A writer on writing

I love buying biographies of writers or their autobiographies and enjoy reading about their lives. While these books reveal quite a bit about the writers' psyche and what drives them to write, the books don't of course delve into the mechanics of writing. In other words, how they write. For this, one will need to get books by writers specifically on writing - and I have two of these on my shelf.

One is Stephen King's On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft (click on this link for a comprehensive review and summary). I have to admit that I haven't read any of his books but he is a prolific writer and a successful one at that, with more than thirty international bestsellers. As such, even if his genre is not my cup of tea, it doesn't mean that I can't learn from him.

In this book, King writes as if he's talking to the reader. He is rather modest in his First Foreword (there are three, albeit short ones), asking himself, "Why did I want to write about writing? What made me think I had anything worth saying?" And then he gives his answer, "... someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn't always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken, but I'm not sure anyone wants to know how he made it." Nonetheless, he asserts that he does "care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it's done." 

Raised by his single-parent mother, after his father deserted the family when King was just two years old and his brother four, he led a rather disjointed life. He had a lively imagination as a child and loved to write from a young age. When he was thirteen, he sent a story to a science fiction magazine but it was rejected. The first story that was published, I Was a Teenage Grave-robber, appeared in a horror fanzine. But this didn't happen too often then. He says, "By the time I was fourteen... the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. By the time I was sixteen I'd begun to get rejection slips with handwritten notes a little more encouraging than the advice to stop using staples and start using paperclips." Yes, King's book is rather humorous, making it an easy and fast read.

The first part of the book is autobiographical but it gives us an idea of King's love for writing from a young age. He even edited his high school newsletter and produced his own four-sheet The Village Vomit. As the latter contained fictional, but not necessarily kind, stories about the faculty, it got him into trouble. The upside was that it led to the counselor getting him a stint with the town's weekly newspaper "to turn 'my restless pen' into more constructive channels." This was where he learnt his first lesson from the paper's editor: "When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story." It wasn't an easy road to success but he persevered. 

In the second part, King explores what writing is and he begins with this: "It's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. It you can take it seriously, we can do business. It you can't or won't. it's time for you to close the book and do something else." He then shares his 'toolbox' with the reader. 

The most important tool is vocabulary - "the bread of writing". You shouldn't, he advises, be "looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes... Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you'll never use 'emolument' when you mean 'tip'." The next important one is grammar: "One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one's native language in conversation and reading or one does not... if you don't know, it's too late. And those incapable of grasping grammar... will have little or no use for a book like this, anyway." After that come elements of style (he cites Strunk and White's book, about which I have posted on this blog, many times). These tools must be mastered for good writing. 

According to King, "while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one." How? "... read a lot and write a lot", he says. "There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut." He goes on, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." 

Then there is the actual writing. It's good to be disciplined about this. King works to a schedule: "Mornings belong to whatever is new - the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time." And he writes every day if he's on a project, feeling that if he doesn't, "the characters begin to stale off in my mind... the tale's narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story's plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade." He is driven to write, saying that "for me, not working is the real work." 

He sets an objective when he writes: "I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book - something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh... only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words." 

It's also important to the writing process to have a definite place to write. "Until you get one," King asserts, "you'll find your new resolution to write a lot hard to take seriously... The space can be humble... and it needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business... If possible, there should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there's a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall." 

King's other nuggets of advice:

• Write what you like,  then imbue it with life and make it unique. 
• Don't be too worked up about the story's plot because that can take away spontaneity.
• The situation comes first and the characters come after that. Let the characters do things their way.
• Good description is essential but it's a learned skill that comes from reading and writing a lot.
• Don't over-describe: "Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's... locale and texture are much more important to the reader's sense of actually being in the story than any physical description of the players."
• Well-crafted dialogue is crucial in defining characters and the key to writing good dialogue is honesty about the words coming out of the characters' mouths. 
• Characters shouldn't be one-dimensional.

As he gives out his advice, King draws upon his own works and that of others as examples. Towards the end of the book, he points out that "writing isn't about making money, getting famous... it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your book, and enriching your own life, as well."

The journey of a lifetime

On the Muslim date of 8 Zulhijjah 1433H, which will coincide with Wednesday 24 October 2012, Muslim pilgrims from all over the world will be in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, to begin the Hajj, a religious duty required of those who are able once in their lifetime. Hubby and I had been privileged to be amongst the guests of Allah in 2010, during which my good friend Yasmin Gan Abdullah and her husband also performed their pilgrimage. After returning home, Yasmin and I collaborated to produce a book of our experiences. By Allah's grace, another good friend, Noorshin Ng Abdullah, and her son Kamil are in the Holy Land at this moment. Alhamdulillah.

