Rewriting Lovers and Strangers Revisited

                                                     

Every few years I get this urge to rewrite the 17 stories from Lovers and Strangers Revisit­ed.  No doubt that seems silly and a waste of time for most writers since the book has already been published.  Had I not done so, it wouldn't been published a second or a third time!  Originally published in Singapore as Lovers and Strangers (Heinemann Asia,1993, Writ­ing in Asia Series), I revisited the stories in 2005 when a Malaysian lecturer requested to use the collec­tion for a course on Malaysia and Singapore literature.  The book—after consulting with an editor and going back to the original inspiration for each story, vis­it­­ing many of the ori­gin­al settings and over­hauling the stories, adding new scenes, back-stories, and endings—was repub­lish­ed as Lovers and Strangers Revisited (Silver­fish Books).

                                                   

In 2008, a third revised ver­sion with two additional stories was published by MPH, which I wrote about in a blog about publishing in Malaysia and Singapore, that later won the 2009 Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Awards and was translated into French.  To complement the MPH edition, I wrote a blog series, The Story Behind the Story, about the devel­op­ment and the sig­nif­i­­cant changes of each story that led to their various mag­azine/lit­erary journal publica­tions—often used as writ­ing/teaching aids in schools, colleges, and uni­ver­sities.  The main char­acter from the story “Neigh­bors”  was featured by an expat teacher in the New Straits Times, “Are You Mrs. Koh?” 

So why revise the stories again?  I’ve always felt that Lovers and Strangers Revisited, based on its publishing track record, deserves a wider audience both inside and outside of Ma­lay­sia/Singapore.  For example, the collection is still available in French by Editions GOPE as Trois autres Malaisie.  In fact, the publisher will be exhibiting the collection along with his other Malaysian titles at a French book fair in Kuala Lumpur on 24 March 2024, which should translate into more sales!.

                                                          

So far, thanks to rewriting those published stories, the individual stories have been published 83 times in 12 coun­tries (12 stories in USA and UK); taught in Malaysian secondary school literature for six years (“Neigh­bors”), as well as in Cana­da and USA (Ohio University); and several stories have been taught for years in various Ma­lay­sian universities and private col­leges.  Film stu­dents at Ohio Univer­sity found the original collection in their library, came to Malay­sia, and filmed, “Home for Hari Raya.”  

Maybe because of this persistent belief that these stories (individually and as a col­lec­tion) are still relevant—they are still being taught in Malaysia as of May 2023 and are still being published in the USA (“The Stare” appeared in Thema, Spring 2021,and "On Fridays" will be out in 2025).  As I began editing again (clarifying details, cutting need­less words or phrases, tightening the writing), I could see significant improvements in each story.

Also, the process feels like a trip down memory lane, both as a writer and as an expatriate living in Malay­sia.  “Mat Salleh,” for example, was my first published story, a non­fiction short story, 28 January 1986 (New Straits Times) and my first published story in the UK (My Weekly).  "Teh-O in K.L." was my first published short story is USA (Aim). The other stories, all published but one, are all loosely based on my early ex­peri­ences or on my ob­­ser­va­tions of kam­pong and modern-day life in Malaysia.  Not all the memories are good—a failed mar­riage for me (“Dark Blue Threads”) and a neighbor com­mitting suicide (“Neighbors”); nevertheless, these stories are my Malaysian roots, so to speak, having lived in Penang as an expatriate for twen­ty-one years and taught creative writing at USM for ten years, before moving to Sarawak to grow new roots.

The real payoff, of course, is that these revised stories now have a chance for future publica­tions in the US or UK or Australia or elsewhere—the main reason I do it.  Or the collection, fingers crossed, is republish­ed to a wider audience.  Or the play that I added as a bonus, “One Drink Too Many,” a comedy adapted from the short story, “Neigh­bors,” is produced in Malaysia or Singapore.  Preferably, all three!

What helps me to keep the faith in Lovers and Strangers Revisited (and the individual stories) is rereading the MPH back-of-the-book reviews and other review snippets that I include while marketing the collection to agents and other publishers: 

MPH Publisher’s synopsis and reviews from the back of the book:

In this collection of 17 stories, Robert Raymer portrays the traditional in modernity, the unexpected in relationships both familiar and strange, the recurring theme of race even as contemporary Malaysia finds ways to understand its multicultural milieu.

