The Talented Mister Jam

Published May 2088

Nury Vittachi is a name I have recently become familiar with, having come across it on Malaysian literati Sharon Bakar's blog. A click of the mouse brought me to his overwhelmingly popular website where he expounds on anything and everything that tickles his funny bone. A pioneer in Hong Kong's lit scene, Vittachi has 90,000 books currently in print and is easily considered to be one of the region's best selling authors for his Feng Shui Detective series and numerous children's books, all of which have been very well received.

Satire dripped jabs on most things Asian was clearly something that readers responded to as Vittachi made his mark in the South China Morning Post with his columns Lai See  and Spice Trader from 1987 to 1997. Vittachi then began Travellers' Tales - a weekly column in The Far Eastern Economic Review. He is also featured regularly in eight other publications around Asia. Vittachi is actively involved in the Western Australian Premier's Australia-Asia Literary Award and is chairing the panel of what is considered to be one of the richest literature awards, possibly on par in terms of prestige with the Booker and Pulitzer prizes respectively. 

Born in Sri Lanka, Vittachi's family fled when the book that his father, Tarzie, had written about the civil war between the Sinhalese and Tamils caused them to receive death threats. "Emergency 58" exposed the truth about the real goings-on within the country at that time and Tarzie was awarded theRamon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts in recognition of his efforts. 

Nuryana Samjam Perera de Lacey Vittachi, or Mr. Jam as he likes to be known when he visits schools, is clearly a unique individual indeed. And if his popularity is anything to go by, that's a good thing. 

From what I've read you've had quite an interesting life. Could you tell us more about you and your family? Do you feel that what you've experienced from an early age has contributed towards your chosen path of being a writer?

When I was born in Sri Lanka in 1958, war broke out. I don’t think the two incidents are connected. But who knows?
In the early 1960s, we had to leave Sri Lanka in a hurry, encouraged by men with guns, because of something my father wrote. I thought this was way cool. 

We first went to Malaysia and then to the UK. In my 20s I came back to Asia. These days I live in Hong Kong and I have three children, or four if you count my wife.

You have some truly humorous takes on life in Asia. What inspires you?

In Asia, you don’t have to make up jokes. You just follow the news and write it down.

My ideas come from a nodule in my brain, lower right hand side, towards the back. If I grow the nail of my little finger long enough, and stick it in my ear, I can just about give it a scratch. That's what I do when I have writers' block.
People often ask if I am ever serious about anything. Well, I would like to put it on record that I'm serious about everything. My mind is always full of Big Questions of Life, such as "Why do men have nipples?" and "Why don't rocks have nipples?" and "Which came first? The egg or the bacon?"

You're the man behind the Feng Shui Detective series. Now that's something different yet still very Asian. How did you come up with the idea for it?

Most of the people on this planet learn English from textbooks. They teach us that English speakers greet each other with “How do you do.”

It’s not true, is it? No one ever says that. It’s just a huge great lie. A conspiracy on the part of text book makers and English speakers.

They say that English speakers use idioms such as “The proof is in the pudding” but they don’t.

When I first went to the UK I was a kid. I went around saying “How do you do.”

Everyone replied, “‘ow do I do wot?”

The actual greeting used in London is wotcha. Everyone just says “wotcha” to each other. The reply is “Hey!” I asked people what wotcha meant. No one could tell me. No one knew. No one had ever been asked that question before.

Anyway, in the Feng Shui Detective books, I deal with the theme that east and west think they can communicate but actually they don’t understand each other most of the time. Yet if they learn to work together, they can actually solve problems and achieve great things.

The books are about Mr Wong, from China, and his assistant Joyce, who has British-Australian parentage.

Mr Wong can’t understand Joyce at all, which baffles him because they are both speaking English, aren’t they?

Eventually he works out that the English word for Yes is “whatever”.

And he works out that the English word for No is “yeah right”.

And then there's the children's books that you've written too. I've always imagined writing for children to actually be quite challenging. How do you engage them?