I have always been fascinated by personal Hajj stories, particularly of people who converted to Islam, and have a number of books on my shelves.

Michael Wolfe's book, The Hadj published in 1993, begins with how he came to Islam. He was born into an American Jewish-Christian family and, as a young man, had traveled a few times to Morocco. He was drawn to Islam and when he embarked on his Hajj, he began in that country. He stayed there for a month to prepare himself, a story that takes up the first ten chapters of the book. The following eleven chapters are of his Hajj,which to him "felt more like a starting point... I had been traveling through a religion as much as through a landscape. Now I was leaving my physical goal behind. The hadj at its best is a vivifying factor. Later I hoped to internalise its meanings."

Having written about his journey of a lifetime, Wolfe then edited a collection of "significant works by observant travel writers from the East and West over the last ten centuries." One Thousand Roads to Mecca, which came out in 1997, presents "distinct sides of a spirited conversation in which Mecca is the common destination and Islam the common subject of inquiry." This conversation goes as far back as the medieval period and into the twentieth century. I found the Hajj accounts of Australian Winifred Stegar (1927) and Lady Evelyn Cobbold from England (1933) particularly interesting.

The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad was first published in 1954 and is considered amongst the top 50 spiritual classics. He writes that his book is not "the story of a deliberate search for faith - for that faith came upon me, over the years, without any endeavour on my part to find it. My story is simply the story of a European's discovery of Islam and of his integration within the Muslim community." He had converted in 1926 after extensive travels throughout the Middle East. The book is a physical as well as spiritual travelogue. He describes his tawaf around the Kaaba: "And I, too, moved slowly forward and became part of the circular flow around the Kaaba... I walked on and on, the minutes passed, all that had been small and bitter in my heart began to leave my heart, I became part of a circular stream - oh, was this the meaning of what we were doing: to become aware that one is a part of a movement in an orbit? Was this, perhaps, all confusion's end? And the minutes dissolved, and time itself stood still, and this was the centre of the universe..." 

Two less formidable books, in terms of length, are Ali Shariati's Hajj (the Malaysian edition was published in 1987) and The Road to Peace by Liza Angela Milo Abdullah, published in 2000. An Iranian, Ali Shariati was a well known Islamic scholar who had suffered in the prisons of the Shah of Iran; he died in 1977 shortly after his release. His book guides the reader through the Hajj rites, interpreting them in the light of Islamic history and highlighting their social significance. 

Liza Angela Milo Abdullah is an Italian who became a Muslim in 1976 and performed her pilgrimage in 1996. In her book, she "narrates each day's events,... explains the significance of the rituals she performs. Interspersed within are other information such as the history behind them." She describes her elation as she sets out on her journey, "My heart is happy and I thank God, I am now ready to perform the journey with my body and with my soul. I tell my family to smile and be happy for me as I am fulfilling my vows as a Muslim." Three weeks later, as she waits in Jeddah to return home, she writes, "The journey is over - the most beautiful experience of my lifetime is over and yet it is not - for I carry it in my heart."

Getting the Best Out of Al-Hajj by Abu Muneer Ismail Davids is not a personal account, like the other books in this post, but I found it extremely useful and informative in my own preparation for the Hajj. With knowledge acquired after spending 15 years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, about all aspects of Hajj from the Quran and Sunnah point of view, he published this book in 2000 (the second edition was published in 2006). The book provides "a good and plentiful source of information that helps the pilgrim to do the Hajj rites and rituals, from all sides and aspects that is solid and established in the Quran and Sunnah."

Mountains of Mecca - nasheed by Zain Bhikha

From scholar to novelist

Umberto Eco's books, translated from Italian, are not an easy read. His plots are complicated and his characters are multi-dimensional, so you will need to concentrate from the first page. But I like his style and the twists and turns in his stories. There is a sophistication to his writing that is incomparable.

A regular follower of this blog would know by now that when I like a writer, I would read a number of his books. And Eco is no exception - I have three of his on my bookshelf. One, purchased in 2009 at a Big Bad Wolf sale for just RM8.00, is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. First published in 2004, it is a rather playful story about a rare-book dealer who, although he has lost his memory about his own life, can remember every book he has ever read. To retrieve his past, he withdraws to his family home in the country and attempts to relive his life through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums and diaries kept in the attic. His search is made all the more realistic within the pages of Eco's novel with reproductions of actual items.

