Tunku Halim
Tunku Halim believes
in mentorship. “It would be good for experienced writers to work with those who
are just starting out,” he says, adding that local publishers may be able to
act as “networking vehicles for all writers”, putting published and experienced
writers in touch with those who are still aspiring to the craft. Tunku Halim says that his books sold well not
because of the stories that he wrote managed to attract the readers or the
quality of writing, but because of
stunning cover and strong publicity. “The Rape of Martha Teoh” and “Other
Chilling Stories” sold very quickly, due to its particularly sexy cover. The
second imprint had a more sedate one and hence sales slowed. BloodHaze: 15
Chilling Tales also shot off the shelves. The cover was mediocre but the press
coverage was fantastic.”
K.S. Maniam
Born Subramaniam Krishnan in 1942, K.S. Maniam is of
Hindu, Tamil and working-class background. He was born in Bedong, Kedah
and he is the descendant of his grandmother who had migrated from India to Malay Peninsula around 1916. Maniam was
raised in hospital compound, where his father was the hospital “dhobi” or
laundryman, and would accompany his parents to their second job of
rubber-tapping in a nearby estate so that he became familiar at first-
hand with the lifestyle of the Tamil
estate workers there.
During his stay in England from 1962-1964, he attended the
Malayan Teachers College in Wolverhampton, residing at Brinsford
Lodge where his fellow-lodgers were ethnically-mixed, an experience he
found positive on the whole. As Maniam
remembers:
“The Brinsford
Lodge society was a truly Malaysian
society in that
everyone, irrespective of his or her race
and culture,
shared a common spirit of living together.
There was
hardly any racial prejudice or cultural
tolerance.
For a would-be
writer this experience was not only necessary
but vital for
it allowed him entry into other personalities,
cultures and
languages.”
In my opinion, what Maniam means from the above excerpt is
that people in Brinsford Lodge were good.
They respected each other regardless of their races. They tolerated with each other and there was hardly
any racial prejudice among them. Maniam feels that such an experience is
beneficial for him as a writer. This experience has enabled him to understand
better about the others’ personalities, cultures and languages.
Besides writing about the plight of Indian community ,
Maniam also writes within the realist genre, though he is not afraid of stylistic experimentation. Dreams and
flashbacks frequent his prose. In “In A Far Country”, Maniam uses
flashbacks in Rajan’s character. “ It
was that blade of light I saw one evening which has brought me to this
pass.” In his first published story, “Ratnamuni”,
he employs interior dramatic monologue to convey the whole story, and he
repeats this technique in the one-act play “The Sandpit”(1987).
Works cited
Lee, Daphne. “ My Star Interview: You Are Got To Start
Somewhere.” 1 May. 2007.Web. 24 March.2014. <http://tunkuhalim.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/publicity-in-the-media-my-interview/>.
Wicks, Peter(2000). Malaysian Landscapes in the fiction of
K.S. Maniam. Journal of Commonwealth and PostColonial Literature, 7(2),73-87.
No comments:
Post a Comment