Novels (good and bad) about Thailand abound the many English-language bookstores that litter the Kingdom of Thailand. Many of these novels are written by farang writers who, from various reasons, choose to live and write from and about Thailand. Although most of them will never get rich just from writing, simultaneously having several other income generators on the side, the lack of financial successes does not stop them from continuing to put down their words on paper.
There are a few writer’s groups that are active in Thailand, two of which being the Bangkok Women’s Writer Group, coordinated by Anette Pollner, author of award-winning The Company of Frogs, and the Bangkok Writer’s Guild, organized by G.Y. Gopinath, author of Travels with the Fish. As in a future article we will concentrate on farang women writers in Thailand, in this issue we asked a few male foreign authors what it means to be a writer in Thailand.
Colin Cotterill, author of The Night Bastard, a riveting book about the exploitation of children, believes that “writing has a lot to do with asking the right questions and knowing how to answer them. By living somewhere like Thailand, an environment that’s outside your own cultural comfort zone, you develop a habit of asking those questions: ‘Why is he doing that?’ or ‘How could she think like that?’ You don’t always have a clear cut answer. That’s a good thing because the people I meet here who ‘understand’ everything are either insufferable bores or just downright wrong (often a combination of both). A good writer doesn’t have all the answers. It’s as if the longer I live here, the less I know with any conviction. You take on the roll of social commentator which allows you to think on behalf of your readers and explain differences in a way they’ll ‘get’.”
Aaron Le Boutillier, author of And Then One Morning – A Personal Odyssey, a well-received book about the 2004 tsunami, compares Singapore to Bangkok: “Actually, I wrote my first book in Singapore and I found the whole environment perfect for my style of writing. Everything is so carefully laid out and precise that that it seems to reflect in your work. It is easier to have discipline in writing in such a disciplined environment. Moving to Bangkok gave me so much inspiration to write other books, however, the hectic, frenetic lifestyle posed me with discipline issues! So, Singapore for writing and Bangkok for inspiration would be my formula for 2010. Another interesting area is in marketing your book. In Bangkok if you were aiming at a local market the demographic is slightly smaller of possibly interested readers, however, with just about everyone in Singapore speaking English, I found marketing my first book easier than in Thailand.”
Larry Welch, author of The Human Spirit, an inspirational book about his life and travels, confesses that “living and writing in Thailand is a hand-in-glove opportunity to find expression in the exotic nature of a culture and the natural world. There’s no place like Thailand for finding the human spirit. From the poverty-stricken to those struggling to realize their dreams, there is always something to move me to write. I remember years ago attending the final rites for Uncle Noun Bootiem, a 76-year old rice miller who lived near Nakhon Phanom. My short story on his stroke, hospitalization, family decisions, and ultimate cremation in a jungle clearing made a unique record on life and death among the rural poor in Northeast Thailand. Another factor that contributes to the making of a narrative is the openness of the Thai people, which allows strangers to quickly assimilate their line of thinking, from superstitions to the security of their belief in Buddhism.”
Dean Barrett, author of Memoirs of a Bangkok Warrior, a “wacky adventure” book about the American’s secret war in Asia, says that “writing is an extremely tough profession. Hemingway described the craft of writing as ‘wrestling with the white bull,’ i.e., inserting a sheet of blank paper into the typewriter and attempting to create characters, plot, theme, etc. Thailand is a fun place to write but the diversions are many and most writers are on their own, doing their own thing. Finding stories to write about or imagining plots set in Thailand is not that difficult but it is a difficult balancing act: Explain too little and a foreign audience might not understand; explain too much and a writer might lose his local audience. As I write on China as well, Bangkok is a perfect location for me. Now if I could only resist all the temptations and buckle down and write!”
For Andrew Hicks, author of Thai Girl, a romantic adventure novel that quickly turned into a bestseller, “Bangkok and Thailand are just so very exotic, so stimulating… and not just for jaded old dogs dipping their nibs in the inkwell. It’s so different, how can you not write about this place? My muse gets positively hyperactive and it’s always such fun. What’s more, the opportunities for getting words onto paper and sold in bookshops are exceptional. In the West getting published is a one in a million chance. Here it’s relatively easy to produce a book and Asia Books will usually give it a chance and let the readers decide. That’s why I so love writing about Thailand.”
David Young, author of Sukhumvit Road, a book about Bangkok’s #1 butterfly girl, makes the following analogy: “You know when you take apart a car and try to put it back together again? That’s an ex-pat. A guy who’s constantly trying to fit the pieces back into working order. The thing a lot of us discover in Bangkok is that some of the parts went missing on the way over. I don’t know, maybe they fell out of the plane. So you get a lot of guys over here with missing spark plugs or wadded up newspaper where the carburetor ought to be. The beauty of Thailand is that no one seems to notice. The Thais keep smiling and the other ex-pats have come to accept that none of us is running right. So I guess you could say that the writer’s job is to notice. Not to be cruel, but you know, maybe to let all the clunkers out there know that they’re not alone.”
For those living in the countryside, things are a bit different. In Colin Cotterill’ opinion, because he doesn’t get to use a lot of English on a day to day basis, this situation “makes me the retarded cousin when I visit the West. My oral language has become simplified through lack of use but my thoughts have also slowed down. It’s made me realize that the old, linguistically diarrheic me used to race away from my readers leaving them bemused in my soggy wake. I think living in Thailand has allowed me more empathy. Most people would cite context and character and readily available cultural material and that is certainly all around us here. But everyone sees these things. The difference is the ability to make people outside the country see them in their own minds. Living in a place like Thailand trains you to observe and gives you the sabai, laid back environment to organize your thoughts.”
Thailand, in general, and Bangkok, in particular, are places where farang authors find their inspiration and readership. Although most of the fiction written by male foreigners living in Thailand can be easily classified as “dick lit,” there are also very good examples of semi-autobiographical novels, travel diaries, and books that tackle social problems, all of which should make us proud of being expat WRITERS.
Post scriptum: I had contacted around 15 writers to request their opinion on the subject matter. Some did not reply at all, while others chose not to be included in the article or were not able to contribute their views in a timely manner.
Initially published in “Bangkok Trader” (Vol. 4, No. 6, May 2010)
I need a mentor.
You can find tons of mentors online!
But, actually, you just need to write.