Perceptive question – yes, writing for children is very difficult. I have only succeeded because I spend hours/ days/ weeks in residence in schools talking to children and telling them stories and watching their reactions.

Lucky for me, there’s little competition in this field. Writing books for children has never been seen as a good way of earning money in Asia, so few people do it.

Some of your favourite authors? Books that we absolutely have to read?

Some authors are literary. That means the critics love them and give them prizes. But readers hate them.

Other books are popular. That means readers buy them in large numbers. But critics hate them.

My aim as a writer is to be accessible enough to be popular and lyrical enough to be literary. It’s not a compromise, but a “sweet spot” in the middle.

My favourite authors are people who succeed in hitting this spot exactly on target. The best two authors who do this regularly are David Lodge (my favourite book from him is “Paradise News”) and Joanne Harris (my favourite from her is “Blackberry Wine”). Both have had huge numbers of bestsellers.

You clearly enjoy a wide fan base with readers from all over the world. What would be some of the most important tips you could share with budding writers?

Don’t try to make a living as a writer. Go and do a proper job. No, seriously. Be a reporter or a teacher or a broadcaster. Write for fun in your spare time instead. Writing literature is a terrible career, especially here in Asia. Unless you have a rich family member who is going to support you while you write, you need to get a job that supplies you with your daily bowl of rice, and then you need to do your writing on the side.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write. You definitely should.
Asian culture will be the world’s leading source of entertainment – books, movies, music and other arts -- within 20 years.

Decisions on what is successful in the entertainment business are made by consumers, not business people. Already more than 60 per cent of the world’s consumers are Asian, and that proportion is set to grow. The takeover is inevitable and unstoppable. 

But make sure you have a secure position from which you can take advantage of this change.

  

I understand that you use your humorous writing to deliver sometimes serious thoughts and opinions. How were you able to fine tune this - juggling the ability to get your message across in a manner that would still be found funny?

To me, it’s important to be funny, but it’s also important to be moral.

I sometimes give people classes in how to be funny. Here are five tips I use.

Read the newspapers with a wry smile and cut out anything that makes your eyebrows move upwards.

Scribble feedback comments on news items and emails and magazine articles so on – it builds your ability to produce quick-fire rapid comebacks.

Practice being deadpan, which makes your jokes funnier, but takes a while to master.

Master the art of humorous, ironic understatement: “There are a number of people who believe that the total nuclear destruction of the world may actually be a bad thing.”

Be off-the-wall, absurd and outrageous.

  

In your opinion, what would be your most underrated talent?

I’m a priest in disguise. I do a lot of sermonizing and moralizing, even in murder mystery books.

Murder stories all have one plot. Chaos enters the world. The hero has to chase it out again. That’s it. It’s very moral.

The moral element is very important to me. For all of human society, people have lived their lives around stories that educated their hearts at the deepest levels – whether it was the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran or whatever. These days people have lost this grounding. Yet the books and films that are most popular tend to be the ones with deep moral values – so there is still a hunger for this.

Here’s an anecdote from the next Feng Shui Detective book that demonstrates how a story can deliver a moral truth:

**

In the days of the supremacy of the southern kingdom, a man with an iron hammer told the people of north Yunnan that he was stronger than any of their village leaders.

                He approached a village made of wood and smashed it with his hammer.

                He approached a village made of bronze and smashed it with his hammer.

                He approached a village made of stone and smashed it with his hammer.

                Soon, everyone worshipped the man with the hammer.

But not the hermit who lived in a small bamboo grove.

                “Knock down my home, and I will worship you too,” said the hermit.

                The man swung his hammer at the bamboo grove. But the rods of bamboo bent with the blow and then sprang upright again. Many times, the man with the hammer swung at the bamboo grove. But he could do it no harm.

Blade of Grass, weakness is a type of strength. When an oxcart passes through a village, everyone sees it coming and gets out of the way. But when a blind man is crossing the road, the oxcart driver has to stop.

**

Nury Vittachi is...

Going to shut up now.

http://mrjam.typepad.com/