Fool's Gold: The Malayan Life of Ferdach O'Haney
Frederick Lees
Silverfish Books 2004; RM30

When I first picked up this book and looked at the jacket, I thought I was in for 280 pages of Saturday night bridge-club reading. The picture on the back of the author, Frederick Lees, looks like a mug from the directory of the Everton Exuberant Eighties club. The first chapter's description of a gin-soaked luncheon brought to mind images of Hemingway without the adventure.

However, my eyes widened and my preconceptions were dispelled by the third chapter, in which the protagonist makes friends with a hooker. And let's face it, a hooker's a good friend to have. "He has obviously jumped into the Far Eastern pool at the deep end," goes the story.

But this story about a British officer beginning his foreign service career in the Malaya of the 1950s is a reasonably good read; it's an interesting and informed look at the political machinations of the British in the final days of the colonial adventure.

The author, now 80 years old, was himself a Malayan Civil Service officer, and so a lifetime of experience colors the book. One envisions that the characters are composites of people the author knew, or perhaps of a person the author once was himself.

The appeal of this book lies in the events it chronicles, although at times it tends to drag on a bit. The reader is introduced to Ferdach O'Haney, the half-British, half-Irish ex-commie leftist who is plopped right in the middle of the Emergency, and from his base in Ipoh he is given immediate responsibility for enumerating squatters that had fled into the jungle during the Japanese Occupation.

The political insight and descriptions of events, places, and personalities makes this book worthwhile for anyone interested in that period in Malayan history. Raman Krishnan (owner and publisher of Silverfish Books) told me over a bowl of laksa that this was one of the reasons he had chosen to publish this book.

Smile, you're history

"I publish for historical recordsevery book published is a snapshot of historythe way people felt." He explained that he felt an obligation to document that period in history. "There are so few historical records in this country I encourage people to write about the Emergency, about the Japanese period. Unfortunately there are very few [people] writing about that period."

The book is undeniable British in style and form, and the prose is that of a practiced and steady hand. It's a well crafted novel, and it's easy to imagine that Lees's late-in-life literary career is the manifestation of a lifelong dream.

It's very readable, with a sprinkling of Lees's subtle and dry humour, and it's interesting to hear the story told from the point of view of the occupying power, a power that knew (according to the author) its days were numbered in Malaya.
An excerpt to illustrate the point:

I'll make it as clear as I can which won't help you very much. Some people in the Malayan Communist Party want to do a deal with the Government. They think that the present military struggle will run them into the sand. They also think that as long as the Emergency continues the British will have every excuse to stay on. As you know from the support he gave you yesterday, Lai Kuan holds this view.

By the way, there's no evidence that he's been involved in any terrorist activities. Others in the Central Committee think quite the opposite. Now my dear O'Haney, just as the Communists are not united on the issue, so on our side there are conflicting views. You might say that the Intelligence people in Singapore take the 'world view': they'd like the Emergency to end and to have a rapprochement with China.

And Britain being in declineeconomically, militarily, God, in every damn waythey'd like a early British withdrawal from South East Asiaprovided that whatever new governments emerge keep opportunities open for British trade and investment. Of course the outbreak of the Korean War will bugger up their viewpoint if it goes on too long.

Still, those are their long term objectives. In consequence they were in favour of the Labour Government's recognition of Communist China. But our Federal Intelligence people in Kuala Lumpur don't want any deal with the Malayan Communists. They want them eliminated. They hated the Labour Government's recognition of Communist China. They're convinced that it sent the wrong message to the Malayan Chinese. And they think primarily in terms of the interests of the Malays.

Gay Malaya

There are some interesting characters in the book, and some intriguing transformations. The pages are dripping with homoeroticism, as are many accounts of imperialism, but this one is a good bit more explicit. This got me to thinking about others I've read: Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad just to name a few. In many of these books there are fairly flowery descriptions of a subtly sexual nature, and it's common to find passages about the "lithe and sweaty smooth bodies of the savages."

