Johann S Lee

"I think I am a fairly complex person." -- Lee, p. 4. If you write this at the beginning of your novel, you are probably not.

There are many wrong reasons for writing a novel, but two stand out :

1. The writer thinks his (or her) personal story would make a good novel. Also, writer wants very much to be a novelist.

2. The writer thinks that X group -- here highly educated Singaporean gay males who have worked privileged positions in London -- deserves a representative story.

For an example of the first mistake, see Andrew Koh's "Glass Cathedral." At least in that case there was a strong sense that the writer saw himself as a young man in a large, confusing world. There's some semblance of modesty in that.

For an example that combines 1 and 2 for a serious literary train wreck, do read this book, or as much of it as you can get through. I think you will find that Lee manages to get over even Koh's minimal level of authorial modesty, and is now more than willing to speak for an entire class of people. Thus he becomes their god, and they are his adoring readers. This sycophantic relationship is apparently quite real, for Lee's first novel was made into a play. (I know because he tells me this on the first page of this novel.)

However pleasant it may feel to have adoring fans who think you speak for them, this novel show quite clearly that this situation might not encourage a good story. Quite the opposite.

I know it's not fair, but by page 11, I had to stop. It seemed to me that the writer was doing nothing so much as trying to remember drunken exchanges he had at a variety of posh bars. Perhaps he or the people he was talking with were plagued by certain fears or desires that would be worth considering. I don't know. There was no effort to tell me about it.… (mais)