Feel the thickness.... Good reads I have & have not known
19 November 2015
ARTHUR WILLIAMS
LIKE Phil Fitzpatrick, I have quite a few of those ‘must read' books that I have never been able to finish.
They include 'War and Peace' and the Koran – both of which have sold millions but which bored me out of my mind.
Before the onset of television in Papua New Guinea, I was in Baimuru and irregularly would have a few videos chosen for me by a staffer working in Steamships Trading Company.
My predecessor at Baimuru, John Bird, had sent memo in the mid-1980s asking for “more violence and sex” and got plenty of the former.
I was able to get into Port Moresby about every six weeks and on my must-do list was the small, cramped downstairs rooms of a Boroko house, which was open weekday evenings from five to eight.
There you could get as many books as you liked for 20 toea each. If you returned them you received a 10 toea refund.
I would go there armed with empty tinpis boxes and quickly browsed for 100 books. These would be sealed and delivered to the next Steamies coastal ship that sailed fortnightly to us in that great, green, greasy Purari township.
My main criterion for choosing books was thickness. Another was no female authors. I had given them up after a diet of Enid Blyton in my primary school days.
I later found this was a mistake when I accidentally chose and thoroughly enjoyed Colleen McCullough's 'The Thorn Birds' and so I became gender non-specific, at least in literary matters.
Of the 100 books I generally chose based on thickness, perhaps a maximum of 60 would be good yarns. Some of these were not necessarily the thick ones.
I never found myself returning any books to the Boroko exchange because in the Purari the demand for something to read was insatiable and no book ever made it out of Baimuru.
Every Sunday, I would see my mate Adrian walking towards my home across the small bridge over one of the deep drainage ditches needed to keep the Gulf rains from swamping our houses.
A smoke was always between his lips and he clutched a half-drunk stubby with two or three more cold ones stuffed in his shorts' pockets.
I have always been a teetotaller, or wowser as Australian writer CJ Dennis called us – “an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder.”
Adrian knew my weakness and under one arm was cradled a bundle of books.
We would yarn for hour or more with me having a few black coffees as he slowly supped an SP brown, or green if my store had run out of the former.
Eventually with the nectar in his last bottle disappearing it was time for him to make his way back to his domestic stash of stubbies. He usually required two cartons of 24 to get through a weekend’s relaxation with a pile of books.
Then along came satellite dishes and television slowly killed off the reading habits of the nation. The computer later dealt a fatal blow to small libraries and bookshops. Now I spend many hours of reading from the computer’s screen.
I went back to New Ireland in 2007 and 2008 and read 368 books. I counted them.
Alas many were second-time reads as the library in Kavieng didn't really cater for people to borrow books. It didn't open until people were at work, closed for lunch and opened again only until four before people could get to it after work.
Regarding elitism among the literati, I recall my first English lecture at teachers college. The snobby chalkie asked, “Hands up anyone who enjoyed 'How Green was My Valley'.”
As I was a mature entry student and thoroughly unafraid of chalkies, I quickly raised my hand high.
“Oh, Williams, what is there to like about the book?”
“Well Mr Jones, I have read it several times over the past 10 years and it has the ability to make me laugh but also to make me cry. Any book that can tease your emotions surely must be a good read.”
I was even able to say how it closed with that lovely thought of its hero Huw.
“Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.”
Keep writing and reading.
Arthur, I wonder whether the bookshop you allude to is the same one I and my mates used to frequent. It is was situated behind the squash court and was owned or run by a ? Spanish speaking family.
I used to go there with my friends from the Taurama campus of UPNG in the late 70’s and early 80’s once or twice weekly and bought books for 20 toea each. All of us had different tastes and by and large chose different books to read. I preferred the thrillers by Alistair McLean, Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes and the likes and began to develop a liking for John Steinbeck and Hemingway.
As a doctor in the mid 80’s I went back to Port Moresby for specialist training to discover to my pleasant surprise that the bookshop was still there. I still enjoyed the same authors (I have a propensity to read books I enjoy umpteenth times) but by then I had developed a taste for Grahame Greene, Paul Theroux, Joseph Conrad, Tolstoy and others.
Teaching more recently at the medical school I found that the number of students reading had diminished significantly as most of them were into videos and facebook etc.
I cannot watch TV or movies now and find it more relaxing to read a book instead. I also find it hard to enjoy the movies based on books I have read but there are a few exceptions such as Umbero Ecco’s “the name of the rose”. I have the film version of “to kill a mockingbird” but have not dared to try to watch it as I am afraid of being disappointed.
Posted by: Paulus Ripa | 28 November 2015 at 10:35 AM
Andy - Obama is the first black president of the united states, in our time.
Sorry - that small statement has everything to do with everything about being black in the world to date.
That Obama is proud to call himself black is a statement in itself.
Let's not buck history for crude and potentially rude descriptors.
As some Americans might say, "Ain't nuthin wrong with being called black, nigga!"
The unmistakable voice of a black man.
Posted by: Michael Dom | 24 November 2015 at 10:58 AM
All valid points gentlemen.
However, given the racial situation in the USA and the widespread discrimination and prejudice against African Americans and Hispanics (whatever that means) there is a clear distinction being made in that country.
