Dwarf inspires Koch in banned novel

Dwarf inspires Koch in banned novel

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

With obvious amazement on his face, author Christopher John Koch,
better known as CJ Koch, looked outside the window from the 21st
floor of the Hotel Mandarin in Central Jakarta.

"Wow, everything has changed. Look at those tall buildings,"
said the Australian author recently, looking at the cityscape
spread before his eyes.

It has been 34 years since the 70-year-old writer last visited
the country, the setting of his award-winning novel The Year of
Living Dangerously finally published in 1978.

The book, however, had long been "unofficially" banned here as
it plays out against the backdrop of political strife in
Indonesia in 1965.

The story is focused on an Australian journalist, Guy
Hamilton, who was thrust into a hotbed of political turmoil and
the alleged coup attempt by the now extinct Indonesian Communist
Party (PKI) in President Sukarno's last days as the president
before then Maj. Gen. Suharto stepped in to take the reins.

Later on, the movie -- produced in 1983 with the same title
and which Koch co-wrote the screenplay for -- was also banned
here.

The film was directed by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society) and
starred a dashing young Mel Gibson as Hamilton, Linda Hunt and
Sigourney Weaver. Hunt even won an Academy Award for her
excellent performance as a Chinese-Australian cameraman Billy
Kwan, who happened to be a "dwarf".

Koch was here to get involved in fundraising for the Harry
Burton Memorial Scholarship for local journalists. He also held a
book signing for his novel.

The Jakarta Post was able to interview him prior to the fund
raising charity night. Below are the excerpts of the interview.

Question: So, the last time you were here was 1968, is that
right?.

Answer: Yes, I was here with UNESCO. At that time Sukarno was
still under house arrest in Bogor and the PKI was still around
the whole sort of underground struggle. It was a very strange
time.

Many years later I was starting a novel which I wanted to be
about a dwarf named Billy Kwan. It was initially set in
Melbourne. But it wasn't such an interesting place and suddenly I
thought about Indonesia and Sukarno.

There was also a story from a journalist friend in the 1970s,
about a Chinese-Indonesian who jumped out of the seventh floor
window of Hotel Indonesia. The man was worried that the security
officers chased him. And that's how the novel began.

My brother Philip was an ABC correspondent in Jakarta from
1964 to 1966. He was very helpful. I've never been a journalist.
He's the one who gave me background about everything.

Q: Why did you choose a dwarf?

A: I was always very interested in fairy tales, like the dwarf
squad in the legend of King Arthur.

I'm also fascinated with the idea of an intelligent man who is
normal in most ways but trapped in a body the size of a child.
He's in the position of the court jester, who were often dwarves,
in the middle ages in Europe.

Once a year, in the day of fool, the jester could say anything
he wanted, he could be rude to the real king and told everybody
the truth. Now, Billy in a way performs that function in the
book.

When I started the novel, I wasn't think of the wayang
(puppet) story but there is apparently the corresponding myth on
the leading roles in the book with those in the Indonesian wayang
story Mahabharata. Guy Hamilton is like the (knight) Arjuna,
while Billy Kwan is like the dwarf Semar.

I then became obsessed with wayang kulit (shadow puppet) and
tried to have the characters to correspond to the wayang figures,
and the cycle of Pandawa (the five knights of Mahabharata).

Q: Where did you learn about wayang?

A: From reading books. I also used to watch performances here. I
didn't understand what was going on but I think it's very
haunting -- a beautiful form of entertainment.

My brother told me that Sukarno used to hold wayang shows at
the Bogor palace. And he had the script re-written with the
characters of his ministers. The ministers would see that if they
came up as bad characters, they knew their career would soon be
finished. That was fascinating.

Q: Wayang kulit is a wonderful metaphor. In the classical story,
there's a constant struggle of the wayang of the left, Kurawa,
with the wayang of the right, Pandawa. It's like the PKI on the
one hand and Muslims on the other (in the political dynamic of
the 1960s).

A: The other thing about the wayang is that -- unlike the West --
there's no such thing as completely right and completely wrong.
The left (generally bad) has good qualities and the wayang on the
right has some bad. The right usually wins but not wholly right.
That's what I tried to bring up in the book.