In the title story, a selfish writer gets more than he bargained for when two former lovers haunt him in more ways than one. In another story, a man's loneliness turns into obses­sion when he shares a taxi ride with a Malay woman. A Clark Gable lookalike is a bar­rister wannabe with a shocking secret and gossipy neighbours reveal more about them­selves than the man who commits suicide. Elsewhere, expats cross the border to Had Yai to experience a good bargain in the Thai flesh trade before going home to their wives in America.

In this republished edition of Lovers and Strangers Revisited, Raymer's snapshots of scenes from various walks of life provide an insider-outsider view on love, family and culture, and urges a second look at ourselves in the mirror of self-awareness.

Praise for Lovers and Strangers Revisited

'Raymer not only writes from his own viewpoint as a foreigner and observer, but also delves into the minds of desperate Malay woman, a young Indian girl, an adulterous Chinese couple, and an old Chinese man who survived the Japanese occupation... He has an uncanny ability to hold a mirror up to the people of his adopted country, not as a for­eigner but as one of us. His stories are full of personalities that you know, you work with them, or live next door to them, or eavesdrop on them at the kopi tiam.' The Borneo Post

'This account ("On Fridays") of a crammed ride with strangers in a taxi may well stand as a metaphor of Raymer's own experience of living among Malaysians... He imbues each of the characters in his stories with a realistic, genuinely believable voice even as he tempers it with the valuable perspective of an observer.' New Straits Times

'Raymer gives a lushly and rich and multi-layered rendition of the Malaysian way of life as colored and influenced by his own experiences from his twenty years as an expat here... These stories are some of the few authentic portrayals of the inner workings and inner plays of the average Malaysian's life in all of its robustness and unique cultural settings.' The Expat

A little ego boost for sure, something all writers need now and then.  Also, it’s good to touch base, like stretching before exercising.  Awfully glad I rewrote those stories.  Now that 2023 is over (having rewritten eight books—six novels and two collections of stories—in two years), I’m ready to embark on new writing projects for 2024 and beyond... 

—Borneo Expat Writer

 My interviews with other Malaysian writers:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize. 

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey

Preeta Samarasan, author of Evening is the Whole Day, finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009. 

Chuah Guat Eng, author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change.

Malachi Edwin Vethamani, author of Complicated Lives and Life Happens.

 

Lovers and Strangers Revisited - 20 Years

Near the end of 2013 a friend from Penang sent me a Christmas card and mentioned that she was teaching my short story “Mat Salleh” from my collection Lovers and Strangers Revisited for her reading class at UiTM.  I then realized that 2013 was the 20^th anniversary of the original publication of Lovers and Strangers (Heinemann Asia, 1993).  Although I’m posting this a little late, I have a strong feeling I haven’t heard the end of these stories for years to come.

 

 “Mat Salleh” was the first short story from the collection published in The New Straits Times.  I sold it again a few months later to My Weekly in the UK, and then "The Future Barrister" won third prize in the 1988 Star contest and "Sister's Room" third place in a contest in the US.  I knew I was onto something.  The 17 short stories set mostly in Malaysia have so far been published 83 times in twelve countries, the collection won the 2009 Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award and has been translated into French.  (Previously, three stories had been translated into Japanese.) 

In 2005, a colleague at Universiti Sains Malaysia where I taught creative writing informed me that he was not only teaching my story “On Fridays” in his post colonial course on Singaporean and Malaysian Literature but also planning to teach the collection in the following semester.  Since the book had gone out of print, I contacted Silverfish Books (I was the editor for their Silverfish New Writing 4) and they agreed to re-publish the book.

Having revised the stories numerous times since its initial publishing, I wanted something more; so I revisited (and overhauled) each story—adding new openings, new endings, new back stories, even doubling several stories in length, which I wrote about in the introduction and then added the word ‘revisited’ to the title.

The first book launch in 1993 was organized by Penang Players (I was the stage manager for several productions and critiqued many of their plays prior to their performance.)  Penang Players not only sponsored the book launch they also read extracts from four stories and did a delightful play reading of One Drink Too Many, a comedy that I wrote based on the short story “Neighbours”, thus turning a simple book launch into a literary event attended by over 100 people.

In 2007, after moving to Sarawak, the Malaysian part of Borneo, I encountered some distribution problems, so I agreed to buy out the last of the stock from Silverfish and switched publishers to MPH (2008), followed by another round of editing and adding two stories.  I also created the blog series, The Story Behind the Story, for each of the 17 stories, separating fact from fiction and noting the significant changes that led to their various publications.

