Bali, by Putu Wijaya

Now this one in English, even though the book is in Indonesian. This is a collection of very short short stories about Bali (hence the title) by one of Bali's most famous literary scions. It was written shortly after the Kuta bombings of 2002, and several of the stories address issues around the bombings--the criminals, the reactions of the government, the reactions of the people. The stories also take on other issues of contemporary Bali--what does it mean, in this day and age, to be Balinese? How can one accommodate traditional practices with the demands of the modern world? How can one adjust to being both Balinese and Indonesian?

While these all sound like fascinating issues, and they are, the stories failed to satisfy me. Perhaps they were too short, perhaps they were too confusing--each of the characters in the each of the stories had the same name--or perhaps they were just boring, focusing only on those issues and not on any literary development or character expansion. In any case, I'm sure they're important, they just weren't exactly entertaining as well.

Aib, by J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee memang salah satu penulis yang terbaik di dunia hari ini. Dia pemenang Nobel Sastra 2003, dan pemenang Hadiah Booker beberapa kali. Dan, selain semua itu, dia memang penulis yang kesukaan saya.

Buku ini, "Aib," mewakili puncak bakatnya. Saya pernah membacanya dalam bahasa Inggris, dan kali ini saya baru membacanya dalam bahasa Indonesia. Buku ini lebih menakjubkan dalam bahasa Inggris, pasti karena saya bisa merasakan keindahan bahasanya. Tapi bahkan dalam bahasa Indonesia, saya menikmati pengalaman membaca J.M. Coetzee. Siapa tidak bisa menghargai karyanya? Seharusnya mereka diusir dari "polite society."

Language and Power, by Benedict Anderson

Though I was totally bored by the chapters of this book focusing solely on politics—that’s just not my shtick—I was equally enthralled by his chapters addressing linguistic issues in politics. Benedict Anderson is a genius and I’m jealous of him. I think that’s actually sufficient review.

He's Just Not That Into You, by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo

This was a fun little throwaway read, good for a night of entertainment—short, to the point, clever and amusing in its writing while still (mostly) solid in its advice. While I don’t particularly think I’m one of the women it’s aimed at—in the past, at least, I’ve had very few problems moving on from a crush that clearly wasn’t working. On the contrary, I’ve been the one in the male position, not enough into a boyfriend but afraid to admit it, using “busy” as an excuse and hesitating about using the word boyfriend. And now, of course, looking back, I feel like scum—I should have freed him to look for someone better ages before I actually did.

But this shouldn’t be entirely about my own relationship history. I agreed with most of the assertions in the book—men who claim to be too busy to spend time together, don’t want to have sex, are married, are drunks, or are abusive, are men to be avoided. Basically, men who make excuses for not committing are not worth committing to. Fine. I’m sure that’s a lesson many single women need to learn: cut your losses and move on. Somewhere out there is a man who will committ.

That’s a tricky proposition, of course, given the fact that there are far more single women than single men. I think the problem of most of the audience of the book is not so much that the women can’t see the issues in the relationship, and not that she can’t, deep down, admit that he’s just not that into her, but that she’s weighing her odds: “so this relationship is subpar. It’s still a relationship, and I don’t want to be alone.” Luckily, the authors, or at least one of them, the single woman, acknowledge this, and address it: so you’re lonely. That sucks. But isn’t lonely better than miserable in a relationship?

I think they’ve got a fair point, or at least they’ve convinced me: if the relationship isn’t true love, isn’t, as they say, “uplifting, joyous, inspiring, and intoxicating,” then get out and look for one that is. (Not that every relationship is going to feel like that all the time—of course there will be problems. But problems of, hopefully, a different kind than the one of apathy, or just not being that into each other.)

Though I agree with their main point, I did disagree with some of the smaller ones. Like, for example, the case study of a man in medical school who sometimes gets stressed and yells. They tell the girlfriend he’s just not that into her if he’s yelling. (“I don’t care if he’s studying to become the next Messiah. There is no reason to yell at anyone ever, unless you are screaming “LOOK OUT FOR THAT BUS!””) Sure, yelling is a bad outlet for any kind of stress, but they don’t seem to acknowledge her claim that before this stress, he was a really good guy and really good to her. They can’t acknowledge that his stress might be a legitimate thing, and maybe she should hold on to something good, knowing the current rough time will pass.

(I don’t know this particular relationship, obviously, but I have experienced something similar, where I was incredibly stressed. As soon as the stress was over, though, the relationship improved dramatically. Hence, I think this guy should at least be given a chance.)

