I also had a chance to meet my publisher, editor, head of publicity and foreign rights at Grove/Atlantic while in New York. As one of the last independent publishers in New York, Grove/Atlantic continues Barney Rossett’s tradition of giving voice to the outsider, of publishing books that are literary, books that are about the larger world. Next Autumn Grove/Atlantic will bring out Paying Back Jack.

As 2008 ends I am writing an article titled Literary Bangkok for Writers & Poets Magazine. I spent a few days at the Oriental Hotel researching the article. Looking into the archives of writers from the past who came to Bangkok: Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, George Orwell and others. Like the trip to New York, the time at the Oriental Hotel has stimulated my thinking about what we owe to the great authors and publishers of the past, and as we walk into the future, what part of their legacy do we take along with us and what parts are shed like the skin of snake.

2008 has also brought to Thailand and many other parts of the world equal measures of violence, uncertainty, and chaos. Political events in Thailand overshadowed the news for months. Demonstrations, occupations of the government house and closure of the airports, with new governments coming and going in rapid successions. The tourism business crashed. People were staying closer to home. Foreigners are less certain about the future, have less money, and with travel warnings, they put off that discretionary purchase—whether it is an air ticket to Thailand, a hardback book, or dinner at a posh restaurant. Stock markets crashed everywhere, entire industries dissolving before our eyes, a crisis in publishing. Newspapers dropping print editions, home delivery, going into bankruptcy.

Perhaps the world has always looked like it was unraveling. Economic collapse, the climate fundamentally changing, the balance of power in the world up for grabs, and the feeling that something we can’t quite imagine looms over the horizon. In better days, we assumed something good would be found over the horizon. Now people aren’t so sure. And that in a nutshell is our existential angst. We want to believe things will get better, but have largely given in to the feeling we are about to slip into a void and no one around us has the capability, the resources, or the intelligence to break the fall.

A tugboat of gloom is pulling the world through the dark waters of noir. There aren’t enough lifejackets for everyone. People are getting thrown over the side.

On Maud Newton’s literary blog, I came across the excerpts from Mark Twain’s “The Privilege of the Grave” which can be found in the New Yorker archives.

Its occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege — strictly speaking — but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by civilized peoples.

            * * *

Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are waste, because I can’t print the result…. It does my weather-beaten soul good to read it, and admire the trouble it would make for my family.

Peter has received many awards over the years and a few of his well-known books include: Ghost Story, Shadowlands, Koko, Mystery, The Throat. And there are also a couple of novels that Peter co-authored with Stephen King: The Talisman and Black House.

Peter also stayed in the Somerset Maugham Suite at the Oriental Hotel in 1983. His Bangkok connection factors into his novel Koko. If you haven’t read him, you’re missing out on superb story-telling from a master of the craft.

“Whether in a Raymond Chandler story set in 1930’s Los Angeles or a Christopher G. Moore Calvino novel set in Bangkok 2008, no matter how nihilistically Noir the setting and story, there is an immense and guilty pleasure to be found in the world of Noir, a world in which we are free to surrender our ideals, hopes and dreams and come to grips with the “true” nature of life and the world as a gigantic and colorful sewer, populated by charismatic bugs, rats, reptiles and serpents, who ceaselessly try to do each other in as they float along on the infinite river of fecal waste matter created by humanity.”

Link: http://absolutelybangkok.com/looking-at-bangkok-through-a-noir-lens/

Artist Chris Coles: Thai Police Colonel

What has received less attention is the underlying dynamic of origin and nature of the economic and political interest and how they’ve remained fairly consistent in Thailand for many decades despite the fact that governments and constitutions have regularly changed. This partnership of convenience has an enduring quality.

The perception that Thaksin policies threatened to upset this partnership with its existing players, caused a sense of panic, followed by determination to do what was necessary to eliminate the threat.

