Bird’s eye view of cloud cuckooland: a Writer’s tale

Those attending events held at NLB’s Pod are routinely ushered into the lift which serves only the 16^th floor of the building, and directly transported into a huge room with a panoramic view of the surroundings. On the morning of Saturday 6 February 2010 the 100 or so people who went up that lift perhaps also found themselves stepping into cloud cuckooland.

The event was a talk given by Member of Parliament Irene Ng, author of the biography of S Rajaratnam, as part of NLB’s series Experience Singapore Literature. The book had been launched two days earlier by the prime minister, and was not available for purchase till then, so most of us, myself included had not read it.  As a member of the audience keen to learn about how the book was put together, I was treated to an insight of being a Writer in Singapore which took my breath away. The air in the stratosphere was so refined that the ivory tower of academia paled in comparison.

For a start, the audience was treated by the Writer (as the author sees herself as being) to the fascinating insight that writers are given scant recognition  in Singapore unlike say, in UK where journalists have long been respected for writing biographies of the country’s leading political leaders. One wishes she would go into the reasons why this is so. Perhaps it is because well-researched political studies have not quite been encouraged, and/or that what has been written so far has really not been deserving of respect?

At any rate, Our Writer thinks that her work is deserving of such respect, for she is serious about Writing. She had resigned from her job at the NTUC (which presumably she held after leaving SPH as a journalist on becoming an MP), so that she could dedicate herself to the task. By her account, when she handed out her name card which identified her as ‘Writer”, she would get quizzical looks, and be asked if it was a real job. It is! she assures us emphatically. She is very particular about use of words and slaves over her sentences, working till 3 am when she was holding her 3 jobs; is committed to writing a book for the people that is easily readable, unlike academics, who use ‘ponderous’ language, though of course she herself has had to plough through the requisite tomes. She wrote countless drafts, which her husband faithfully went through over and over again, giving invaluable comments. Her original manuscript, which Our Writer assured us we won’t want to read, was returned by her editor, with the comment that it should be reduced to a quarter of its length. While it is probably the case that not all writers have a spare job to give up, or a suffering spouse to go through their manuscripts, Our Writer is nevertheless probably not alone among writers in being particular about choice of words, burning the midnight oil or working through countless drafts.

At  the revelation that Our Writer had  been asked by the editor to make revisions a member of the audience who was apparently at home in cloud cuckooland leapt to her feet. She asked of Irene Ng, Member of Parliament, former Straits Times and New Paper journalist, and commissioned author of S Rajaratnam: The Singapore Lion, if at any point she faced censorship. Those of us not qualified to inhabit that fantasyland were aghast. How could it cross anyone’s mind that a person with the political qualifications of Our Writer would face censorship problems?  What on earth could she possibly say that would be considered subversive or unacceptable to the powers that be?

This question certainly took the prize hands down for its unreal quality, but it was not the only instance. An academic in the audience asked almost painfully: Our Writer had mentioned using an array of sources, including Internal Security Department records. How does one gain access to materials listed in the book such as Cabinet records and ministerial files, which most researchers have found impossible to. The explication given by the author was stunning in its simplicity—the files are in the National Archives—just fill up the form for permission to use them–that’s what she did! Some in the audience chuckled, while others smiled at the reply. Was it a neat, deadpan acknowledgment of her privileged position, or a charming ignorance of that fact? In any case, I will regard works which have used ISD files and the like with a degree of skepticism until the day arrives when such documents are routinely available to researchers.

As for Cabinet papers, which the academic noted was mentioned in the bibliography, but not used much in the text, well, Our Writer tells us that they are actually not really all that informative—the minutes only recorded decisions taken, not discussions that preceded that, nor do they record who said what. If that is the case, are there other files which would have served Our Writer better? Surely there must be records which document Rajaratnam’s work as Minister of Culture from 1959?

Academics certainly had a lot to learn that morning. Another hapless one found herself rebuked by Our Writer for having got it all wrong—’Raja’ did not think that Singapore history started in 1819 as this historian had written. Our Writer had been asked by a member of the audience for her view on Rajaratnam’s choice of 1819 as the starting point of Singapore’s history. Bursting with indignation and pride, she revealed that she had found ‘Raja’s’ writings done in the 1940s which talked about there being stone age civilization in Malaya. ‘Raja’ had also written that there were Indian and Chinese in this part of the world before 1819!  The thoroughly discredited academic in question, who happened to be in the audience, could only meekly point out that surely the question was not whether when Mr Rajaratnam believed Singapore history really started, but that as PAP visionary, how far back he thought Singaporeans should trace their history to, and that to him 1819 was the most sensible date to start for the building of a new nation out of a population the majority of whom were recent migrants with their different ancestral histories. Indeed, how they do waffle on, these historians!

Yet another come-uppance for academics was in store. Our Writer revealed that she had a scoop, which no scholar had managed to obtain so far. Fong Swee Suan, former Barisan Socialis member had revealed to her in an exclusive interview that there had been a meeting held over the question of merger between leaders of both factions of the PAP.  The team on the one side included Lee Kuan Yew and S Rajaratnam, and on the other, Lim Chin Siong, Fong Swee Suan and S Woodhull. Lee’s ultimatum was that the ‘other side’ had to support him on the question of merger, or else they would have to leave the party. The three decided they could not go along with the merger proposal.

If only Our Writer had explained to the audience just how earthshaking this revelation is. For it confirms what the left had been saying for decades, and what Dr Poh Soo Kai had asserted in his recent interview with the Straits Times (27Dec 2009): that the dissident MPs did not walk out on the party and cause the split in the PAP—they were expelled.  One would of course assume that Our writer, a veteran journalist, would have checked Fong Swee Suan’s story with Lee Kuan Yew, who called the meeting.

But yes, yet again the academics present must really have felt that they had been thoroughly outclassed by Our Writer, though the more uncharitable among them might have wondered where the glam factor of having interviewed Fong is concerned, if Our Writer had not been pipped to the post by the three Straits Times journalists of Men in White fame.

S Rajaratnam: The Singapore Lion is published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), an academic research institute, whose publications are peer reviewed.

But surely this Writer-in-residence of theirs is peerless.