The above book is a walk in the park to read when compared to Eco's earlier novel, Foucault's Pendulum, which first came out in 1988. It is a thriller of interconnected mysteries running into more than 600 pages that, along the way, takes a dig at "exploitative publishers and pompous intellectuals" (Jonathan Coe, in The Guardian, 12 Octobeer 1989).

I came to appreciate Eco when I bought his first novel, The Name of the Rose, which was originally published in 1980 and went on to become an international bestseller. The book, later made into a movie starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, is set in medieval times. It is in fact a detective story in which the protagonist, a learned Franciscan, is called upon to solve a mystery involving monks who were murdered in bizarre ways. 

In 2011, in an interview for The Guardian, Eco says, "People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged." Thus, his books have been about conspiracies and the paranoia created because of them. Almost 80 years old at the time of the interview, Eco has had a distinguished academic career, publishing scholarly works, before he ventured into fiction-writing. The Name of the Rose established his reputation as a novelist and there was no looking back after that. 

Knowing my Prophet

We are in the last ten days of Ramadan, the month when Muslims around the world fast from dawn to dusk. It is a month when we refocus our attention on God and strive to purify ourselves; it is a month of self-evaluation vis-a-vis Islamic guidance through the Quran and Sunnah. The Quran was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) during this holy month.

I have several books on my Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). The first one, which I bought very many years ago, was Martin Lings's Muhammad - his life based on the earliest sources. It is acclaimed worldwide as the definitive biography of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) in the English Language.

It was first published in 1983 and draws upon eighth- and ninth-century Arabic sources, of which some are translated in the book for the first time. Lings, whose Muslim name is Abu Bakar Siraj al-Din, uses a narrative style that makes the book extremely readable. Take this passage from Chapter Eight, for example, which describes how the fatherless infant Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) becomes a nurseling of the Bedouin woman, Halimah: "So I went and took him, for no reason save that I could find none but him.I carried him back to where our mounts were stationed, and no sooner had I put him in my bosom than my breasts overflowed with milk for him. He drank his fill, and with him his foster-brother drank likewise his fill. Then they both slept; and my husband went to that old she-camel of ours and lo! her udders were full. He milked her and drank of her milk and I drank with him until we could drink no more and our hunger was satisfied. We spent the best of nights, and in the morning my husband said to me: 'By God, Halimah, it is a blessed creature that thou hast taken.'" 

Another well-known biography of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) is Muhammad - a biography of the Prophet by Karen Armstrong. She is not a Muslim and was, in fact, a Roman Catholic nun for seven years. 

In her introduction, Armstrong observes that "the old hatred of Islam continues to flourish on both sides of the Atlantic and people have few scruples about attacking this religion, even if they know little about it." Indeed, the book's first chapter "traces the history of Western hatred for the Prophet of Islam". In a later chapter, she refers to Islam as "a religion of social justice". In her last paragraph, she quotes Wilfred Cantwell Smith who wrote in 1956 that "the 'fundamental weakness' of both Western civilisation and Christianity in the modern world 'is their inability to recognise that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals.'" She then concludes, "The reality is that Islam and the West share a common tradition. From the time of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims have recognised this, but the West cannot accept it... If Muslims need to understand our Western traditions and institutions more thoroughly today, we in the West need to divest ourselves of some of our old prejudice. Perhaps one place to start is with the figure of Muhammad: a complex, passionate man who sometimes did things difficult for us to accept, but who had genius of a profound order and founded a religion and a cultural tradition that was not based on the sword - despite the Western myth - and whose name 'Islam' signifies peace and reconciliation".  

An earlier publication in my collection is Muhammad - A Mercy to all the Nations by Al-Hajj Qassim Ali Jairazbhoy, first published in 1937. 

In his preface, the author states, "To raise a people sunk in the lowest depths of degradation and vice, and to have the rare fortune of achieving success in his mission in his own lifetime, is decidedly the monumental work of a highly successful character, one to inspire mankind with action, perseverance, patience, and faith. Any other would have despaired of success, would have yielded to the pressure of utterly hostile circumstances, but the Prophet gloriously outlived all struggles, persecutions, temptations, and failures; he was confident of his mission, confident of success, and so he succeeded at last in the very place of persecution, and could confidently say, 'Verily, I have fulfilled my mission.'" The last chapter of the book is of special interest, where the author advances his claim that "all the prophets had prophesied the advent of a world Prophet who should verify the truth of all the prophets who had appeared in the World". 

