an earlier conference in Melbourne, said that Australia's distrust of Indonesia was born mainly out of ‘complete ignorance'. We either share the region's hopes and desires, or have little clue what people elsewhere in our region care about. In my view, we have hardly begun to touch fingertips with region, at least in terms of literary engagement. Indeed, we seem to be going backwards.
Asialink still provides paid opportunities for Australian writers to reside for short periods in parts of Asia. I would like to see more Australians living and working in Asia, particularly writers and academics teaching literature, exchanging places for a time with Asian writers and scholars who can introduce Australians to their literature. I would like to see more Australians learning Asian languages, immersing themselves in the mythologies of Asia, meeting local writers and other thinkers, becoming familiar with different realities, and eventually writing stories. I would also like to read more stories about Australia written by people from Asia so I can see myself, my countrymen and women fresh through other eyes. Looking at ourselves in the mirror of our own literature is an insular way of perceiving who we are. Looking through other eyes, we may see differently.
Australia is changing, which is what a vibrant, living culture must do. We are continuing to develop, grow and create a new, unique identity out of multiple identities and influences we absorb, adapt and adopt. My sense is that people who have crossed bridges into other cultures can take others with them. Asian Australian writers do this. Chinese-Australian writer Ouyang Yu is described by literary critic Wenche Ommundsen as typifying ‘the new generation of post-colonial writers and intellectuals who can write with detachment about the forces of globalisation and their impact on East-West relations and at the same time acknowledge their complex and often painful impact on their own life and work.'
Yet Yu told me he has virtually given up trying to publish in Australia. ‘My first published novel, which won the prize for innovation at the Adelaide Writers' Festival, received twenty-nine rejections, including one from the publisher who eventually published it. I'm going to say, sorry, this is too hard. The only hope is to be published posthumously. Some publishers say, "Even though we find your work engaging and engrossing ..." that sort of thing, they quote the size of the market – the estimated readership of work here – as a reason why they won't take the publishing risk. The size of the market holds them back from publishing anything experimental. Do they want to publish toilet paper, something used by millions of people? Even if there's one reader, there's still a market. It's not just the money we mind about. We [Asian-Australian writers] want to reach this culture but that's being rejected. It makes them uncomfortable or challenges their notion of the way things are or should be. What do they mean there isn't a market? I want something to read that stimulates the mind. There are people around who like to think.'
Small publishers tend to be the ones who take the risks. Veronica Sumegi of Brandl & Schlesinger eventually published Yu's first novel. ‘We're constantly looking for Asian authors,' she said, but stressed – as others did – that was difficult to find good manuscripts. Ivor Indyk's publishing house, Giramondo, took a long shot with Brian Castro's Shanghai Dancing, which had trouble finding a publisher because of its form, but went on to sell around five thousand copies and win both the Victorian and NSW Premier's Awards for Fiction. In Castro's view, earlier books set in Asia that found Australian publishers – including, presumably, Christopher Koch's work, Robert Drewe's A Cry in the Jungle Bar, and Blanch d'Alpuget's Turtle Beach – were narratives about Australians experiencing Asia, not the other way around, which Castro considers more interesting. ‘Twenty years ago a good cook book or garden book enabled publishers to take a risk. Now publishers, particularly multinationals, are beholden to their masters in New York or London. The graph favours global writing ...'
In an essay in Australian Humanities Review, Castro wrote, ‘The situation currently is that Australia needs Asia more than Asia needs it.' He could be writing specifically about Australian literature, but generalises. ‘While the West seems to have run out of ideas in the creative and cultural fields, relying on images of sex and violence, reviving old canons and dwindling to parody and satire in what can already be seen as one of the dead ends of postmodernism, the Asian region is alive with opportunities for a new hybridisation, a collective intermix and juxtaposition of styles and rituals which could change the focus and dynamics of Australian art, music and language.'
With a little more imagination, courage and some investment in the future, Australian publishers and arts bodies who support the ‘contaminated' or ‘hybridised' writing now coming out of Asia, or influenced by the region, could resuscitate interest in Australian literature – a new generation of literature from Australia. ♦