SINGAPORE - About thirty-five people packed into the top floor of the three-storey extravaganza that is Books Actually, Singapore's most gorgeous and largest independent bookstore/literary shrine, for the The Proper Care of Foxes reading.
Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize this year, the short story collection has been described by Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore as "Mrs Dalloway on speed". This is a book that very few people have read (it's only available in Singapore for now), and yet, those who have read it love it intensely - the kind of intense love that makes perfect strangers Google me on Facebook and post their love for the book in ALLCAPS on my Wall. Money cannot buy that kind of love.
I did a funny scene from one of the Siegfried stories. Siegfried, the spoilt, lovable tranny hero of three of the stories, modelled after Brian Eno in his early 70's Roxy Music glamrock phase, is much beloved by my readers.
The second half of the evening was devoted to the new novel, Alex y Robert, about teenage matadors and modern Spanish bullfighting. I invited special guests Emilio de Miguel Calabia, the Cultural Attache from the Embassy of Spain, and actress/director Beatrice Chia-Richmond, to talk about their experience of taurine culture.
Mr Calabia, whom I have never met till now, spoke affably and wryly about Spain's obsession with the bulls. Like most Spanish people, he acknowledged the historic and symbolic importance of the corrida, but was careful to remind everyone that bullfighting is losing the fight with modernity and there will come a day when football will replace it as Spain's national icon.
It is particularly this moment in Spain's history that makes modern toreo (the art of torearing or bullfighting) so interesting to me as a novelist: it does tug at the heartstrings of the Spanish, even as it may embarrass them with its strangeness and anachronism. That sort of tension is wonderful when doing a novel about a country and its culture.
I did a scene from Alex y Robert in which Alex texts Robert the matador and harangues him about "whether his chances of surviving a goring improves if he gets stuck on a curved horn or a straight horn", and whether he worries every day about getting "neutered", which Mr Calabia later told me he found rather comic.
Beatrice talked about how she commissioned me to write a novel about Spain after she witnessed her first bullfight in Madrid. She shared some great memories of our schooldays together and how she was the first reader of all of my teenage "novel" manuscripts (poor Bea!). We discussed Singapore's cosmopolitanism and cultural fluency and how as women artists we were both traumatized by bullfighting and yet deeply moved enough to go beyond snap judgments and find its true grandeur buried underneath decades of Hemingway macho crap and ignorant stereotypes.
I still find it remarkable that my special guests would take time off a workday evening to do such public speaking, for no recompense except goodwill and a signed copy of the book! I and the rest of the audience were very lucky; it felt as good as any event in a major international literary festival.
The event was promoted and hosted by the artistic, hipster owners of Books Actually, Karen Wai and Kenny Leck, who have tirelessly put their lives, waking hours, and finances into promoting the cause of good Art.
Literature is still best when brewed artisanally - by small bookstore owners, readers, writers - and served, lovingly, one book at a time. It has the power to bring different cultures together, even if momentarily, to experience a shared view of humanity. Authentic moments like last night are an essential part of why I do what I do as a writer. I hope there will be more. Thanks to all who came - and thanks for all your presents!
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