There's a sort of colonial-homoeroticism happening here, it seems, and so I decided to ask Raman about it. He told me that Bali had become known as paradise because the Europeans could go there and "take boys to bed," and no one back in jolly old England, or swampy old Holland would be the wiser.

Raman told me that the indigenous people "treated homosexuality as something they did before they got married." Interesting. This immediately raised a number of questions in my head. Was there a clash of civilizations here? Was there an incompatibility of perceptions, with the idea of homosexuality as a mere behavior, prevalent in the East, being confused with the generally accepted principles of "gayness," that is, an inherent and fundamental difference in sexual orientation of the West? I wanted to know more.

"So before the outsiders came to Bali and other places to 'take boys to bed,' was that a prevalent behaviour?" I asked Raman. I wanted to know if it was a generally accepted part of the culture, a rite of passage or a stage in a young man's life, or was it a result of the locals being mystified by the whiteys, or was it mere hospitality?

White devils

Who knows, was the jist of his reply. "All the accounts, novels, and stories are written by foreigners." Sounds like the conflation of a forbidden behavior labeled by society as deviance and the innocent frolickings of innocent, but curious young men.

Aha! So there is something going on. The lithe-skin descriptions, it seems to me, are just another manifestation of a master-slave relationship, the exploitation of the savages (pardon my language) by the cultured, albeit decadent, but civilised nonetheless, outsiders.

Raman disagreed with my point here, and as I slurped down some noodles he expounded on his point about the relationship between Ferdie, the protagonist, and Mat Noor, one of the Malay soldiers under his command, and the object of his newly-awakened desire.

Raman told me that in Indian culture, there were not just two sexes, but several, and that this was manifested in the images of some of the gods, rendered as androgynous, or as hemophrodites.

He described the many gradations of Eastern sensuality and sexuality, cast against the black and white, in-versus-out paradigm of the west. Whatever your take on it, though, there's something for everyone in this book. We also discussed the concept of "amok," which has a role in this novel as well. The only other book I'd read by a foreigner about Malaya was Henri Fauconnier's The Soul of Malaya, another novel in which an amok plays a prominent role.

Is it just an easy way out for a writer? Is it a way to employ the exotic to create an instant chapter of adventure, action and conflict? Is it an over-relied upon device, like those witches in Shakespeare, to knock off a character? I mean, white people can get a lot of mileage from describing and incorporating seemingly innocuous items such as fruit, boats, clothes, etc., to wow folks back home. Lees does it a lot in this book. Everything from rambutans to Cheongsams are employed to set the mood.

Raman told me that foreigners were naturally fascinated by this behavior, because although we all know it happens, nobody knows why. We then digressed into a short conversation about people scaling towers, storming schools, and seizing fast-food outlets blasting everything and everyone in sight, wondering if these actions constituted an amok.

What about the book?

Then back to the book. It's not bad. For me it was an interesting look at a period that I know little about. For Raman it's confirmation of why he's in the business. "It's very well written, literarya literary book is not quite plot driven. It's driven more by language." There is also some good character development in Fool's Gold. They grow, they adapt, they learn, and you grow to like or dislike them along the way.

Fool's Gold is one of around eight books Raman's SilverfishBooks released last year. He's a small publisher, with a small market; a typical run consists of 2000-3000 copies. Although Silverfish Books in Bangsar has been open for five years now, Raman has been publishing books for three years.

It's a struggle, and a great deal of work for Raman, who reviews dozens of manuscripts and does the editing himself: "good ones are few and far between," he told me, but it's addictive. "I'm enjoying it too muchWhen you get manuscripts like the one I'm reading right now you love your job."

Raman spends around 10 hours a day at a computer, and has a great deal of "grunt work" to do, as well, but he's driven. "In a way I'm not in it for the moneyI want books which will remain relevant. I want to print stories about MalayaI want to publish stories about Malaysians." So when you find a book like Fool's Gold on the SilverfishBooks label, it's been personally chosen. You'll probably learn something, and you'll probably enjoy the time invested.


Next week: What if Singapore attacked Johor? Blue Moon, and more on the vicissitudes of the small-time publisher in Malaysia and the reading habits of Malaysians.