Song of a Reformed Headhunter

 I read Nabokov's third Russian novel The Luzhin Defence while on vacation in Penang, after picking up the book in Kuala Lumpur. The novel is very enjoyable. There is a deep paradox in Nabokov's treatment of his chess-playing protagonist: it is at once warm and cold. The warmth comes from the Bildungsroman mode, the loving recreation of a Russian setting, the tender analysis of exile, the sympathetic understanding of artistic passion. The cold comes from the art of fiction itself, since the author knows that his fictional creation cannot escape whatever fate he is designing for him. The logic of chess underlines, in this novel, the logic of fiction. Appropriately, I started reading Sandi Tan's novel Lurkers when I returned from Malaysia to Singapore. Appropriately because Sandi grew up in Singapore. Her first novel The Black Isle is obviously based on Singapore. It is nothing like any Singaporean novels that I have read. She has lived in Los Angeles county for many years n...

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...

I never met Justin Chin, and now it’s too late. He died on Christmas Eve after his family took him off life support. Two people wrote me separately to ask if I knew Justin Chin. Why ask me? Because we both moved from Singapore to the States, and we both are poets and gay. Born in Malaysia, Justin Chin grew up in Singapore. He was just one year older than I am. He probably went to Anglo-Chinese School. I’m guessing from the comment on an obituary left by Singaporean actor and comedian Hossan Leong. Hossan Leong was a classmate of Justin Chin’s since six, and Hossan Leong studied at ACS and ACJC. After ACS, Justin Chin went to the University of Hawaii before transferring to San Francisco State University. In the 90’s he made a name for himself on the San Francisco poetry scene, writing and performing work that was full of “humor and raw vulnerability,” as the POETRY Foundation website describes it. The website also calls him “fiercely political.” Justin Chin published many books, of po...