Here is the publication breakdown by story with a link to each The Story Behind the Story, except for "Moments," dropped for the revisited collection. *Updated: the total published stories now stand at 83.

14 – On Fridays
8 – Neighbors/Aftermath
7 – Teh-O in KL
7 – Sister’s Room
7 – The Future Barrister
6 – Dark Blue Thread/The Watermark
5 – Waiting
4 – The Station Hotel/Joking
4 – Smooth Stones
4 – Symmetry
5 – *The Stare (added to Silverfish version, replacing “Moments”)
3 – Only in Malaysia (added to MPH version)
3 – Transactions in Thai (added to MPH version)
2 – Home for Hari Raya (and also filmed by Ohio University)
2 – Mat Salleh
1 – Lovers and Strangers
0 – Watcher (blogged it)
1 – *Moments (dropped after original Lovers and Strangers collection)
83

“Neighbours” (about neighbors gossiping over a neighbor’s suicide) was then selected by the Malaysian Education Ministry to be part of the sixth cycle of reading texts for SPM literature for Form 5 students for 2008-2010.  Three times it has been renewed and will be be taught in selected schools through 2015. The Malaysian English Language Teaching Association (MELTA) also had an online thread for “Neighbours” with over 20,500 hits and 30 pages of comments (around 290) before they archived it then took it down.  Denis Harry even wrote an article for the New Straits Times about the story’s main character, a busybody, titled, “Are You Mrs. Koh?”

Over the years many students have contacted me about that story via my website or facebook. When I mentioned to one student whose class was adapting “Neighbours” into a play that I would be attending the Popular Bookfest in Kuala Lumpur the following week for Tropical Affairs, nominated for the 2010 Reader’s Choice Award, her teacher, Christina Chan organized a field trip bringing about a dozen students to meet me.  She said it was a rare opportunity for students in Malaysia to meet the writer of a story that they were currently studying (most had either passed away or lived overseas).   

Robert Raymer with Christina Tan and her students at Bookfest 2010

In addition to the collection itself (stories from the original collection were first taught at a high school in Canada), nine stories that I know of have been taught numerous times at several universities and private colleges throughout Malaysia (along with The Story Behind the Story, a handy aide for both teachers and students I’ve since learned).  In 2012, two of the stories “Mat Salleh” and “Home for Hari Raya” were even taught in the U.S. at Ohio University in their Southeast Asia Studies program (where I had the honor to skype with the students)

.

The Lovers and Strangers collection has been instrumental in other aspects of my life.  In fact, it helped me to land my first teaching job at Universiti of Sains Malaysia where for six years I taught two courses on writing and then created a new course on creative writing that I taught for four years before introducing the materials to Universiti of Malaysia Sarawak and taught it there for another three years.  (I had used Lovers and Strangers Revisited as a calling card while giving a creative writing workshop for MELTA in Kuching.)

Back in 2006 the collection Lovers and Strangers Revisited (and unfortunately the author) was even psychoanalyzed by a Malaysian academic at a short story collection conference in the UK.  As a writer, it’s imperative to develop a thick skin; it also comes in handy for reviews. Thanks to LSR, I’ve been interviewed several times in magazines, newspapers, and online.  I was even put on national TV along with my friend Georgette Tan, who earlier had given me a nice review in The Borneo Post.  Together we appeared on Kuppa Kopi with Sharnaz Sabera.

Georgette Tan, Robert Raymer and Sharnaz Sabera

In 2007, in reaction to a blog post by the Malaysian author Lydia Teh about publishing books in Malaysia, I posted a rather lengthy comment based on my experiences of publishing this collection in both countries, then I used it as the first posting for my own blog, Borneo Expat Writer.  Then in 2009, as part of publicity for LSR, I had been asked to write a short story for Going Places, Malaysia Airlines in-flight magazine for their August Merdeka (Independence) edition along with Lydia Teh and Tunku Halim, both successful authors in Malaysia whom I had yet to meet.   

Accepting the challenge, I quickly came up with an idea and an opening for “Merdeka Miracle”.  The three of us furiously sent emails back and forth between Kuching, Kuala Lumpur and Paris and London (where Tunku was travelling with his family) to craft a first draft and then revised it daily, about twenty times, to meet the tight deadline.  Later, at the same K.L. Bookfest where I met the students and their teacher, I finally got to meet Lydia Teh.