To understand the working relationship between the business community (overwhelmingly ethnic Chinese) and the other big political players such as the bureaucrats, the “old-money” class and men in uniforms, you would do well to read Joe Studwell’s Asian Godfathers.

Studwell does an excellent job of revealing how the Godfathers succeeded in Southeast Asia, including the Thai godfathers contingent. In any Southeast Asia patronage system where concessions, licenses, cartels and other monopoly practices have had a long history, the Chinese were skillful in cultivating the right political connections and exploited them to create a herd of rich cash cows. Whether it was ports, banks, telecommunications, mining, rubber, or timber, having an exclusive right to a monopoly coupled with the guarantee to exclude competition was a surefire way to rake in a large amount of money. The other factor that Studwell identifies as significant to the rise of billionaire Asian Godfathers was access to easy and cheap credit. This allowed them to expand their business interests.

As the global financial recession continues accelerate, it will likely eliminate the easy and cheap credit that Asian godfathers have grown accustomed to tapping. How many of the Asian Godfathers have been over-leveraged? As this is a secretive group, probably no one really knows the answer to this question. The same is true of another question— whether the cash flow from the Asian godfathers’ traditional concessions and licenses will see them through this financial crisis.

Leather also lives for half the year in Bangkok. He speaks and reads Thai and is someone with a good knowledge of the language, culture and history.

Stephen’s blog is a welcome addition to the Bangkok literary scene. You will also find a long passage from a novel in progress.

Check it out: http://www.stephenleather.blogspot.com/

Get a copy of his latest Spider Shepard novel titled Dead Men.

'He explores complex contemporary issues while keeping the action fast and bloody. In DEAD MEN Stephen Leather poses tough questions about the morality of the fight against terrorism and whether the means justifies the end.' -- The Economist

“Most crime fiction, no matter how “hard-boiled” or bloodily forensic, is essentially sentimental, for most crime writers are disappointed romantics. William T. Vollmann, in an afterword to the NYRB edition of Simenon’s greatest masterpiece, Dirty Snow, contrasts him with Raymond Chandler, whose Philip Marlowe novels, despite their elegance, wit and polished metaphors, seem now distinctly soft-boiled. “Chandler’s novels,” Vollmann writes, “are noir shot through with wistful luminescence; Simenon has concentrated noir into a darkness as solid and heavy as the interior of a dwarf star.” Only Patricia Highsmith approaches Simenon’s ability — indeed, his compulsion — to show the world as it really is, in all its squalor, excitement and contingent cruelty, yet Highsmith’s characters are paper-thin compared to the French master’s vividly multidimensional men and women.”

“The story of Rosset's life is essentially one of creative destruction. He found writers who wanted to break new paths, and then he picked up a sledgehammer to help them whale away at the existing order. ‘He opened the door to freedom of expression,’ said Ira Silverberg, a literary agent who began his career in publishing at Grove. ‘He published a generation of outsiders who probably said more about American culture than any voice in the dominant culture ever could.’ A Grove book, said Robert Gottlieb, who served as editor of Simon & Schuster and then Knopf during the years Rosset ran Grove, ‘made a statement. It was avant-garde. Whether European or American, it had very special qualities; it was definitely worth paying attention to.’ ”

Link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/172555/output/print

On Sunday 7^th December 2008 I was the featured speaker at the Pattaya Expat Club. I talked about the new Calvino novel Paying Back Jack before about 200 club members. They are always a good audience with questions after the talk. Richard Ravensdale, the club organizer, performed his magic in putting together the program. He had hitchhiked from Nepal (at the time of the airport occupation and closure) in order to get back to Thailand in time for the talk. That is what I call dedication. The club president Niels Colov interviewed me for People TV.

Texxas Lonestar: Washington Square, Bangkok

Here’s more information about the people who operate Home Hak. Suthasinee Noiin has been the driving force, working as an independent social worker for over 30 years. She's established her Home Hak (which means "Love Center" in Isan) over 20 years ago. It received support from Japanese Embassy (to build the building for the kids) 7 years ago (the support has long finished). The lady is known as Mae Tiew. She is not doing so well now. In fact, she’s dying of cancer.