I bought my copy of Rafiq Zakaria's Muhammad and the Quran in 1997 at the London British Museum. Published in 1991, he reveals in his preface that "the idea of writing this book came to me after reading Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Its acclaim by a large number of non-Muslim intellectuals and its popularity, especially after the fatwa by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, convinced me that a fair picture of Islam needed to be presented once again in order to remove much of the distortion that has crept into its perception".

He further states, "The book is not the life story of Muhammad, nor does it give a translation of the whole text of the Quran. It is an attempt to bring out the essentials of what Allah has pronounced and what his Messenger preached and practised... Instead of giving my personal views, I have quoted the studied observations of highly respected persons, both Muslims and non-Muslims; their testimony lends authority to the assessment of the various issues under dispute". 

In this book, Rafiq Zakaria has selected 1,111 Quranic verses (out of a total of 6,666) to "reveal the nature and spirit of Islam and bring out clearly its message of monotheism and the consequences of good or bad deeds for this life and the life hereafter". He also covers "the stories of the prophets from Adam to Jesus, as narrated in the Quran... (to) give an illustrative insight into the values that the faithful are asked to emulate". 

'Abd al-Rahman 'Azzam, the first secretary-general of the Arab League, first published The Eternal Message of Muhammad in 1954 in the Arabic language. It is deemed a classic study in the Muslim world of the Prophet's (Peace Be Upon Him) Message. Written for a Muslim audience, the author points out in his preface, "My intention in writing the original essays was to clarify for Muslims some of the principles and origins of their society, faith, and revealed Law, and to speak of the life of their Prophet. It was not my intention to apologise or preach to non-Muslims". 

'Abd al-Rahman is saddened by the materialism of the West, the idol he terms as 'a high standard of living' to which many, including Muslims, appear to be attracted to. His book is "a serious attempt to point out the Muslim answers to today's world" and focuses on the fundamentals of Muhammad's (Peace Be Upon Him) Message, i.e. faith (Iman) and right-doing (Ihsan). The chapters explore social reform, the Islamic State and international relations, as well as what the author believes to be the causes of world disturbance. On the latter, he states that "extremism in patriotism or national loyalty has been a basic cause of the increase of world disturbances and the gradual expansions of wars from local struggles to universal  holocausts". 

He asks, in his last chapter, "Why not teach people, therefore, to loathe war as they loathe murder?", and calls upon mankind to return to "the (righteous) way of the prophets, who directed instincts in a manner satisfactory to the standards of virtue and the common welfare". 

When in England...

The Olympics 2012 are proceeding very nicely now in London as I write this post. Fortunately for us in Malaysia, we have several channels on our satellite network dedicated to the various sports, which make up for the fact that we're not there to be part of the action. If I were, the most likely place I'd be would be at Greenwich Park for the equestrian events.

Several Malaysians I know are in London and they are bound to have periods of lull in between their activities, including shopping. So while they wait here and there, they might fancy holding a book in their hands (and reading it), and I have just the title for them - Watching the English by Kate Fox. It is a rather tongue-in-cheek study of 'the hidden rules of English behaviour'. She has other books to her credit, the titles of which indicate that she has fun in choosing her subjects; one of them is the The Racing Tribe: Watching the Horsewatchers. 

In the book above, Fox, who is a social anthropologist, breaks down her observations into two parts - Conversation Codes and Behaviour Codes. In the first part, there is a chapter on 'The Weather' because, as she declares in her opening line, "any discussion of English conversation, like any English conversation, must begin with The Weather". We had learned this to be true during our holidays in England, when we discovered that  the weather is indeed the best way to strike up a conversation with a local. Even if it's just to say something as obvious as "it's raining quite a bit, isn't it?" to the stranger sharing the table with you in the cafe, while both of you look out at the drenched view outside.

To Fox, her English compatriots can be described as "self-conscious, ill-at-ease, stiff, awkward and, above all, embarrassed", which of course brings to mind the quintessential English gentleman in the film Bridget Jones's Diary - Mark Darcy, played by one of my favourite actors Colin Firth. The film and the book are good examples of another English trait highlighted in Fox's book, that of humour, which is one of irony, understatement and self-depreciation. Being a fan of English comedy (the Monty Python television series and Fawlty Towers come to mind), these are elements I appreciate rather than the slapstick type common to American humour.

As far as behaviour is concerned, Fox observes that "the English may  not speak much on public transport, but when they do open their mouths, the words you are most likely to hear, apart from 'sorry', are 'please' and 'thank you'". However, she warns, this "does not mean that we are good-natured, generous, kind-hearted people. We just have rules about Ps and Qs, which most of us observe, most of the time".