Lydia Teh and Robert Raymer and "The Merdeka Miracle"

I’m sure the success and the publicity surrounding Lovers and Strangers Revisited, which had just won the Popular Reader’s Choice Award, was largely responsible for me being named one of “50 Expatriates You Should Know” by Expatriate Lifestyle (January 2010)—quite an honor since most of the other expats were diplomats, celebrities, or leaders in their industry and mostly living in Kuala Lumpur, while I taught creative writing, gave workshops, and wrote books in Sarawak.

Robert Raymer standing between nominated writers Yvonne Lee and Adeline Loh.

In 2011 Editions GOPE translated Lovers and Strangers Revisited into French and published it as Trois autres Malaisie, which means "Three Other Malaysia".   Then Ohio University School of Arts, Media & Studies turned my story “Home for Hari Raya” into a film, shot in Malaysia in December 2012/January 2013.  The 24-minute film can now be seen on YouTube.

 

Twenty years has gone by quickly, but the stories in that original Lovers and Strangers collection have come a long way since 1993.  And for 2014, its 21^st year, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.
          —Borneo Expat Writer

*Update: Rewriting Lovers and Strangers Revisited

                    

                                        And: Trust the Novel Writing (and rewriting) Process. 

Here are links to four of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Booktalk on 7 May, at MPH The Spring, Kuching

                                                                  
Please excuse the really short notice, but I have a Booktalk on Saturday, 7 May, 3-4 at MPH The Spring in Kuching.  In addition to autographing all three of my books Spirit of Malaysia, Tropical Affairs, and Lovers and Strangers Revisited, I will be giving a short talk.  The title and subject: The World is Yours—Bring the world to you as a travel writer, or tell the world your own story through creative non-fiction, or create your world through fiction!

Booktalks in bookstores, I have to admit, can be a funny animal, because as a speaker, you never know what to expect.  In recent years I’ve given about a dozen such booktalks inside bookstores, which are often the hardest place to speak because you’re never quite sure who your audience is.  Rarely do you have a proper sit down audience (thankfully MPH The Spring finds a way to create one by shifting some of their aisles around).  My last one in Singapore, I hardly had anyone directly in front of me because the space was too narrow with a display of my books in the middle.  Instead, people were spread out on both sides, so I was forced to swivel back and forth to make eye contact.

At other stores, I’d have people roaming all around me looking for, what else, books!  They’ll also be juggling books and/or tugging at spouses or children to get their attention.  One friend even dropped by with a baby stroller and she wasn’t even married; just happened to be babysitting her niece or nephew that day. 

At Silverfish Books in KL, they have a separate room for talks, which makes it ideal, and with months of advance publicity through their monthly online newsletter.  They know how to make it into an event that people plan in advance to attend.  At MPH, they have a talent for making signs and displays.  One I even had framed and another I brought back from Singapore for my office.  It states: Calling All Fans of Robert Raymer! My wife, bless her heart, laughed.

For publicity, I usually announce booktalks months in advance on my website, but lately I’ve been rather slow updating it.  Some people may hear about it from a flyer or an in-store promotion.  Some hear about it from a Facebook announcement, an email reminder, or an SMS.  Most just happen to be in the store at around that time, or were passing by the store and noticed me standing near the entrance speaking into a microphone.  When I was in Singapore last year, midway through my talk, we actually had a little crowd going just outside the store. 

In some stores people sit or stand right in front, while others stand pretty far back, though in my direct line of vision.  Some listen attentively from an aisle or two away, while others lend an ear from wherever they happen to be, while perusing a book, often out of eyesight or even somewhere behind me.  Others pop in and out of the store, pausing for a few minutes to listen, and then hurry off to their next appointment.  One Australian gentleman was so eager to hear me speak in Singapore he came a day early and wondered where everyone was.  Thankfully, he came back the following day.

It’s relatively easy to talk to an audience who are sitting or standing in front of you, but not so easy in stores when people are roaming all around looking for books. Sometimes when you start out, you really don’t have an audience per se, though potentially you do if you can catch their attention.  Those are the times I wonder, if I just start talking will people think I’m some madman rambling in a bookstore, or will they start to gather round and form an audience?  Or will they shush me because they're trying to read! If you’re holding a microphone, that’s always an attention getter, but there have been times, I admit, I’ve been tempted to announce, “Your attention please, does anyone want to buy a book?  It comes with a free autograph!”

