Caron Eastgate James (now Dann) is a journalist, novelist and researcher who lived in Thailand for four years in the 1990s, where she worked as a teacher and journalist, then researched and wrote her novel and, later, used that research as a starting point for her PhD thesis. She was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1962, but now resides in Melbourne, Australia. Caron is the author of The Occidentals (Asia Books, 1999) and Imagining Siam: A Travellers’ Literary Guide to Thailand (Monash Asia Institute, 2008). In this interview she talks about her books, the literary scene in Thailand, and her passion for writing.
Voicu Mihnea Simandan: Your début on the world literary scene was The Occidentals, a 19th century Siamese saga. Where did the idea for the novel come from?
Caron Eastgate James: I moved to Thailand first in 1990 with my first husband, an engineer, and we lived at Muang Thong Thani. In those days, Muang Thong Thani was a small village and we lived at the Eastin Lakeside apartments when they were new, but a long walk even from the village shops. For the first time in my adult life, I had a lot of free time! I decided to make use of that time and write a novel, as I’d always wanted to.
I joined the Siam Society and started reading some of the wonderful historic books they have – memoirs, travel writing and diplomats’ accounts. At the same time, Thailand was a culture shock for me. Though I had travelled a lot as a child, I had hardly been to anywhere in Asia before, except for a few days in Singapore in 1967 when I was five. I found the heat, traffic and dust on the streets difficult to put up with, though I loved the food, the friendly people, the creative arts and Buddhist teachings. I got to thinking, if I found it difficult in the late 20th century, how must Western visitors from cool climates have found it in the 19th century, when there were no cars, air conditioning, and other comforts we take for granted now? So I decided my long-awaited novel would be set in Thailand among expatriates during the mid- to late-19th century.
I had noticed in my reading that there were three main types of Western men who came to Thailand in those days. They were adventurers, businessmen or missionaries. So I decided to write a strong male character from each of those categories. They became Sam, the writer; Edward, the professional photographer; and Joseph, the missionary.
VMS: It is obvious to any reader that a lot of research went into The Occidentals. Can you tell us about the time when you researched the book?
CEJ: As I learned, writing a historical novel is all about the research. Every sentence has to be considered in the context of the time and the place you are writing about. For example, if I wanted a character to light a candle, I had to consider how they would light it in those days – and not even how they would light it in Europe, but whether they would use the same technology in Thailand. How was a letter posted in Thailand in the late 19th century, and how did one get there from Australia, England or the US? When I was writing about the clothing the Western characters wore, I had to look not only at what the fashions in Europe were, but at how long they would have taken to get to Thailand in those days and what the resources to make or import those clothes would have been.
When I did my main research, in 1992, we didn’t have the internet and so I had to source English reference books on subjects such as Victorian England and the Australian gold fields. This wasn’t always easy in Bangkok, though I was a very good customer at Asia Books! My father in Australia helped me with research into 19th-century weapons.
VMS: How accurate are the historical events presented in your novel?
CEJ: As accurate as possible. I don’t believe in moving historical events to suit my plot. I find it annoying when films do this. Of course, no matter how hard you try, you are bound to get something wrong. The good thing about fiction is that nothing is really wrong, because the writer is God and can make up whatever she or he likes. It’s much scarier writing a non-fiction book and worrying about the authenticity of your details.
I’ve learned along the way to be wary of everything. Even greatly respected sources such as Encyclopedia Brittanica can be wrong. So whenever I can, I verify facts in more than one place. These days, I think Wikipedia is more likely to be correct than Brittanica, though I did find a mistake just the other day on Wikipedia.
VMS: Did you write the novel while you were in Thailand (1990-1993 and 1997-1999) or on your return to Australia?
CEJ: All of the above! When I started writing the novel, in 1992, we didn’t have the internet at home, as I mentioned above. We didn’t even have a computer. I wrote the first draft on an electronic typewriter – and some even on a manual typewriter because we used to have power cuts most days in the wet season. I did six months full-time research before I started writing. It took me only about three months to write that first draft. Then we returned to Australia, and I put my manuscript in the proverbial bottom drawer! I was doing my MA degree part-time and working full-time as a journalist at TV Week magazine.
I did start to retype the manuscript into my laptop computer, throwing away the old typewriter-written pages as I went. I wasn’t great about backing up my work – remember the small discs we used in those days? Anyway, in about 1995, my house in Melbourne was burgled and my lap-top was taken. To my horror, I discovered my backup disc was missing 100 pages of my manuscript and I’d thrown away the originals. I had to rewrite those 100 pages! Actually, it was good, because I had originally written a kind of Mills & Boon-type ending with Elizabeth and Sam getting together. I changed that to a more realistic ending.
Anyway, the novel languished for years and I finished my MA, became Assistant Editor of TV Week and then moved back to Thailand in 1997. In 1998, I got a job as a section editor on Bangkok Metro magazine. One day, I was talking to my colleague, Howard, who edited the books section. I told him I had a manuscript for a novel tucked away and he said he thought Asia Books was looking for local authors. He gave me the name and number of the commissioning editor. Within six weeks, I had a book contract! There was a problem, though: the editor wanted me to write another 100 pages and show more of my research, and include several sub-plots. This is when the mystery about the gold nugget was added and I will use this more in the next book. So I had to go back and do some further research. It took me another three months to do this.
As publishing goes, Asia Books was very quick. It was only about 12 months from the time they accepted it, through the rewriting, editing and printing, until it was in book shops at the end of 1999. In the meantime, I’d moved back to Australia at the start of 1999, so the editing process had to be done by phone and email. I agreed with most of the changes my editor made, though I had to fight him on punctuation. He had inserted semi-colons at frequent intervals throughout my manuscript and I thought this was very odd, so I made him take most of them out again.