I had a great laugh reading this book, and I still do when reading it again. If you're doing so in public, you might see a raised eyebrow or two as you giggle through its pages.

Yusuf Islam's Arabic alphabet

Another book for children but just as great for adults, like Fatimah's Kampung. This book, A for Allah, is written by Yusuf Islam, who many of us know as Cat Stevens. Another labour of love, it took 20 years to produce and was first published in 1999. It began as a song of the same name to "teach my daughter (his first child born in 1980) that - above all else - 'Alif' (of the Arabic alphabet) is for Allah, and that everything else that we love and appreciate in this earthly life originates from His Divine Will and grace."

The song grew into a book, the design of which, writes Yusuf in his introduction, "has its own interesting tale. Just after I embraced Islam, I bumped into a fellow musician who had also become Muslim a year or so before me, Ian Whiteman... (who) was working as a designer at that time... (and) could also write Arabic calligraphy and displayed a distinctive flair with the pen... Much of the beauty in the design is due to his masterful style and talent." The book's striking cover is an early indication of this.

The book introduces the reader to the Arabic alphabet, choosing Islamic concepts to convey the various letters. Each page (and there are a total of 64 pages) is richly illustrated with meaningful images and exquisite calligraphy. You need to just look at the following pages to appreciate this.

I bought my copy at Kinokuniya in 2005 for RM50.85. If it's out of stock there, you can buy it online from Mountain of Light, the book's publisher, or through Amazon. 

Fatimah's Kampung

This book, Fatimah's Kampung by Iain Buchanan, is a children's book that will fascinate adults. It certainly is one of my favourite books - well written and richly illustrated by the author, and with an important message.

A geography lecturer, who "had no experience of writing for children... and no art training of any kind', Buchanan succeeded in producing "a picture book for children about the life and death of a landscape." All the illustrations were done by hand, he says, "everything on a scale many times greater than the final scale... to do justice to the subject, and to capture details, textures, perspectives which would otherwise be lost."

The book is obviously a labour of love, on which Buchanan persevered over eight years. Writes Buchanan in his preface, "It was a full-time job, which meant I wasn't earning - and so Maznoor (his Malaysian wife) went out to work to help pay the bills... For two retired academics, both well into their fifties, new worlds had been opened."

Words cannot describe the beauty of the book so I'll let these pages say it for me:

Every page, like the above, is a work of art. The book was published in 2008 by the Consumers Association of Penang. When I first heard about it, I quickly went to a nearby MPH bookstore and managed to get hold of the only copy on the shelf. I don't know whether it's still in print. It's a pity if it isn't.

Remembering our Creator

It is a striking book - black with a burst of colour in the upper corner, and the title and author's name embossed in gold. Within its full-colour pages is a flowing river of poetry and poetic-style prose by the author, Dr Safiah Osman, thanking "Allah SWT for His clear reminders that there must be love, fondness and kindness in our hearts."

Dr Safiah Osman is a very close friend of my aunt Datin Kalsom Taib and she has become a friend of mine. Soft-spoken, gentle, gracious and courteous, she is also humble, not speaking much at all of her achievements, which are many. She had been a Professor of Language Education at the University of Malaya and, later, at the Sultan Idris University of Education, where she moved on to become its Director for International Relations before retiring in 2004. Safiah was the founder member and first President of the Malaysian Reading Association, affiliated to the International Reading Association.

She had a dream she wanted to pursue after her retirement - and that was to put down her thoughts and feelings about the boundless gifts and blessings of Allah in books that will guide people to always remember Him. In this book, Let Us Remember Allah For the Gift of Love in Our Hearts, her sincere and heartfelt words cover the spectrum of love from what we feel for our parents, mothers, children, relatives and friends, to what we can have for the poor, elderly and sick; even for those who smile warmly, speak politely or forgive readily. 

It's a beautifully written book. Safiah's poems and prose are all the more meaningful accompanied by verses from the Holy Qur'an and authentic Hadiths, and illustrated by photographs and original Islamic calligraphic art-pieces. She gives so much in the book that you need to take your time to savour her words, reflect upon them and, of course, if you haven't been doing so, to build that love within you and share it (Please click here for the pdf sample of the book).

This is not Safiah's first book. Her earlier one, published in 2009, is "about the wonder of Allah's Creations, about love for the seas, oceans and mountains; trees, rivers, animals, insects, plants and vegetation." 

Both books would make ideal presents for all kinds of occasions. A gift of knowledge, one that may help to improve our deen, must surely be one of the best to receive.

A certainty of life...