The Suthasinee Foundation now has 17 social workers. She remains the chairman but after she has passed on, the same set of people will continue to work there and the kids will remain there with the center (but they will leave when they turn 18). The foundation relies solely on private donations.

The foundation relies on private donations. Their expenses are so large that they don't have enough money. Now that Suthasinee Noiin’s dying, how well the center will continue to be run, given they don't have a sympathetic figure like her to draw public sympathy, is an open question.

You don’t have to buy a book to help. You can do so directly.

Cash donations can be made to one of the foundation accounts (for my record):
Siam Commercial Bank, Yasothorn Branch
A/C Name: Suthasinee Noiin Foundation for Children and Youth
A/C No.: 561-2-21187-7
or
Thai Military Bank, Yasothorn Branch
A/C Name: Suthasinee Noiin Foundation for Children and Youth
A/C No.: 437-2-13090-8

Any transfer made should be notified by fax: +66-(0)45-722-241.

The Home Hak orphanage address:
Suthasinee Noiin Foundation for Children and Youth (Baan Home Hak)
No. 3 Moo 12, Baan Pracha Sawan
Tadthong District, Muang, Yasothorn 35000

This week we will go out and buy sweaters and other clothes for the kids with the money that Terry Fitzgerald and Bruce Comstock’s order have brought in. The nearly Baht 18,000 from these two orders of A Killing Smile will buy a lot at the wholesale market in Bangkok. We will box them and ship them upcountry over the weekend.

Terry and Bruce are a couple of true heroes for 112 children.

But this isn’t one of the reasons to read crime fiction.

It is easy in these circumstances to feel scared, helpless and hopeless about what has happened and may happen next. People are numb with fear. I was at the Emporium, an upscale shopping Mall, and the ground floor is decorated with Christmas trees and White Christmas is playing on the sound system. Some people walking around dazed, staring at the Christmas trees, trying to make sense of what is happening. Bangkok and its people occupy a zone of immense contradictions.

But this isn’t one of the reasons to read crime fiction.

Smiles and sadness. Friendship and hatred. Hope and despair. You have a choice in life. You can choose to give into the fear or you can find a way to make a difference.

Again this isn’t the reason.

The chance of anyone in Bangkok being killed or injured by a grenade or bullet is small. Of course, if it happens to you, then that is little comfort. What has placed the current chaos in perspective was a call my wife received from a woman upcountry in Thailand. This woman several years ago started taking in abandoned or abused children. Things like this always start in a small way. Someone hears about a kid who has nowhere to go. She took him in. Housed him. Fed him. Saw he went to school. Another child found her, then another. For the last twenty years, Suthasinee Noi-in has sunk her life saving into Baan Home Hak (Love Center), which has become a place to feed and shelter 112 children between ages of newborn to 19 years old. She lives in Yasothorn Province. The kids include AIDS orphans, abandoned kids, kids with AIDS, and kids who are victims of domestic violence.

The thing is, she’s run out of money. It gets worse. Suthasinee Noi-in has intestinal cancer and is dying. She’s got six months left. Maybe. And upcountry it has turned cold. As everything is upside down in Thailand, she doesn’t really have anyone to help her.

Today I received an order for a copy of the Special Edition of A Killing Smile from Bruce Comstock. The limited edition cost $275.00. The money from Bruce’s order has been used to buy 112 sweaters that will be shipped upcountry this week. There are crimes and then there are true crimes. Not helping in a case like this would be, for me, a crime. Money has to have some meaning in life, and part of that meaning is finding a way to see that it gets to the right people and the right time. Bruce, in my eyes, is a hero and my wife and I will let the kids upcountry know that there is one Canadian out there whose money made a difference to their life.