Barack Obama belongs to that oppressed group, although not of slavery origins, and his ability to rise over that oppression to the highest position in the nation is something worth noting.
That noteworthiness is acknowledged by calling him 'black'.
I think that is a fair call.
Posted by: Phil Fitzpatrick | 22 November 2015 at 03:39 PM
I am not convinced that the use of a descriptors should be used. Would any of us like to be banged up in court, and the clerk of the court reads out:
"M'Lord, the accused is a mixed race/ black/ Engan/ Morobean/ white/ male/ female/ not sure/ grey/ brown/ caucasian/ gay/ straight/ haven't decided/ married/ single/ adulterous/ Melanesian with a tinge (more or less) of Eskimo/ African with 34.7% Irish/ devout Catholic/ atheist".
Imagine the jury forming some pre-conceptions/ judgments on all that, and many would. Some people I know (and a fair percentage at that), on hearing that, would find the bastard guilty before any evidence was heard.
The point I was making originally was that I did not see the point of "black" President. What has it go to do with anything ? If Donald Trump wins the next election will his win be announced as "The XXth White President". I certainly hope not.
We recently saw the tabloid media in Australia gorge themselves on the female jockey winning the Melbourne Cup. She was absolutely entitled to her victory as the "Winner of the Melbourne Cup" (and by the way it was the horse that won). But did being female make a difference ? She is a skillful jockess but any jockey who wins the Melbourne Cup has to be skillful.
The word "jockess" is now is use, as the girls did not like the neuter gender "jockey". They felt there should be a distinction.
Posted by: Andy McNABB | 22 November 2015 at 01:13 PM
'Mixed race' always was and still is a derogatory term in PNG and I suspect that is so in most parts of the world.
I'm Anglo-Irish but that doesn't seem to be a problem, it's when we start talking about colour that prejudice arises.
This leaves mixed race coloured people like Barack Obama with a choice, identify as mixed race, identify as black or identify as white.
In his case, given his appearance he has obviously chosen to identify as black, or Afro-American, rather than white. We should respect that choice.
He's an intelligent man trying to do a good job - I think that is all that matters.
Posted by: Phil Fitzpatrick | 21 November 2015 at 12:01 PM
Andy, yes, Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother American. Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. Correct me if I am wrong, but he was referred to as the first African American to reach the top military post in America. Why?
Posted by: Daniel Ipan Kumbon | 21 November 2015 at 07:42 AM
Now living in Wales, my youngest PNG daughter who lives with me is almost white by the time it gets to March every year.
When we have a good summer..not often... she turns darker and darker. She is what many used to call 'half-caste' now frowned upon as being non-politically correct and thus now called mixed race or mixed ethnicity.
Living here she has found it can sometimes help to use the race card to her advantage in racially conscious UK and call herself 'black' like mixed race Obama.
People in authority are so scared of being deemed racialist that we have attempts at reverse racialism. Recently there was a report criticising the UK police for not recruiting enough ethnic minority policemen into their 52 police forces.
My daughter is looking for a job, so I told her to demand being appointed to the local South Wales Force because the force does not appear to have even one female police officer with a Welsh-Melanesian background.
I recall Buka people calling Highlanders 'redskins' and Papuans saying 'black as a Buka'. While I was merely 'the white bastard' as one opposing provincial assembly member once called me.
I didn't retaliate or demand an apology from him because atleast I had a copy of my white parents' marriage certificate.
Strangely despite the UK's anti-racist ethos we ironically do have a National Black Police Officers Association – imagine if someone had started a White Policeman's Association.
And despite the rise against homophobia for 14 years we had a Gay Police Association that ceased in England & Wales from April 2014 but continues in Scotland. The GPA was replaced in the former at March 2015 with the National LGBT Police Network.
A very mixed up world as we try to be everything to everyone and end up often to be nothing to nobody or should that be anybody?
So to Andy I would say calling anyone 'non-Caucasian' is perhaps more confusing than being called black when you are perhaps a lighter shade or deeper shade of the colour.
Because one of the traditional definitions gave Caucasian as a racial division of humankind, marked by fair to dark skin, straight to tightly curled hair, and light to very dark eyes, and originally inhabiting Europe, parts of North Africa, western Asia, and India.
Imagine trying to define a 'non-Caucasian using the opposite of that definition; perhaps calling Obama 'American' would suffice in most discussions.
Then again we have orange as the new black in fashion so where does that leave us mere men.
Posted by: Arthur Williams | Taskul and Cardiff | 21 November 2015 at 02:07 AM
Daniel, while you have repeated what is common in the media, President Obama is not black. He is half black, or perhaps he is half white. Or "mixed race" as PNGeans say.
But he is not full white of full black.
You may call me racist for making such comments, but I can only ask why it was necessary to mention his skin colour at all. Perhaps the words should have been "non-Caucasian".
Posted by: Andy McNabb | 20 November 2015 at 08:53 PM
Two thick books I ever finished reading from cover to cover were Alex Haley's 'Roots' and Robert Hughes' 'The Fatal Shore'.
Both books remind me of the cruelty of man against man but in the end Australia sprung up to be the great nation that it is from what started as a penial colony. And America got its first black president in Barrack Obama.
Posted by: Daniel Ipan Kumbon | 20 November 2015 at 07:46 AM