Another bone of contention: the authors insist that the man should do the asking out. They even add it as one of their “standard suggestions,” along with basics like “I will not date a man who is married” and “I will not date a man who makes me feel sexually undesirable” and “I will not date a man who drinks or does drugs to an extent that makes me uncomfortable.” I mean, again, I can understand their perspective: a man who is into you will be brave enough, by hook or by crook, to ask you out. But what about relationships where the woman notices the man first? Or where things just work out so that it’s easier for her to ask out? I have no problems with women being the askers, though, then again, I’m a woman. Maybe the authors are right. Maybe men do. I just don’t think that’s nearly as basic a suggestion as “I will not be with a man who is not clearly a good, kind, loving person.”

In any case, this was a fun read, filled with (mostly) solid advice and lots of funny writing, amusing lines like “Have to say, little suspicious of someone who doesn’t like one of the greatest plesaures on earth. What else does he not like that you don’t know about yet? Puppies? Babies? Having a soul?” and “With the advent of cell phones and speed dialing it is almost impossible not to call you. Sometimes I call people from my pants pocket when I don’t even mean to” and amusing workbook exercises, like coloring in a red flag to remind yourself that a man not wanting to have sex is a giant red flag in the relationship. I don’t know that its advice will be particularly life-changing for me, but presumably it has been for many. After all, to borrow from the premise of the book, just because I’m not that into it doesn’t mean that no one will be.

Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman

I think my relatively neutral feelings towards this book were largely a product of reading it ten years too late: perhaps had I picked it up right upon its being published, or right as the hype machine was in full force, I would have been struck by something new or interesting. As it was, though, I found that I had already been exposed to most of the ideas—whether through casual conversations, reading Howard Gardner on mutiple intelligences, or, most crucially, though discussions of Peircean semiotics—and so this book was, if anything, a refresher course.

And, like any good college course, the lecturer has his credentials. I expected the author to be much more “journalist interviewing the experts” type (a la Malcolm Gladwell), instead of a real psychologist himself (albeit, of course, a psychologist-cum-journalist). He was, as far as I could tell, solid on the research, and even if he didn’t include all the details in the text, for the sake of a reading public without PhD’s, the footnotes were comprehensive and accurate.

The information was similarly dense—though well-organized, of course, the writing style lacked pizzazz, which made the text, interesting in its subject matter, almost boring to read. Goleman frequently used real-life examples and short anecdotes, but then almost never made reference to them later in the chapter; they were, instead, just a garnish to attract the reader’s eye, not a spice to keep the reader interested. His argument was a good one—emotions are critically important to the human condition, and we need to teach our children to handle them correctly—but I would have enjoyed more concrete suggestions on how to teach children, how to keep emotions in line. I suppose he saved that for his long series of sequels—emotional intelligence in relationships, emotional intelligence at work, etc.

In sum, this was fine to pass the time on a long journey, but not really an earth-shaker or ground-mover of any kind. I didn’t think it was terrible, and I didn’t think it was brilliant. I guess you could say it didn’t really affect my emotions at all.

Raumanen, oleh Marianne Katroppo

I could probably write this review in Indonesian, but I’m not going to, because I’m feeling lazy, and because I just wrote several reviews in Indonesian and I’m tired.

I have mixed feelings about this work, the story of a love between Raumanen, a girl from Manado, and Monang, a Batak boy. On the one hand, it was awarded several major literary prizes in the years after its publication, and is clearly one of the classics of contemporary Indonesian literature; its characters are nicely drawn, I thought, and believable; the time split between past reminiscences and present situations was fairly balanced and presented in an interesting way, revealing details about Raumanen’s current fragile, if not entirely broken, mental state little by little. The language was clear, easy to read, and funny; more than that, I can’t really say, not being a native speaker. The story drew me in and kept me reading for several hours at once, which, though perfectly normal for books in English, is quite a feat for a book in Indonesian.

However, I did find a few parts of the book that I disliked. First of all, the secondary characters were all rather flat, each of them given a very obvious supporting role to Manen and Monang—“the friend with advice,” “the jealous friend,” “the friend in a similar situation.” They were dull and not really worth keeping track of. What’s more, I thought they were introduced almost at random. The best example is Manen’s American friend, a woman named Norah married to a Batak man. She appeared out of nowhere, just like, “oh, by the way, this is my friend. And she’s American!” She seemed too strange a character to really have a place in the book—why is there a Westerner interfering in this clearly Indonesian problem of an impossible love between ethnicities? I could see that perhaps Katoppo thought to show another example of a mixed marriage, but I felt that she would have been better off keeping her story entirely within Indonesia.