Q: How was the process in casting Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan?

A: Well, I wasn't involved in the casting or any side of the
film. I only co-wrote the original screenplay. I actually was
very pleased that they stayed very close to the book though there
were some things I objected to. We had many arguments. When I
heard they cast a woman as Billy Kwan I wasn't surprised
(laughing).

But actually she was wonderful. She is a very good actress.
And I was told that she got quite emotional when she was working
on the role. She sort of became Billy Kwan. She began to get
confused about her gender (laughing).

Q: What happened after the book was released? Did the Indonesian
government quickly ban it?

A: When the book first came out, it had a very good review here
in one of the English-language papers, saying it was very
sympathetic to the Indonesians.

What went wrong in the film was partly the filming, a Muslim
group said some parts of the film had insulted them, which wasn't
true. There was nothing in the film and I don't think they knew
what they were talking about.

Peter (Weir) then realized that filming here was too difficult
and so they had to move to the Philippines. But the Muslim group
here contacted the Muslim group in the Philippines and there were
death threats to Mel Gibson and the casts. So the filming was
finally finished in Sydney.

One thing that I have to make clear is when a writer sells the
rights of his book to the film studios, he has no control over
the film. One thing that I strongly objected to in the film, and
maybe that is the reason it was banned, I don't know, is that at
the end of film, there's an image of civilians kneeling down on
the street in Jakarta being shot by police. No such thing ever
happened in reality.

When the movie was banned, I was told that the book was banned
too. But it was never officially banned, actually, as far as I
know. All these years, it just had never been on sale in
Indonesia, it has never been distributed. So I'm very pleased
that it is being distributed now.

Q: Why do you still want the book to be translated? Do you think
it's important for today's generation to read this novel?

A: It could be nice for Indonesians, who are not English speaking
people, to read it. I'd like to reach a wider audience.

To some extent, the politics in the book are not important to
me. I only used the historical background as a background.

The novel is about the people in it and a good novel ought to
last. What I hope will last is the story of Guy Hamilton and
Billy Kwan. That's what important. But since the setting is in
Indonesia, maybe it will continue to interest Indonesians.

Q: What do you think about Indonesia now?

A: I'd like to say that I'm a novelist, not an expert on
politics. Once I finished the novel I wrote about something elses
that were quite different.

Of course I read the papers like anybody else and follow what
happen in Indonesia. Suppose I can tell it's been very tragic,
with the economic collapse.

It's sad to me because when I came here in 1968 there was a
lot of poverty and the country really was in ruins. I know
everybody speaks against Soeharto and his family, having been
greedy and all, but he really did a remarkable job in building
this economy, and building a new middle class here. It's very sad
that now it's been undone.

But I feel very sure that Indonesia will rebuild and become
prosperous. It's a painful period now but you have a very rich
country. In many ways it is much richer than Australia. In
drought at the moment we haven't enough water, we never are going
to have enough water. You have all these climactic and
agricultural advantages here.

Q: Do you think there are facts about the 1965 events that have
been reinterpreted falsely by the Indonesian government?

A: I don't think so. I think there are now attempts to understand
what happened then. There was this journalist John Hues from
Christian Science Monitor. He came three days after the coup and
interviewed many people. From what he wrote, it was clearly a PKI
organized coup, not a CIA plot or anything.

Q: Many blamed Sukarno for the situation back then, do you think
it's true?

A: Not wholly, but yes, he was the leader. He tried to distract
attention from the fact that he didn't do anything to eliminate
poverty. He built monuments, had a military confrontation with
Malaysia. He did anything but address the domestic problems.

He's a tragic figure. He did extraordinary things, putting the
whole country together. But in the final stages he lost control.
He was unable to take action to revive the economy.

Q: What do you think about his daughter, Megawati?

A: Oh, no comment (laughing).

Q: What are you writing now?

A: Well, I've just finished writing a travel book. I'm also
writing a script from another novel called Highways to A War
(1995), about a combat cameraman in Vietnam.

We, this young producer and I, don't even have the money yet
for the film. But we think it'll make a good film.