Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . "All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists," declared W.E.B. Du Bois, the African American philosopher and civil rights leader, in "Criteria for Negro Art" (1926). The trenchant declaration captures a vital truth about the function of literature in directing the sympathies of the reader. Being somewhat priggish and not a little puristical, I confess to feeling uncomfortable with the word "propaganda," feeling as I do the Singaporean state's output of feel-good songs, images, and 'news' as a rash. Was it the element of 'propaganda' in Terrance Hayes's American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin that disappointed my high hopes? The poems are tremendously inventive and musical, but the matter and treatment of the murders of young black men in America is... too obvious? Too easy a play for the sympathies of the r...

Tuesday, Dec 18—Read Kevin Killian's Fascination . Who would have guessed that the North Shore of Long Island was so full of incident and pathos in the 70s? This three-decker memoir is in search of lost time, the writer's teens and twenties, lived in a haze of drugs and drink and drool-worthy boys. "Move along the velvet rope, run your shaky fingers past the lacquered zigzag Keith Haring graffito: "You did not live in our time! Be Sorry!"" Friday, Dec 28—Saw the Indian's Progressive Artists' Group show at Asia Society. Ram Kumar's "Unemployed Graduates" (1956), F. N. Souza's "Tycoon and the Tramp" (1955) and "Girl with the Silken Whip" (1963), and S. H. Raza's two "Ls Tere"'s (1973 and 1985) were stand-outs. My favorite painting was V. S. Gaitonde's Untitled (1962) abstract work, commissioned by Air India. After the show GH and I had Spanish tapas, Barcelona-style, at the very fine Boque...