Bringing the Nation to Book

In many other countries, Budi Darma would probably be the recipient of a hefty grant to help the septuagenarian continue keyboarding. But as this eminence grise of modern Indonesian literature knows well, culture and the arts aren't on the Indonesian government's must-fix list. Duncan Graham meets the writer. 

Books are not the top buy for the average family, despite more people finding the courage to enter bookstores.

"There have been two print-runs of my Orang-Orang Bloomington (People of Bloomington), each of 5,000 copies," Budi Darma said of his acclaimed short-story collection first published 27 years ago. 

"For Indonesia that's not too bad."

It’s a relative literary success in a country with a population of 230 million people.

"The problem is our culture," says psychologist Audifax, who is also an author.  "We're an oral society.  We watched events like wayang kulit (shadow puppets) in the past, and now we're hooked on television."

But there's another, more sinister factor operating.  Writers, from the Dutch colonial era to Soeharto’s New Order, have long been considered dangerous people in Indonesian society, terrorists with word grenades. 

Bookshops are better now, though most still deter browsing by shrink-wrapping, denying customers chairs while a stockpile of staff watch your every move.

They have reason:  When workers' backs are turned some students whip out their mobile phone cameras and snap the pix or text they need for the next assignment.

There were some great exceptions, like novelist Richard Oh's welcoming QB World bookshops (unfortunately, most in Jakarta closed down last year).  Then there is the new kid in Indonesia,  Johan Budhie Sava, with his TM Bookstores, also trading as Togamas.

His shops are spacious with some spots to sample the text and not all books are sealed.  The store in Surabaya has 20,000 volumes and the place is far more welcoming than the Gramedia and Toko Agung stores. 

"It's little by little," Johan says.  "People are slowly starting to become more interested in books.  Times are changing, but price is still a factor.  It's difficult to move anything with a tag of more than Rp 50,000 (US$6)."

Budi Darma is also cautiously upbeat.  He reckons the change started in 1999. When fourth president Abdurrahman Wahid closed the Information Ministry there were 292 magazines and newspapers.  That number rapidly jumped to more than 2,000 before market forces came into play. Around 830 have survived.

"It's been the same with book publishers, particularly in Yogyakarta," he says.  "Three or four people in a kos (boardinghouse) with some computer skills could become instant publishers.  Of course the problem has always been distribution and competition for shelf space."

Much of this output has been a waste of trees; there may be hundreds of new titles but the print size is large, the print run small, pages are few and the quality of language and grammar worries purists.

The much-awarded Budi Darma, who is now an emeritus professor, has spent much of his life training teachers at the State University of Surabaya. 

"The reality is that writing is a lonely job and most Indonesians prefer to be in groups," he says.  "It's not a high status profession as it is in the West.

"Nor does it enhance your status to have a library at home.  People are more concerned with cars and houses and furniture.  They think buying books is a waste of money."

Although she accepts the truth of this statement, the electric Lan Fang is outraged that men prefer to spend on tobacco instead of type.  "People are also so busy, with both parents working," she says.  "Many genuinely don't have time to read."

Lan has been writing for about 20 years and although she started as a teenager she's no superficial author of chick-lit, a genre that bookseller Johan Budhie Sava believes is now boring readers.  She writes about relationships with more maturity and understanding.

Like her mentor Budi, she has also tried her hand with success at short stories, a form that does well in Indonesia but not in the West.  Many writers, like Lan Fang, got their break when their works were published in newspapers.

But when the nascent bibliophile does make it past the surly bookstore security guards who know everyone is a thief, they're likely to be disappointed.  A good guide to public taste (or the publishers' definition) is shelf space.

The literature shelves look like an afterword; tomes on theology, how to make a mint in business (from the U.S.) and comics (from Japan) push everything else to the edge.  Most depressing is that large numbers have been written and published overseas where they've proved their salability; then local publishers buy up the rights.

"You can make a better living as a translator into Indonesian rather than an author in Indonesia," says Budi wryly.  "I agree that there's a great gap in our national literature caused in part by bad education and the censorship of the New Order era when generations of creative talent were crushed and we were not encouraged to inquire.

"After we gained independence most intellectuals looked to the West and did not try to understand the philosophy of their own country – even up to now.  In many ways we have become too westernized.

"Most writers live in the big cities.  They don't really know society in the country as Pram did so can't reflect it in their writing. We do not understand our own earth.  Authors have been cut off from their traditions.  And of course Indonesia is dominated by Java.

"Many still think that literature is not enjoyable, that it's difficult to digest.  They just want to read a synopsis rather than the book.

"Now we have the freedom to write and read.  But it seems that we haven't yet learned how to handle that freedom."

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