One time in Penang, when I had over-scheduled myself with a couple of workshops, two separate talks and a booktalk all in the space of two days, I was actually relieved when I had no audience at all.  For the first time I could just relax and mingle and casually talk to a few stray people who just happened by about my books.  Even managed to sell a few.  Then my son showed up an hour late—teenagers—and asked, “How did it go?”

By the way, if you’re free on Saturday and you happen to be in Kuching and at The Spring at around 3, do drop by.  If not, I'll try to catch you later in some other bookstore, or feel free to check out one of my books or any other book that may interest you... 
         Borneo Expat Writer 

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

Finding Stories in Your Backyard

  

My father sent me a book.  His book.  No, he didn’t write it, but he’s in it.  A lot.  He even got a chance to sign autographs, and they posted him on YouTube!   When the book came out he was 81 years old.  It’s the first time he sort of felt like a celebrity.  I’m happy for him.  Seeing him on YouTube made my day.  I called him up and had to explain to him what it was.  He had no idea; doesn’t own a computer. Doesn’t understand how it’s possible that I saw a video of him a day after I finished reading the book. (I contacted the author, went to her website and clicked on it.) But that’s okay.

The author of They Flew Proud, Jane Gardner Birch, found her story in her own backyard.  Basically it’s a book about her father, but oh, it’s much more than that!  In the acknowledgements she wrote: “Until three years ago, I had no knowledge of the Civilian Pilot Training Program nor did I know the Boards existed (the names of those like my father who learned to fly solo from May 17, 1944 to July 17 1948).  All I had was one photo of my father in a military uniform and a child’s memory of an airport.  That doesn’t make a book…”

But she took the story of her father and made it a part of an even bigger story, the 1940’s in the US, about the men and women in small towns who not only learned how to fly but also who became the backbone of this country for the sacrifices they made to support the war efforts by working in factories and by going off and fighting in World War Two, a time that so many of us know so little about.

In the forward it states: "...Now we have Jane Birch’s They Flew Proud, a crisply told account of her father, Gardner Birch, his fellow pilots, and their involvement in the CPTP-WTS course of training at Grove City College, in Grove City, a small town in western Pennsylvania. Ms. Birch has done a remarkable job of piecing the story together so many years after the fact. She deserves a great deal of credit for what obviously has been a labor of love, a resounding tribute to her father and his love of aviation, and a reawakening of formative childhood memories." 

Grove City, Pennsylvania is where I was born.  Grove City College is where my grandparents and my brother attended.  Grove City is also the setting for my short story “Waiting for My Father to Crash” that I wrote after my first visit home after three years of living in Malaysia, published in both Silverfish New Writings 5 and 25 Malaysia Short Stories, Best of Silverfish New Writing 2001-2005.  Basically it’s about my father who nearly crashed his plane, a Piper Cherokee.  Four years later, my father did crash that plane.  The engine died, and he knew he was going to crash but he was smart enough to find a back road and was lucky enough no cars were on it, and he brought it down onto that road.  He was thrown out of his seat and a wing was torn off.  But at age 65, he was able to walk away from that crash.  He never flew again.

But now he is, thanks to this book, at least in my memory of all those flights that he took me with him, including the time we flew into the airshow at Oskkosh, the biggest aviation event in the US. (Check out the photo of the author Jane Gardner Birch at Oshkosh with, yes, that really is Harrison Ford.

They Flew Proud even went onto win the Combs Gates Award, which is presented by the National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF), located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, to honor a project which best promotes or preserves America's air and space heritage.  Not bad for a book that started out with a few questions about her father. 

Thank you, Jane Gardner Birch.  By writing about your father, you wrote about my father, too.  You wrote about a lot of fathers and mothers who learned how to fly and how to survive WWII.

So what stories are in your back yard?  I bet if you looked around you might find something that raises a few questions in your mind.  Who knows, if you did a little research you might find an even bigger story, and possibly a book that only you can write.

*Here’s a link to the other pilot interviews including a longer segment of my father, Bill Raymer 

** This is a link to another story involving my father, the day his own father was killed by lightning.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

The Outsider Within: The Expatriate Writer in Malaysia – Medwell Journals

Medwell Journals, a scientific research publishing company, has just published Jamaluddin Aziz and M.M. Raihanah’s article “The Outsider Within: The Expatriate Writer in Malaysia”, a psychological or Freudian analysis of Lovers and Strangers Revisited. 

This article or paper was originally titled “Masculinised (American) Eyes, Feminised (Malaysian) Dreams? A Psychoanalytic Study of Robert Raymer’s Collection of Short Stories in Lovers and Strangers Revisited” and presented at a short story conference in Lancaster, UK in 2006.  Later in Malaysia, it was posted on a USM website.

