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.