... is death. But it is a subject that people don't like to talk of, not even to think about. Yet this is what the book How We Die - Reflections on Life's Final Chapter by Dr Sherwin B Nuland touches upon. Unlike in earlier times when people usually die at home, Nuland says that today "we have created a method of modern dying. Modern dying takes place in the modern hospital, where it can be hidden, cleansed of its organic blight, and finally packaged for modern burial. We can now deny the power not only of death but of nature itself."

He writes in his introduction, "I have written this book to demythologize the process of dying. My intention is not to depict it as a horror-filled sequence of painful and disgusting degradations, but to present it in its biological and clinical reality, as seen by those who are witness to it and felt by those who experience it. Only by a frank discussion of the very details of dying can we best deal with those aspects that frighten us the most."

In this book, Dr Nuland has chosen six of the most common diseases, which have "characteristics that are representative of certain universal processes that we will all experience as we are dying. The stoppage of circulation, the inadequate transport of oxygen to tissues, the flickering out of brain function, the failure of organs, the destruction of vital centres." These diseases are heart attack, old age, stroke, Alzheimer's Disease, AIDS and cancer. 

The book draws you into the experiences undergone by patients with serious illnesses, by doctors treating them, and by families and friends dealing with emotionally draining situations. Along the way, Dr Nuland describes what happens to the patients' bodies as life slips away. He is very matter-of-fact about this. At the end of the book, he tells us, "Nature has a job to do. It does its job by the method that seems most suited to each individual whom its powers have created... It is incumbent on us to remember that (death) is not only the way of all flesh but the way of all life, and it has its own plans for us. Though we find clever ways to delay, there is no way to undo those plans." 

And he slips in a quote by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar:

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come."

Dr Nuland concludes, "The dignity that we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives... The art of dying is the art of living. The honesty and grace of the years of life that are ending is the real measure of how we die. It is not in the last weeks or days that we compose the message that will be remembered, but in all the decades that preceded them. Who has lived in dignity, dies in dignity."

Of books and bookshops

Wouldn't it be nice if there's a bookshop where the people there can remember your name? Of course, it wouldn't be at a Borders or an MPH store; perhaps at Silverfish if you go there often enough. In Paris, there is one bookshop, where not only will they remember your name but they will also give you a bed to sleep on if you're in dire straits. The story of this one-of-a-kind place is told by Jeremy Mercer in Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs.

A few words about 'Shakespeare and Company', regarded as one of the world's most famous bookshops. It was opened by a woman called Sylvia Beach in 1919, and soon became a favourite gathering place of literary greats such as F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. It was forced to close down in 1941 when Beach refused to sell the last copy of Finnegans Wake to a Nazi officer. Ten years later, another bookshop was opened on the Left Bank. Called 'Le Mistral', it was run in a free-spirited manner and even provided beds for the literary-inclined who were down on their luck. The shop was renamed 'Shakespeare and Company' in 1964 and was a regular meeting place for Beatnik poets. The shop's ethos has remained and writers, such as Canadian crime reporter Jeremy Mercer, find their way to this sanctuary.

A book that I picked up at a recent Big Bad Wolfs' sale is The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton - it was a bargain at just RM8.00! A foreign correspondent, Hamilton served in Africa in 2006, where she was inspired by the Kenyan Camel Mobile Library to write this novel.

Although fictional, the book draws on the real-life efforts of a group of librarians who dedicate themselves to reducing the illiteracy rate of more than 80% of  the bush people. Camels are used to bring boxes of books to the nomads, wherever they may be. 

Source for the two photos above.

While the book above is about the basic need to read, Used and Rare by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone brings us to the other end of the spectrum - that of the collector of vintage books. It is a delightful account of the writers' 'travels in the book world', of how they stumbled into book-collecting when Nancy was looking for a hard-cover edition of War and Peace to buy for Lawrence's birthday. At the end of the day, the Goldstones concluded, "It had been all too easy to catch the... 'First Edition Fever'. To think that a book had no value unless it was a pristine first edition of a book that everyone else wanted... The more we thought about it, the more we came back to our original view. You don't really need first editions at all. They are just affectations, excuses for dealers to run up the price on you, charge you a lot of money for something that doesn't read any better than any other edition."

To know how astronomically expensive a rare book can be, John James Audubon's The Birds of America, published in 1827, was sold at auction in January 2012 for US$7.9 million!

Short and sweet

How short is a short novel? One website defines it as being no more than 80,000 words or not exceeding 250 pages. A short novel, also called a novella, is not a short story as it can stand on its own in book-form. It features fewer conflicts and sub-plots than a novel but allows for greater characterisation and development of theme than a short story. I think it takes a lot of discipline to write a short novel - there's no waffling about and the writing has to be spare and economical.

