A disappointment

It has been a while, in fact, too long, since last I posted something on the topic of literature up here. There are many reasons for this holdup, all of them very complicated, unpardonable and nothing but excuses. So, no more on that; it’s a past. Earlier this month, I attended a reading of young Thai-American writer Rattawut Lacharoensap at our Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin. I had first encountered him and his work two years ago at exactly the same venue and had been quite intrigued by his refreshing debut collection of short stories, “Sightseeing” (review here). Naturally, I was excited to see what he’s up to next. And he was really courageous, I must say, for reading from a manuscript in the making, his long-awaited fist novel “End of Siam”, slated for publication around May of next year. That I found impressing.

But then, the reading as such, my first impression of the text, those opening passages that are meant to get us into the body of the entire thing – frankly, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by what I heard. Of course, the man himself was charming as ever, spirited, and he seemed at ease with his temporary hometown of Berlin. But as far as having a literary appointment with a new talent goes, my expectations weren’t met. Apparently, the book is about the male protagonist’s childhood years and adolescence followed over the course of some 20 years and it starts out in a Thai village setting and a fitting domestic account. There are some memorable scenes that tell of the boy’s intimate relationship with his (single) mother. I thought most of the descriptions well-done, but unrefined, without much resonance and stale. The pace was TV-ish and the narrator’s point of view omniscient, which doesn’t have to be consistently so (for that I would have to have read the whole novel, obviously), and the approach is not technically invalid per se. But there were some characterizations and internal commentary that are just too explicit, leaving no space for the reader to make up their own minds; to me, this is a typical shortcoming in many young story-tellers of whatever medium, and when there is too little artistic distance to the subject matter.

In any case, this can be nothing more but a first-first and no final judgment. I might still want to read the work in full when it comes out. All I can say at this point is that I’m – disappointed, a bit. And that may as well be my own mistake in part, for – as I said – those expectations? They were mine to begin with!

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