Other Stuff

ACROSS THE AIRWAVES

There now follows a transcript of an interview with Professor Andrew Hicks, author of the best selling novel, "Thai Girl", hosted by the feminist chat show hostess, Mylene Déranger, which was broadcast by the Bangkok based radio station, AsiaView, on 1 April 2006.

Mylene: Andrew Hicks, there are those who say that the many liaisons between foreign men and much younger Thai women here are just based on sex. What would you say to that allegation?

Andrew: Well, yes, Mylene, maybe you're right.

Mylene: But aren't you ashamed to admit it?

Andrew: Not a bit. If you've got it flaunt it, as they say.

Mylene: And what exactly do you mean by that?

Andrew: No, the problem's this. You see, Thai women think Thai men are philanderers. And, compared to us, they're rather small where it matters… know what I mean? And we've got these wonderful white skins and long noses, so yes, maybe that's why they go wild about us.

Mylene: No, no! I mean it's you men who go crazy about them. (Pause.) No, Andrew… I mean… do you like Thai women?

Andrew: Oh yes, I do. Thai men too… I really like the Thai people.

Mylene: No! I mean, do you find them attractive?

Andrew: Oh yes, certainly… almost as attractive as western women.

Mylene: You mean less attractive?

Andrew: Look Mylene, physical attraction isn't important… it's what the person's really like… their kharma. But since you ask, I actually prefer blondes, statuesque women with substantial assets. But there you go… can't win'em all!

Mylene: But isn't it your assets the women here are after?

Andrew: I think I've told you that already.

Mylene: No, I mean they're just after your money, aren't they.

Andrew: Thai women want my money? How outrageous, Mylene! Absolutely not... they're in it for the romance. We're more romantic than Thai men, you see. See'em swooning over an old farang, and then you'd know sighs really matter.

Mylene: Size matters?

Andrew: No, Mylene, sighs matter. You feminists!

Mylene: Well, thanks for that, Professor! Maybe we'd better get back to the book. (Pause.) Now "Thai Girl"'s been described in the glossy monthly, 'Farang Untamed Travel' as being one of the biggest selling English language novels ever published in Thailand… and I'm told you're hoping to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Is this true?

Andrew: Yes, it's true.

Mylene: But is this a realistic hope?

Andrew: You have to have faith, Mylene… sheer merit will be recognised.

Mylene: Yes, but…

Andrew: Of course my Nobel claim isn't just based on "Thai Girl". There's also my "Nigerian Law of Hire Purchase", published by the Ahmadu Bello University Press some years ago. You must have read it.

Mylene: If I have, it's slipped my mind. (Pause.) So Andrew, what are you writing at the moment?

Andrew: I'm writing a personal memoir about living in Isaan.

Mylene: So where are you writing it?

Andrew: In Isaan.

Mylene: And what's it about?

Andrew: It's about my experiences writing a personal memoir while living in Isaan.

Mylene: So how's it going, this new book?

Andrew: Well, at the moment I feel I'm going round in circles a bit. But then that's very Buddhist, isn't it.

Mylene: Is it?

Andrew: And it's all about living there with my Cat.

Mylene: Your what? (Pause.) Well anyway, Andrew, I must now finish by saying… thank you for coming on AsiaView.

Andrew: I'm sure it's been a pleasure, Mylene.

WHY DO THEY LOVE MY THAI GIRL?

The monthly magazine, Farang Untamed Travel has recently described my first novel, "Thai Girl" as being 'one of the biggest-selling English language novels ever published in Thailand', and I'm astounded. Reprinted for the fourth time in only a year and a half, the book has been well received here, but I didn't know it was one of the best sellers ever.

Half delirious with joy, I ask myself why. I've only written books on company law before and should be very dull, but nonetheless "Thai Girl" seems to have struck a chord or two. Messages sent to my Readers Forum on www.thaigirl2004.com often agonize over the nature of Thai women from the perspective of the farang male, bruised of heart and wallet, but any such insights can only be a small part of the book's appeal.

Early retired and old enough to know better, writing a novel was my foolish dream, and it was with trepidation that I consigned the final draft to the typesetters. I love all my characters and have a real passion for the Thai context of the story, but would the plot be sufficiently compelling and the writing good enough to sustain the reader over three hundred pages? I really wasn't sure.

The local publishing industry has produced a rash of expat novels, once described as 'a stack of tripe', so my novel would have to be distinctive and different; definitely not another bar girl story. Thus, when backpacker Ben falls for Fon, a modest young masseuse on Koh Samet, the story proves seminal, though in one sense only; Ben does not, it seems, get the girl! In this respect at least, the book is a literary first for Thailand!

In writing a travel novel, my aim was to inform the reader and to provoke thought; I wanted my story to be primarily about Thailand itself. And so, as I began my retirement, travelling alone, I revisited many old haunts in Thailand, my constant companion a thick notebook. These precious notes I later mined and polished as I wrote the story, producing gems such as the ladyboy fortune-teller outside Bazzas Bar in Sukhumvit and Stig Ruud the Norwegian truckdriver and sex tourist. As I wrote, I vicariously relived Ben's bosky nights on the beach at Koh Samet, and sat with his backpacker friends, slagging off the 'war on terror' over green curries at Odin's Pleasure Dome on Koh Chang. I loved every moment breathing life into my characters and maybe it shows.