While for the most part Katroppo did a good job showing lovers’s banter between Manen and Monang, when she failed, she failed so utterly that it’s almost embarrassing. At one point, for example, she wanted to show the lovers discussing something deep, giving her the opportunity to contrast Manen’s traditional religious beliefs with Monang’s cynical modern perspective; she places the characters at a table discussing Bertrand Russell.

'“He is a great philosopher,” said Monang.

“But he didn’t believe in God,” complained Manen.'

See? Clumsy! While I like the idea of these Indonesian college students discussing Bertrand Russell—and while it does seem realistic for people in their position—no actual conversation starts like this.

Katroppo was, apparently, grouped among some other authors of the 70s with the collective name “Pop Literature.” Though I felt her intentions were to touch deeper than something so easily dismissed as “pop,” and though at times she did indeed display something very deep and tender, whether the forbidden inter-ethnic love or Raumanen’s slow descent into a killing madness, at other times the book rang false with the airy lightness of, well, ABBA, while we’re discussing 70s pop. I would recommend reading it, for those interested in Indonesian literature, and even for those not, if there is an English translation, for it is perhaps a perfect representation of society in its place and era, but, all that aside, I don’t think this is even close to being the perfect book.

Saman, oleh Ayu Utami

Buku ini merupakan suata keajaiban waktu diterbitkan: biasanya di Indonesia, sebuah buku tidak dijual lebih dari ribuan jilid, tetapi buku ini langsung harus diterbitkan lagi karena begita popular. Buku ini juga sangat kontroversial, karena penggunaan adegan sex, apalagi adegan sex tentang perempuan dan seleranya. (Novel ini memang memusatkan pada para perempuan.) Juga, buku ini tentang isu-isu penting dalam jaman sekarang: suku, agama, dan politik.

Buku ini menceritakan hidup seorang pastor Katolik, yang dulu bernama Wis tapi sekarang mengganti namanya ke Saman. Dia terlibat dalam gerakan buruh keret di Sumatra, dan lalu dia ditangkap polisi karena dicurigai pemimpin gerakan itu. Buku ini juga menceritakan pengalaman Laila, yang jatuh cinta pada seseorang yang sudah menikah, dan teman-temannya Shakuntala, yang dapat beasiswa ke kota New York, di Amerika Serikat, dan Yasmin, yang jatuh cinta pada Saman, namun dia sudah lama menikah.

Walaupun tulisannya sangat bagus dan halus, cerita-ceritanya, menurut saya, tidak cukup memuaskan. Rupanya, buku ini direncanakan menjada buku yang lebih tebal, berarti ini sebagian buku lain saja. Saya kira itu betul: setiap cerita tidak cukup dalam, tidak menjelaskan perasaan-perasaan wataknya dengan cukup terang. Saya memang menikmati buku ini serhubungan dengan keberanian penulisnya mengarang adegan politik, adegan agama, dan adegan seks, tetapi saya tidak paham watak-watak dan tidak jatuh cinta padanya. Lagipula, setiap adegan agak samar, supaya saya tidak seratus persen mengerti setiap tindakan orang-orang di dalam buku ini. Ayu Utami memang sangat berbakat, tetapi mungkin dia harus kerjakan buku lagi untuk memamerkan bakatnya dengan sempurna.

Perempuan Di Titik Nol, by Nawal el-Saadawi

(Pengantar: Mochtar Lubis)

Saya kira penulis buku ini sudah sangat pahit kepada kaum lelaki; barangkali dia sendiri telah tertipu atau telah diperlakukan secara jahat oleh lelaki, atau mungkin rekan-rekannya atau teman-teman telah mengalami kejadian buruk seperti itu. Pendapat watak utama dalam buku ini, seorang gadis yang cerdas, cantik, dan malang, yang akhirnya menjadi pelacur, sangat benci kepada lelaki, tetapi alasannya cukup bagus: dia memang dipukul lelaki, diabaikan lelaki, dan diperbudak lelaki. Terus, tidak mengejutkan bahwa dia bilang, “Untuk menjadi penjahat hanyalah lelaki.”