When I first blogged about this in Being Re-blogged, Psychoanalyzed, and Nominated two years ago, I stated that this was quite an honor for a writer based in Malaysia, writing about Malaysia with a Malaysian publisher, and even wondered if the short story conference presentation was a first for a collection of short stories written by a writer from or living in Malaysia.

In the blog, I wrote:  “If you’re a critic and you’re looking for symbols, phallic or otherwise, you’re going to find them. Whether they’re true symbols, consciously or subconsciously placed by the writer, or the critic groping at straws to support his preconceived theories is anyone’s guess . . . .Although I questioned some conclusions (is an umbrella used on a rainy day, as in “On Fridays”, a phallic symbol or merely an umbrella used on a rainy day? Or is a cockroach, like in “Symmetry”, remotely sexual?) I had an enjoyable banter with the critic, a former colleague at USM, who gamely responded to my queries and my own criticisms of his criticism."

I only saw the paper after it was presented, and for me, it was tough to get through.  It seemed rather personal, and I didn’t particularly like some of the conclusions being drawn.  Five years later, I still have qualms about it, yet I do feel honored that Jem took the trouble to analyze my work (he could’ve chosen someone else) and present it in the UK.  In the long run, what really matters is not the criticism, but the actual writing itself.  I hope.

I guess you can’t really call yourself a writer if someone doesn’t find fault with your writing somewhere. When you put your work out there, whether in book form, in literary journals, magazines, newspapers or blogs, you have to expect some criticism, or comments regarding your competency as a writer.  There’s not a famous, universally acclaimed, award-winning writer out there that hasn’t been trashed in a review or had his or her sanity (or sexuality) called into question, or his life’s work picked over by some vultureistic graduate student. 

It’s all part of the writing game like developing thick skin.  Remember, it's only one person’s opinion.  Think of your favorite singer or band, favorite movie or TV show, favorite and most-loved book of all time, and there’s going to be someone out there who absolutely hates it for a perfectly valid reason.

I do wish that this article, in the five years since it was written (though the journal may have held onto for a couple of years), had been updated by using the MPH (2008) version of Lovers and Strangers Revisited instead of Silverfish version (2005). Some of the examples cited had been edited out of the collection, and all the stories have been heavily revised, and that was three years ago.  In fact, I just revised them all again to prepare for the French translation. 

Still, it can be interesting (even amusing sometimes) to see how others view you.  As a writer, as an expatriate, you’re always going to attract attention and people will judge you, often through their own pre-conceived ideas.  For example, when an aunt from Sarawak came to Penang to visit my future wife (and to check me out for the family), we took her to a nice restaurant and I drank ice-tea. 

My aunt told everyone back in Sarawak that I drank beer, so when I made my first visit to Sarawak, everywhere I went they kept offering me beer and were puzzled when I declined.  I don’t drink beer.  We all had a good laugh over this, including the aunt, and she had been eating with us!  But instead of looking at the evidence (there’s ice and a lemon slice in my ice tea), in her mind, expats drink beer, therefore I drink beer.  I suspect that some of this was going on in this analysis of my short stories and by extrapolation, me.  It’s human nature.

But when it’s published in an academic journal and made available online and it pops up on a random Google search of my name, it’s out there…and those who don’t know me personally or have never read any of my work, this may well be their first impression of this writer.  First impressions, as we all know, are very hard to change...

So to help offset or balance this out, I’ll add a couple of links to other views of my collection, including the very same Silverfish version, which at the time I was very happy with and got a lot of good reviews including in The Star and cited in the Medwell piece). 

The fact that the book, including the original Lovers and Strangers (Heinemann 1993), has been published three times, won the 2009 Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award, been taught (as a collection and individual stories) in numerous universities and private colleges, high schools, and SPM literature, and it's getting translated into French, means it can’t be too bad.  The individual stories have also been published 81 times in 12 countries (15 of 17 stories set in Malaysia - so they must be fairly accurate).  

And an umbrella on a rainy day, in my opinion and as the author who wrote “On Fridays”,  it is still an umbrella. . . .Read the beginning of the story and you be the judge.  Of course, if some French graduate student or lecturer takes me to task on that umbrella issue, I won’t have a clue as to what they’re saying, and that may not be a bad thing.  I’d rather just focus on the writing.

*Update, the 20th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I