Readers seem to find Ben's naïve passion for Fon and her dilemma over Ben both compelling and moving. Perhaps this reflects the enduring fascination we farang have for the Thais and they sometimes have for us. Sadly though, as we each aspire to be like the other, we learn that they're not as exotic as we thought; they just want to be like us!

When people ask me what "Thai Girl" is about, I find it surprisingly difficult to answer them. At one level it's just a poignant love story, an easy poolside read, but with pretensions to be something more that that too. As its author, I'm too close to it to be objective and only the reader can tell me what it means to them and why it's been so well received since its launch over a year ago.

Andrew Hicks

THE KANDINSKY LODE

BOOK REVIEW

'The Kandinski Lode' by Andrew Hicks, reviewed by Dustin Caldwell, embargoed for publication on 1st April 2006.

Andrew Hicks' new book, "The Kandinski Lode" is notable for reaching far beyond the literary range of "Thai Girl", his first bestselling novel. In a virtuoso exhibition of versatility, "The Kandinsky Lode" weaves a compelling narrative at many multi-textured levels which both entertains and informs. Themes of early Christianity are explored throughout, including the key proposition that myth and religion are inseparable as a conservative continuum and that it was Emperor Constantine's 'acquisition' of Christianity that led to the dominance of a highly assertive religio-political hierarchy.

In Hicks' story, Desmond Jones, an accountant, lives with his wife Molly in their suburban house in Surbiton in the south of England. One day Des is disturbed to find their lodger, Augustus Dernit, dead in his room, empaled on his computer table with an assegai. Nothing has been stolen except an ordinary Toshiba laptop.

This discovery leads Des into a terrifying quest for the hidden secrets of the ancient church during which he comes to fear for his sanity and for his very life. Gussie, as Dernit was known, had managed in his dying breath to leave some vital clues on the desk, written in his own blood. Des pursues these with an accountant's zeal, following many blind trails, but revealing truths that no mere novelist could ever have imagined.

He learns that Gussie had been receiving a series of pop-ups on his computer screen, apparently from an extra-terrestial cyber source. One of these popped up just before his murder and he managed to write in blood across his desk the mystifying words, 'Iti sapis potanda bigo ne!' After much research among Gnostic archives, Des discovers this loosely to mean, 'That's my story and I'm sticking to it!' Could these words, he speculates, be attributed to the Virgin Mary herself?

Pursuing his search for the Divine Toshiba, the essential key to the mystery, Des is intrigued by repeated numerical references in biblical writings; the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Thirty Nine Articles to name but a few. Could God himself be an accountant who has made Desmond in his own image, giving him a special role to play on earth? And how, he asks, could Saint Peter have the data processing capacity to call up instant trial balances of sins and good works on Judgment Day without causing unacceptable queues at the Pearly Gates?

Then Des himself starts getting celestial emails from above. Extraordinarily, he seems to have replaced Gussie as God's chosen intermediary on earth. These divine messages tell him that Jesus had a twin brother, named Judas Thomas, who was brought to France by Joseph of Arithmetea (sic) accompanied by Maximinus, one of the seventy two disciples who later became the first bishop of Aix. Des again is fascinated by the numerical references; even the name Aix contains the Roman numeral nine.

The emails continue, leading him to an obscure symbologist, Joseph Kandinski who is obsessed with finding the modern equivalent of the lode stone and the art of alchemy. Could the answer be the silicon chip, the modern source of fabulous wealth? Then the messages start referring obliquely to the Second Coming of Christ, to the multiple filial phantasm and the sacred messianic emanation.

From their joint researches they soon discover that the second coming is not in the person of Christ himself but of his resurrected twin, Judas Thomas; and remarkably, he is already upon the earth. He has come, it seems, not as an evangelistic Christ-man figure but in the guise of a wealthy IT entrepreneur and philanthropist to give to mankind the benefit of God's enhanced data processing expertise, bringing new meaning to the expression, 'Jesus Saves'.

Desmond ponders the identity of this figure and notes wisely that God uses the Messianic Saviour Divine Operating System, and for software runs the Pearly Gates database, God's Word and Good Works. Could these be God's software prototypes which can offer new applications for mankind, thus indicating the worldly identity of the second son of God, now present here on earth.

Is it, Des concludes portentously, that the truth really is all about the archytypal pattern of wholeness, the harmony of the polarities and the 'szygy' of logos/Sophia representing the divine as a union of opposites? Or in Lennonian terms this could simply mean, 'Life goes on, brah!' or as Voltaire more candidly put it, 'You'd better go and mow the garden.'

"The Kandinsky Lode" is thus an assured piece of fiction which knits together the past and present seamlessly and is as much an ingenious and blazingly good yarn as it is an exceptional piece of scholarship. Profoundly erudite, it is an intricate and intensely pleasurable read in which the writer has far excelled "Thai Girl", his strangely successful first offering.

Not yet available at Asia Books and other good bookshops.