I have a number of short novels on my bookshelves. One of them was bought when I was a university student in Wellington, 'New Zealand's Capital of Cool', in the 1970s. The book is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, first published in 1962. The small Penguin publication is only 138 pages long. It was adapted into a terrifying film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The lead character Alex was played by Malcolm McDowell.

Set in a near-future England, the teenager Alex and his gang of friends speak in a slang, called Nadsat, made up by Burgess based on the Russian language. Alex is a complex character; a sociopath who is intelligent and quick-witted with a love for classical music, especially Beethoven. It is a dark story of the state's use of Pavlovian conditioning to alter behaviour.

Another short novel also bought in Wellington was Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was first published in the Soviet Union in 1962 and the Penguin version that I have runs into 143 pages. 

It is a "spare, stark description of life in a Siberian labour camp", a fate that was shared by millions of Russians when the Soviet Union was under the dictatorship of Stalin. The book, which "shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared", led to Solzhenitsyn being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

Love, or its darker side, can also be explored in less than 250 pages. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, first published in 1951, is an intense account of the aftermath of a love affair; my Penguin edition takes up 192 pages.

It is a story about obsessive love and is said to be based on Greene's own affair with a titled lady. Religion is also woven into the plot, a reflection of the author's Catholic faith.

Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse is 108 pages long (Penguin edition) and it was first published in 1954. When she wrote this book, Sagan was only eighteen years old and, interestingly, it is a story about a young girl's jealousy of the woman her father intends to marry and her devious plan to separate them. She succeeds but at a tragic cost.

Beauty and Sadness is another story of love and jealousy, this one written by Yasunari Kawabata. First published in 1961, it is the author's last work before he committed suicide in 1972. Kawabata was the first Japanese to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. Like Greene's book above, Beauty and Sadness, which is 152 pages long, is about a middle-aged writer and his mistress of many years earlier. There is a twist here in that the mistress of long ago, now a recluse artist, has a female protege who is also her lover.

My favourite short novel, which at 245 pages is longer than the rest mentioned here, is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. He was only six years old when his family moved to live in England in 1960 and is a British citizen. In this particular book, which came out in 1989, he delves into the professional dignity that defines an English butler, a dedication that sadly results in missed opportunities in his personal life. The character of the butler, Stevens, was brought out very well  by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptation of the book, ably supported by Emma Thompson as the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, to whom Stevens just could not say the words 'I love you'. 

Short novels like these are apparently not economically viable for publishers. Such books don't cost that much less than longer ones in the shops, and many customers prefer to get more book for their bucks. Which is a shame, really, because it is in short novels that you can truly see the skills of the consummate writer.

The best medicine

I like British humour. Not Mr Bean, though, who I find a bit silly; I prefer Fawlty Towers anytime. British humour appeals to me because it's subtle and ironic, not at all obvious. As far as books are concerned, when it comes to those that make me laugh, I absolutely enjoy the ones written by Sir John Mortimer (21 April 1923 - 16 January 2009).

Mortimer, an author and playwright, was also a barrister by profession. This legal experience became useful when he created the character that he is best remembered for - Horace Rumpole, who features in a series of very funny books. The first, Rumpole of the Bailey, introduces us to this aging defender of the downtrodden:

"I, Horace Rumpole, barrister-at-law, 68 next birthday, Old Bailey Hack, husband to Mrs Hilda Rumpole (known to me only as She Who Must Be Obeyed) and father to Nicholas Rumpole (lecturer in social studies at the University of Baltimore, I have always been extremely proud of Nick); I, who have a mind full of old murders, legal anecdotes and memorable fragments of the Oxford Book of English Verse (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's edition) together with a dependable knowledge of bloodstains, blood groups, fingerprints, and forgery by typewriter; I, who am now the oldest member of my Chambers, take up my pen at this advanced age during a lull in business (there's not much crime about, all the best villains seem to be off on holiday in the Costa Brava), in order to write my reconstructions of some of my recent triumphs (including a number of recent disasters) in the Courts of Law, hoping thereby to turn a bob or two which won't be immediately grabbed by the taxman, or my clerk Henry, or by She Who Must Be Obeyed, and perhaps give some sort of entertainment to those who, like myself, have found in British justice a life-long subject of harmless fun."