Gadis ini mulai hidupnya di dusun di Mesir, dengan ibu yang hanya dua mata besar dan bulat, yang terus-menurus memandangnya, dan dengan ayah yang tidak mempedulikan anaknya, apalagi anak perempuan. Lalu, dia tinggal dengan pamannya, yang sesudah waktu berlalu menikah dengan wanita yang tidak suka padanya, dan dia dikirim ke sekolah. Nanti, setelah sudah lulus SMA, dia dikawinkan dengan seorang sheikh yang tua dan jelek; dia patuh perintahnya, tetapi dia masih dipukulnya. Dia melarikan diri dan kemudian menjadi pelacur. Akhirnya, setelah beberapa kejadian lagi yang masih buruk, dia membunuh seorang laki-laki. Karena dia perempuan dan korbannya laki-laki, dia langung dipenjara dan dihukum, berarti digantung.

Ini memang bukan cerita ceriah. Tetapi penulisnya pintar melukis gambaran masyarakyatnya dan negaranya dan keadaan wanita di negeri ini di masa kini. Penulis Nawal el-Saadawi sudah lama menjadi doktor wanita, dan sekarang dia salah satu orang feminis yang paling terkenal di dunia Arab, bagi bukunya maupun bagi pendapatnya dan tingkatannya. Dia memang berbakat menulis, dan adegan-adegan penderitaan wataknya amat mengharukan dan efektif. Dan pengantar Bahasa Indonesia, Mochtar Lubis, memang juga pintar bahasa; sebagai bintang sastra Indonesia dalam abad ke-20, saya tetap percaya pada terjemahannya. Walaupun kucil, buku ini sangat berat: pesannya penting sekali. Seandainya saya bisa membaca buku ini dalam bahasanya yang asli!

Sepuluh Anak Negro, by Agatha Christie

Buku ini sangat terkenal dalam bahasa Inggris, karena Agatha Christie memang salah satu juara menulis cerita detektif, dan novel ini salah satu hasilnya yang paling disukai orang.

Dan memang buku ini disukai saya dulu, tentu saja dalam bahasa aslinya. Waktu saya kecil, sekitar 11 tahun, saya sangat tertarik pada tulisan Agatha Christie, dan saya membaca semuanya, tapi buku ini yang favorit saya.

Dan ternyata, selera saya dari masa kecil sampai sekarang tidak berubah. Buku ini masih sangat menarik hati, masih sangat menegangkan. Ceritanya amat bagus, tapi kali ini saya agak kecewa dengan akhir cerita; saya masih harap ada orang lain tersembunyi pada pulau itu, walaupun itu tidak mungkin.

Bahasa Indonesia dalam buku ini agak aneh: kendati bahasanya baik dan benar, kata-kata dan kalimat-kalimat masih agak terpengaruh Bahasa Inggris. Bahkan kalau saya tidak tahu sebelum membacanya bahwa buku ini diterjemahkan dari Bahasa Inggris, saya pasti bisa menangkap hal itu dari gaya tulisannya.

Tetapi, selain itu, saya menikmati buku ini untuk kali yang kedua. Mungkin, pada suatu hari di masa depan, akan ada kali yang ketiga. Siapa tahu?

Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet, by Djenar Maesa Ayu

Saya sangat menikmati kumpulan cerpen ini, and hal itu jarang sekali. Biasanya, cerpen terlalu pendek untuk selera saya: seketika saya masuk dunia cerita itu, rela bergabung dengan pengalaman wataknya, cerita itu langsung selesai, and saya ditinggalkan, sendirian dan kecewa.

Tetapi, saya memang tidak tahu kenapa, cerpen-cerpen ini tidak mengecewakan saya, seperti biasa. Dunia yang diciptakan setiap cerita menarik sekali, sebuah dunia yang berbeda dari dunia ini, tetapi yang masih mengandang bagian-bagian realistis, seperti sifat wataknya dan gaya hidupnya. Yang lebih memuaskan lagi, setiap cerita mencerminkan penghidupan Indonesia—kekayaan, kemiskinan, dan perbedaan antara kedua keadaan itu.

Setiap cerita dalam kumpulan ini cukup unik dan menarik. Yang favorit saya, yaitu “SMS,” sangat cerdas dalam karangannya. Pengarang menggunakan format SMS untuk menceritakan kejadian antara beberapa pasangan yang ingin bertemu secara rahasia. Cerpen “Waktu Nayla” juga sangat menarik, mengenai seorang wanita yang akan meninggal dan keinginannya untuk hidup ini sebelum dia meninggalkannya selama-lamanya.

