classics

One bad thing about living in Bangkok is that it is hard to find cheap books. Ok, not books in general, but English books. For some reason all the bookstores are stocked with Thai books. Not only that, but the libraries - which are pretty good - are also stuffed full of nothing but Thai tomes. So...bizarrre...isn't it? And it's too bad about the libraries beacuse there's a nice one at the science museum down the street from us and there's a super groovy space-age one at the shopping centre across from the Big C downtown. But so far my Thai is not good enough to enable me to plonk down in front of a novel and figure it out. I can barely work out street signs and food labels.*

*In my own defence, I have to say that written Thai has been much harder to learn than Vietnamese and Malay (which are written with English-style alphabets) and even Lao. While Lao and Thai share the same root language, Thai has differentiated itself by adding more letters and becoming trickier to figure out. Dang the Siamese and their nefarious efforts to keep out outsiders! Although Lao is a straight forward phonetic language, Thai is let's say 90% phonetic with an added 10% of non-phonetic elements. Crazy! It makes it hard to learn the language in the same way that nutty phrases like 'Phil was involved in a knife fight' make it hard to learn English.

For example, in Thai, if the letter that usually makes an 'r' sound comes at the end of a word it's pronounced 'n'. If there's a double 'rr' in the middle of a word, it's pronounced 'a'. 'R' is also sometimes silent in certain words and if it comes after a particular kind of 't' sound, then the combined 'tr' turns into an 's' sound! If that seems hard to figure out, get this: a large percentage of Thai folks pronounce 'r' as 'l'!

In addition to the insane 'r', there are a number of other spanners that the Thai have thrown into the works. There are 44 consonants and 17 main vowels and 4 tone marks. However, the tone you read the word in does not depend solely on the tone mark. Oh no. That would be too easy-peasy-Vietnamesey. Instead, the type of consonant plus the type of vowel plus the ending sound of the word plus the tone mark must be considered. Another treat that I love is that quite often the short 'a' sound is unwritten, as is the short 'o' sound. So what may look like 'nk sbay' is actually pronounced 'nok sabay'. I still haven't figured out how you know whether it's the 'a' or the 'o' that you're missing. Suffice to say, if you'll allow me to reiterate my earlier point, I'm not going to be reading Thai novels anytime soon.

Since I can't read Thai fluently, I'm forced to rely upon the kindness of visitors bringing me books and on the two branches of international shops that sell English books here. I've heard there are a few good used book shops in Khao San, but since I go there on only an annual basis and I run through books on a daily basis, that makes them a bit of an impractical solution to my problem. Even I can do that math. There are two main bookstores in Bangkok, Asia Books and Kinokuniya. Asia Books has a decent magazine selection, but is stocked with alot more trashy British chick-lit and 'real life' Bangkok ladies of the night memoirs and white dudes who like Bangkok's ladies of the night memoirs. They also have trashy kids books. You know, like they only have the movie tie-in books and none of the oldies but goodies like Where the Wild Things Are or The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Kinokuniya is much better and goes so far as having a wide array of big, huge coffee table art and design books available. However, their prices are sky-high. Most small paperback novels cost at least ten dollars US, which is quite alot when you can go see a movie at a fancy theatre for two dollars and eat a good-sized meal for a dollar fifty.

But I have figured out a way to out-wit the bookstore. Here it is: classic novels cost only two dollars!

The other day I went to Kinokuniya and picked up The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (first published 1868). For the low, low price of 100 baht, I got FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY THREE pages of tightly spaced, teeny-fonted text! What a score. Not only that, but it turns out Collins - who I'd never read before, strangely enough - is the grand-daddy of mystery and thriller writers and is a snappy teller of ripping yarns. The Moonstone begins in deepest, darkest India, where a wicked Englishman ransacks one of the world's largest diamonds from the treasure chamber of a raja whose ancestors had stolen the diamond from a centuries-old Hindu temple! The opaque, mysterious, and invaluable diamond makes its way to England and is eventually bequeathed to the lovely Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. But on the very night that she receives the diamond it is stolen!

Suicide, opium abuse, broken engagements, wild accusations, midnight plotting, and stained-nightshirt-hiding ensue. Along the way, Wilkie has some prime passages like the ones that follow. First, from Lady Verinder's servant, Mr. Gabriel Betteredge:

The woman I fixed my eye on, was the woman who kept house for me at my cottage. Her name was Selena Goby. I agree with the late William Cobbett about picking a wife. See that she chews her food well and sets her foot down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you're all right. Selina Goby was all right in both these respects, which was one reason for marrying her. I had another reason, likewise, entirely of my own discovering. Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn't charge for her board, and would have to give me her services for nothing. That was the point of view I looked at it from. Economy - with a dash of love

....After that it was all over with me, of course. I got a new coat as cheap as I could, and I went through the rest of it as cheap as I could. We were not a happy couple, and not a miserable couple. We were six of one and half a dozen of the other. How it was I don't understand, but we always seemed to be getting, with the best motives, in one another's way. When I wanted to go upstairs, there was my wife coming down; or when my wife wanted to go down, there I was coming up.

After five years of misunderstandings on the stairs, it pleased an all-wise Providence to relieve us of each other by taking my wife. I was left with my little girl, Penelope, and with no other child.

From Lady Verinder's lawyer, Mr. Bruff, a description of Mr. Murthwaite, who has travelled widely in India:

On his appearance in England, after his wanderings, society had been greatly interested in the traveller, as a man who had passed through many dangerous adventures, and who had escaped to tell the tale. He had now announced his intention of returning to the scene of his exploits, and of penetrating into regions still left unexplored. This magnificent indifference to placing his safety in peril for the second time, revived the flagging interest of worshippers in the hero. The law of chances was clearly against his escaping on this occasion. It is not every day that we can meet an eminent person at dinner, and feel that there is a reasonable prospect of the news of his murder being the news that we hear of him next.

And lastly, a jolly bit of repartee between the dashing hero, Mr. Franklin Blake, and his lawyer, Mr. Bruff, concerning a plan to dose Blake with morphine in an effort to discover who really stole the diamond:

"Do you really mean to say that you don't feel any interest in what we are going to do?" Blake asked. "Mr. Bruff, you have no more imagination than a cow!"

"A cow is a very useful animal, Mr. Blake," said the lawyer.

With fun like this, who needs TV? [Bangkok-24-March-2006]