I have a collection of the Rumpole series in two books on my shelves - The First Rumpole Omnibus (Rumpole of the Bailey, The Trials of Rumpole, and Rumpole's Return) and The Third Rumpole Omnibus (Rumpole and the Age of Miracles, Rumpole a la Carte, and Rumpole and the Angel of Death).  You can probably tell that I just can't get enough of this character.

Mortimer's dry wit comes into play in his non-fiction as well. His Murderers and Other Friends - Another Part of Life, first published in 1994, is full of hilarious anecdotes of his life, including his childhood. He writes about his producer/director friend Tony Richardson: "Tony was a tall, angular man whose long limbs were curiously uncoordinated; but he was resolutely, if not always successfully, athletic. He only learnt to swim in middle life and, although he spent more hours practising on the tennis court than Nastase before Wimbledon, he was easily beaten by a one-armed player who had to throw the ball into the air and then grab his racket from between his legs when he served." Of his own attitude towards sports, Mortimer says, "An English middle-class education has made me allergic to sport and my only interest, when forced to take part in any sort of game, is to lose it as quickly as possible in order that it may be over."

In the book, he gives a glimpse of his courtroom tactics: "Boredom is a weapon you can use in court; given sufficient endurance you can bore a judge into submission by going on until he's in real danger of missing his train to Hayward's Heath and is ready to submit." As a barrister, Mortimer had the opportunity to travel to Singapore in the 1970s to defend opposition leader Ben Jeyaretnam in a libel suit issued against him by none other than the Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. He describes the city-state: "... that Reader's Digest of a city, linked by a causeway to the wilder shores of Malaysia, where they discuss making chewing-gum illegal, where Chinese families burn paper Mercedes, paper TV sets and paper video tapes to placate the spirits of the dead, and where Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who was allergic to opposition politicians, was prime minister for many years and thought that the words law and order were in the wrong position. Order has always seemed more important to Mr Lee than law." The outcome of the trial was predictable, of which Jeyaretnam wrote, "Mr John Mortimer's oratory at the trial won the admiration of many Singaporeans, but did not win my case."

Published in 1986, Character Parts is a book of Mortimer's interviews with famous men and women, including Christine Keeler, Sir Alec Guinness, Boy George and Raquel Welch. Of his meeting with Boy George, he writes: "After a lifetime acquaintance with some fairly dotty Judges, not a few lunatic lawyers, a smattering of eccentric businessmen and pop-eyed politicians, it was refreshing to take a cup of morning coffee with a chap who is articulate, reasonable and possessed of a robust common sense. That fact that the chap in question appeared to be got up as Madam Butterfly at eleven o'clock in the morning came as no particular surprise to me. After all, I have been used to carrying on conversations across crowded court rooms with elderly men in scarlet, fur-trimmed frocks and white curly wigs."

Raquel Welch, he tells us, "has written a book. It is the sort... that is likely to go straight to the head of every best-seller list. It consists of many photographs of Miss Welch in various yoga positions, and much cheerful advice of how to achieve physical perfection and enjoy life. It will no doubt be read by countless Americans as they munch through their generous helpings of ground beef on a bun and apple pies, as they absorb their French fries and Pepsi-Colas, and wonder why is it they don't look like Miss Welch." His interview was over dinner in a restaurant, during which he "found her to be quite small, extraordinarily pretty, and wearing a black dress that seemed to have been clawed in front by some giant cat so that more of the undoubted perfection of Raquel Welch might meet the eye."

Mortimer's The Summer of a Dormouse - A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully came out in 2000. It is a humorous account of a year in his life, no doubt inspired by the fact that, to the young and middle-aged, "the day will most probably dawn when your pale foot will wander through the air, incapable of hitting the narrow opening of a suspended sock." 

He writes, "The ageing process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous." Thus the tone of the book is set. There are some privileges for the aged, for example, when in a wheelchair at airports: "Claiming a wheelchair on account of the leg and a blind eye has improved my experience of airports 100 per cent. I have been pushed by retired businessmen eking out their pensions, students in their gap year or, occasionally, beautiful girls in uniform." 

In the book's last chapter, he approaches the subject of death: "The trouble is that you have no idea what it's going to be like, and there is no one to tell you... The worst thing would be a death which is a sort of joke. When we were in the South of France one year, there were widespread forest fires and small planes were used to scoop up water from the sea and, flying inland, dump it on the blazing pines. An innocent tourist was snorkelling harmlessly and happily watching the fish. He was scooped up by a plane, flown inland and dropped, from a great height, on to the forest fire. He became the subject of a law suit with an insurance company as no one could decide whether he had been killed by fire or water."

And if Mortimer's books haven't made you a fan of British humour, perhaps this will: