In the second edition of this newsletter, I wrote that I don’t give Singaporean books negative reviews. Part of the reasoning behind that is selfish – Singapore is a small town and I am, technically, a part of the literary scene here. I hate being implicated in gossip and I don’t need to alienate anybody in an already claustrophobic city because of an unfavourable review. This might be ungenerous of me; writers who are committed to their craft are perfectly capable of taking criticism in their stride. Just last month, the poet Theophilus Kwek blogged about receiving a “balanced” review and how, despite it being disappointing to read critical remarks about your work, it allowed him to read and know his poems from a new perspective. (Full disclosure, Theo is also my friend. I said was a small town!) But I’ve also been a part of the scene for long enough to know that writers are petty and hold grudges!! (And sometimes they are right to!!!)
The main reason I’ve shied away from giving negative reviews of Singaporean books is that I worry they might push readers away from supporting local literature. I have many critical thoughts about the local books I’ve read. I just tend to send them in DMs to friends who’ll understand. I’d say I generally read more middling than outstanding books from local authors. Once in a while, there’ll be a book that slaps me in the face with how good it is. But for the most part, I think most Singaporean books need a lot more work to be truly great. I don’t think the problem is a lack of talent. I think the problem is structural.
There’s no money in books. This isn’t just a Singaporean problem – my non-Singaporean writer friends are also poor – but I think Singapore has a unique set of challenges. If you’ve had the misfortune of catching me at my most dejected, you’ve probably heard me moan about how Singaporeans don’t read. I say that only somewhat facetiously. The National Library Board has conducted the National Reading Habits Survey since 2016. The press gave the results a positive spin, claiming in 2018 that reading rates were on the rise. Unfortunately, the claim that “88% of adults read more than once a week in 2018” doesn’t seem so impressive when you consider that the reading material eligible for the study included books, magazines, newspapers and online articles. This same news article quotes a teenager who states that she reads The Straits Times and The Washington Post on Instagram. Call me a snob, whatever. I don’t think it’s good methodology to count Instagram captions as reading material.
The library’s full report revealed that only 70% of Singaporean adults surveyed picked up a book in 2018. Of those 70%, more than half read 5 books or less. The majority of people read 2-3 books that year. That’s a book every 4 months, at best. The numbers are more dire when you look at the section on SingLit. Only 18% of adults surveyed read a Singaporean book in 2018. The readership for Singaporean writing simply isn’t there. Neither is the market. I worked at a bookstore so I can tell you this first hand –book sales alone cannot pay the rent for local bookstores. Veteran independent bookstore BooksActually moved online last year, partly because of the pandemic but also because of rising rent costs. They’ve been vocal about high rent for years, even selling bricks to try to fund a permanent space.
Rent aside, there’s also no money for the people who work in books. While this is true all over the world, there are also superstars in many markets who can easily draw 5-figure advances or who have cushy jobs at the top of the publishing food chain. I can’t name any full-time authors in Singapore off the top of my head (if you know of any, please respond to this email and I will issue a correction in the next newsletter). Everyone I can think of also works as a teacher, arts administrator, copywriter, civil servant etc. The staff at the publishing houses don’t make a lot of money either. There’s no money in any part of the machine. We’ve successfully crowdfunded 5-figure sums for each issue of Mynah but none of the editors (including myself) have made any money from it. We work for free.
Why does this matter? Nobody goes into the arts to get rich. That is true. But the lack of money and general support for the literature scene means it’s that much harder to produce polished work. We don’t have a robust ecosystem of editors here. There are a few people and they’re usually stretched between many projects at once. We don’t have the system of MFAs and writing residencies like more established literary scenes that allow writers the financial security of dedicating themselves to a work. The low (or no) wages pushes people who can’t afford to work out of the scene altogether. We also don’t have thriving literary journals where readers, writers, and critics can have conversations about literature and sharpen each other’s skills.
This is where I’m torn. I’m not an ignoramus. I know perfectly well how useful criticism is for a literary scene. And I know that it’s cowardly for me to shy away from that pursuit. It just feels almost traitorous to write a bad review if it is responsible for turning potential readers away from Singaporean books. If you’re from Singapore, you already know how much harder it is to find audiences for Singaporean art than for international art. And that it’s hard to get people to give a shit about the arts in the first place.
Every time I read a weak Singaporean book, I squint to look past the flaws and focus on the good. So many of our published writers are natural storytellers whose work just needs a little toning. I try to explain away baggy sentences, loose plots, and unnatural dialogue. I really really want our writers to succeed. And there is, often, more good than bad. I’d rather readers be exposed to local literature and cross that mental hurdle than eschew it altogether. (The NLB survey listed the lack of knowledge of local literature as the main reason why adults didn’t read SingLit.)
I need to be fair here. There are a lot of things going right in the literary scene. I think Sing Lit Station does a lot of good work to support the writing scene. There are independent writing collectives, spoken word events, and journals, all run by people with a lot of passion. But it’s hard not to feel disheartened about the survival of the arts in Singapore this week with the sobering news of The Substation’s impending permanent closure. I don’t think we’ll ever hear the full story behind it but there’s enough to suggest that the government pulled funding because The Sub simply wasn’t generating enough revenue to justify state grants. I don’t think the arts should be beholden to market forces. That’s not the point of an experimental space like The Sub. But having a little bit more money frees us all from the whims of the state. I think it would be good for the arts to be less reliant on the state for funding anyway. Some of our best work has been produced without its help.
Reading about reading
I read two pieces recently that have made me question my stance on reviews.
The first is a piece from Australian online magazine Kill Your Darlings that directly challenges my timid assertion that the lack of negative reviews is good for book sales. If this piece is behind the paywall for you, just shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you. I actually pay for a subscription to KYD because I think they’re fantastic.
Well-executed reviews (that hatchet!) sell books regardless of whether their appraisal is positive or negative. If nothing else, they ‘sell’ the idea of literature actually mattering.
The second is from New York Times book critic (and my intellectual idol) Parul Sehgal on the history of the New York Times Book Review and the role of reviews in general.
There are old, imperishable debates about whether criticism is itself an art form (depends who’s doing it, I say). What cannot be in doubt is that criticism is itself a form of mythmaking, itself a story.
I’m going to write negative reviews from now on!!
Readers, you’ve gotten to witness the growth of the protagonist (me) in the course of this newsletter. I really would encourage you to read the pieces linked above because they changed my mind. That and writing 1,200 words on how much I care about the Singapore literature scene on a Thursday night is probably the push I needed to care about it more intelligently. No more kid gloves! I’m not pivoting to being a critic, this book newsletter is still going to be general and freewheeling (whatever I feel like, yall don’t pay me). But I do think I’m doing SingLit a disservice by being a spineless advocate for it.
If you’re a writer or a publisher, I’m always happy to receive advances. I promise to only accept books that I’m going to read and write about.
Next week
I’m going to the Singapore Art Book Fair this weekend. Want me to look out for anything? Anything in particular you want to me to write about? Drop me a comment or an email! I only got a ticket for one of the venues so a full report is contingent on me successfully sneaking into the second.
fwiw i feel this way about hk anglophone lit too (though there's a bigger and more developed indie sinophone or specifically cantonese lit scene in hk, i suppose). i'm curious, too, about what you think of singaporean writers/artists/translators/critics etc who are abroad - do they have more responsibility not to undersell local lit to anglo-american (mostly white) tastemakers? this is something i struggle with a lot - where does advocacy end and criticism begin?