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My writing mirrors the trauma of not so much being Singaporean, but being a human caught between different voices and narratives. It’s a constant obsession of mine that the voices say that true existing is always a lot more disturbing than we’d like to admit. Which is why I have no regard for Artists who take the easy way out. It reflects their insincerity to everything.
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All Broken Up and Dancing
first edition, published 1992
Cover
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Available for purchase at Doinky Doodles! and Room for Dessert.
All Broken up and dancing -a meta novel (the unexpurgated version)
written 1991. Published 2009.
Meditations on All Broken Up and Dancing – A Meta Novel
written by wong kwang han
Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote about an experience where he
thought the souls of American Indians killed in an accident, which he
witnessed as a child, enter him. A subsequent part of the song has
these lyrics:
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances
Directly or indirectly this song may have influenced Tan in his choice of words for the title when he wrote his first novel All Broken Up and Dancing – A Meta Novel. Tan’s honors year thesis at the National University of Singapore was entitled Modified in the Guts: The Influence of Mikhail Bakhtin on the study of modern literature. Polyphony and carnival as we would see in Tan’s work, are concepts he would constantly come back to. Polyphony, a term from classical music, as used by Russian literary critic Bakhtin, refers to the embodiment of many voices in a work rather than a single authorial voice. Carnival refers to an area of chaos where time, space and structure are suspended and where authority does not exist. Is there a connection between the disembodied Indian souls in Morrison’s song and multiplicity of voices and the lack of a continuous time and spatial narration in Tan’s novel? Morrison’s fascination with Indian rituals recalling the dead does have a certain disruption of orderly time and space; further, the element of dancing is an integral part of carnival. Perhaps this novel can be regarded as a an act of carnival and polyphony in which the writer and his characters struggle to bring forth something that has been misunderstood, under-promoted and yet which has achieved cult status with a legion of underground readers.
(written by Wong Kwang Han) Please open the file below for more>
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances
Directly or indirectly this song may have influenced Tan in his choice of words for the title when he wrote his first novel All Broken Up and Dancing – A Meta Novel. Tan’s honors year thesis at the National University of Singapore was entitled Modified in the Guts: The Influence of Mikhail Bakhtin on the study of modern literature. Polyphony and carnival as we would see in Tan’s work, are concepts he would constantly come back to. Polyphony, a term from classical music, as used by Russian literary critic Bakhtin, refers to the embodiment of many voices in a work rather than a single authorial voice. Carnival refers to an area of chaos where time, space and structure are suspended and where authority does not exist. Is there a connection between the disembodied Indian souls in Morrison’s song and multiplicity of voices and the lack of a continuous time and spatial narration in Tan’s novel? Morrison’s fascination with Indian rituals recalling the dead does have a certain disruption of orderly time and space; further, the element of dancing is an integral part of carnival. Perhaps this novel can be regarded as a an act of carnival and polyphony in which the writer and his characters struggle to bring forth something that has been misunderstood, under-promoted and yet which has achieved cult status with a legion of underground readers.
(written by Wong Kwang Han) Please open the file below for more>
| meditations_on_all_broken_up_and_dancing.pdf |
For information on how to purchase a copy online, please visit the SHOP category of the website.
Available for purchase at the following shops: Room For Dessert, BooksActually, Select Books
Available for purchase at the following shops: Room For Dessert, BooksActually, Select Books
the Nethe(r); R, 2002
Cover
Page 1: Click to read the larger image.
Page 2: Click to read the larger image.
Page 3: Click to read the larger image.
Notes from the author:
In 2001, I wrote a book called the Nethe(r);R. It was critically acclaimed but I think its the kind of book no one really has an interest to grasp. It was my attempt to absorb all the theoretical aesthetic ideas of the West, assimilate them, and then spear them on a canvas of literary aphorisms.
Thank you for reading.
Kelvin
In 2001, I wrote a book called the Nethe(r);R. It was critically acclaimed but I think its the kind of book no one really has an interest to grasp. It was my attempt to absorb all the theoretical aesthetic ideas of the West, assimilate them, and then spear them on a canvas of literary aphorisms.
Thank you for reading.
Kelvin
_For information on how to purchase a copy online, please click here.
Available for purchase at the following shops: BooksActually, Select Books
Available for purchase at the following shops: BooksActually, Select Books
© 2013 KELVIN TAN