ThaRum

It took British writer and author J. K. Rowling 17 years to complete the Harry Potter fantasy series. One would say this is such a long journey. Her work, of course, grabs worldwide attention; she becomes of one the greatest writers living.

Here in Phnom Penh, Em Satya, a Cambodian novelist illustrator, has to wait 17 years to get his a romance comic book published; Bopha Battambang (or Flower of Battambang) is now available in print in Khmer language, as English and French version will be made available soon.

An evening of December 13 I was at a book launch at Meta-House, where some expats and local fellows enjoyed the graphic novel exhibition. It’s great, other than listening to elder Satya the illustrator talked about his long-awaited work, I also met some people I hope to.

In a country where reading is not highly motivated and not really considered as leisure and learning, writers find it hard to have their works marketable. And it’s hard to mention that all the works by present writers are not good enough. Same old thing is: Em Satya’s latest comic book is not published by any independent commercial publisher; rather, it’s supported by Our Books, a local non-profit organisation focused on the development of comic art.

Book and reading promotion and awareness are lacking in Cambodia. While history books and novels are popular amongst our surveyed population, it seems there is little familiarity with Cambodian titles and authors except for bestselling novelists and for a few novels printed during the 1940s-1960s.

Born in 1957 in Takeo province, Em Satya is one of several graphic illustrators in war-torn Cambodia, who can earn a living from his artistic works. His talent paid him to survive during the Khmer Rouge regime. Satya began working on Bopha Battambang in 1990 for his own leisure, and it was at the time that Cambodia were so influenced by Indian culture, specifically movies.

Throughout his career, he is mainly an illustrator. Resigned from his post at Ministry of Education, he has worked for local daily newspaper Raksmey Kampuchea, Cambodge Soir, and Magazine Mom and Mab. In 2000, after recovering from stroke, he started to work again with writer Pal Vannarirak, and later moved to Room to Read.

In 2006-2007 Em Satya completed his major work, Bopha Battambang.

In other part of the world, some top selling books are written on mobile phones. Guess where? It’s Japan. Justin Norrie of Sydney Morning Herald has the story: In Japan, cellular storytelling is all the rage.

“Who is John Galt?”
Is it a cheap American slang?

Atlas Shrugged is the last Ayn Rand’s novel that I’m currently reading, shortly after The Fountainhead. My friend Geoffrey Cain asked me whether I had read Atlas Shrugged when I posted some notes about The Fountainhead. Bigger in scope than the previous book, Ayn the novelist and philosopher blasts the world for conspiracy of silence. The book was published more a decade after the World War II.

I’ve got a used book, a paperback edition, for US$ 3.5 from D’s bookstore in town early this month. Of 1088 pages, I still have more than 500 pages to go, but I can’t wait to post a note of it now.

Ayn Rand’s masterpiece. It integrates the basic elements of an entire philosophy into a highly complex, yet dramatically compelling plot—set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists. The theme is: “the role of the mind in man’s existence—and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest.”

In her book, in a democratic country like the United States, its government, the media, the public, and many prominent people rumbles around two people; Dagny Taggart, railroad executive, and Hank Rearden, the inventor of Rearden Metal, who have to carry the weight of the world. The way that the majority are against them is not that they’re too poor in managing their business, but that they’re so incredibly amazing.

The main conflict of the book occurs as the “individuals of the mind” go on strike, refusing to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. Society, they believe, hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned. The peaceful cohesiveness of the world requires those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort. But feeling they have no alternative, they eventually start disappearing from the communities of “looters” and “moochers” who bleed them dry. The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, and the near-total collapse of civilization triggered by their strike shows them to be correct.

According to the author’s Web site, this fiction is an integration of all her philosophy into a novel that is readable, enjoyable by the fact that inventors and innovators are seen as threat to the society. I feel that her literature work plays a fair role in revolutionizing the thinking of American people.

Like so many achievements, Atlas Shrugged received some negative review, too. This is the way thing exists on this planet.

Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites.

But, wait. I’ve just found that, in the Internet movie database, Angelina Jolie will cast businesswoman Dagny Taggart, one with strong mentality, that is expected to be released in 2008.

In Rand’s conclusion, as far as I can guess after reading The Fountainhead, it’s the man like Howard Roark, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart who move the world.