Ada beberapa tema yang muncul di cerpen-cerpen ini: masa kecil yang kosong dan sedih, tanpa perhatian dari orang tua; sex, tentu saja—buku ini sangat terkenal waktu diterbitkan karena penggunaannya adegan sex yang agak tegas; dan elemen-elemen fantasi yang kuat sekali: seekor lintah yang tinggal di rumah sebagai hewan peliharaan; pertemuan orang-orang yang berbentuk berbagai binatang; dan sebuah gambaran jendela yang dapat dibuka dan dimasuk dan yang menciptakan dunia baru. Walaupun membaca buku seperti ini dalam bahasa asing amat sulit—saya sering bingung dengan kosakata yang saya belum tahu—saya sangat menganjurkan kepada semuanya untuk membaca buku ini.

Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynmann

Richard Feynmann is perhaps one of the twentieth century’s most famous physicists. The comparisons to Einstein are, of course, inevitable, and begin before the book even does with a quote on the back saying that Feynmann is the Einstein of the second half of the century. Be that as it may, they are famous for different reasons: Einstein for the sheer power of his scientific genius, Feynmann for not only that genius, but the ability to convey and teach that genius. Feynmann, then, is famous, to the layperson at least, primarily as a lecturer par excellence, and this slim volume is designed to show off that skill.

Taken from a series of lectures in his introductory physics class for freshmen and sophomores at CalTech, Six Easy Pieces reviews some of the fundamentals of physics—atoms, gravitation, quantum mechanics, and the relation of physics to other sciences. Feynmann is, it’s true, a gifted lecturer, blessed with the ability to be funny without distracting from the subject—he has some lovely sarcastic asides about various theories, which are, as he says, “a very beautiful line of reasoning. The only problem is that perhaps it is not true”—and to find an apt concrete example to help students understand highly abstract concepts, such as Dennis the Menace hiding his 28 blocks to explain conservation of energy. Moreover, Feynmann has a passion for his subject that is evident even through writing such as this: in raptures over the planets and the physics of the universe, he compares it to poetry, saying that, “Far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere or methane and ammonia must be silent?”

His passion is certainly infectious through this book, as evidenced by the fact that I, never much of a fan of physics, finished it. Yet, genius though this man may be, I had a hard time concentrating on his explanations, mostly through my own weakness of will, so to speak. It’s a pity I couldn’t see Feynmann himself lecture, as I’m sure that would be a thousand times better than any book. It seems this book might be best classified as a festschrift of sorts—for those who have seen or known the man, or at least those who have an interest in introductory physics, this is a perfect homage to his teaching style. For those, like myself, who fit none of those categories, this is instead a solid introduction to the basics of physics, as well as the basics of a physics genius, but is, alas, hardly the grand “one book to be passed on to the next generation of scientists,” as a short blurb on the front cover claims.

What Went Wrong, by Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is one of the great Middle Eastern scholars of our day, and, with his name on it, and with such a hot topic—the West versus the Middle East--this book was of course a New York Times bestseller. Why, then, was it so dissatisfying?

This is not to say that it was really bad: it did contain some interesting points about history, both medieval and modern. The central question of the book is in the title: for many years Islam was the world’s greatest civilization, enlightened, powerful, advanced. Then, seemingly suddenly, the West arose and today, Islamic countries lag far behind their Western counterparts and, perhaps even more embarrassingly, behind some of their East Asian counterparts. So what went wrong? What caused this change?

That is the question Lewis puts to us, the reader, and the question he purports to answer; yet, I didn’t find any real, solid analysis of said question in the book. This is a sufficient survey of the history of cultural change, to be sure, but for the most part it’s missing that extra clincher of a real answer; instead, Lewis puts forward theory after theory and points out their weaknesses—it can’t just be economics, it can’t just be culture, it can’t just be the Jews, it can’t just be religion--yet never shows us a real answer of strength. I can understand his reasons for this—he is a scholar, after all, not a political figure, and may wish to refrain from giving his own opinion, instead displaying the opinions of those less dispassionate—but it makes the book, as a whole, rather disappointing. Lewis certainly has some very insightful points—contrasting some of the basic tenets of Christianity versus those of Islam, for example, with respect to secularism and the clergy, or orthodoxy and heresy—but I felt this book was primarily a “throwaway,” a concession, on Lewis’s part, to writing popular scholarship to improve his renown, but without any real effort to make it a quality piece of writing or scholarship. His information repeated itself, his anecdotes seemed almost more chatty than weighty or insightful, and, perhaps most irritatingly, he often made references to interesting things, such as certain Frenchmen taking concubines with “disastrous results” without then elucidating further. This felt like a book that could have been, and maybe even was, written in a real scholar’s sleep. Next time, Lewis, wake up and give us an answer.