INTERVIEW: Desi Anwar & Eka Kurniawan

Desi Anwar, Eka Kurniawan

Akhir Oktober tepatnya tiga hari yang lalu di Ubud, Bali, Desi Anwar menjadi moderator pada salah satu sesi dalam Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2016. Sesi yang bertajuk Beyond Beauty is A Wound ini menghadirkan Eka Kurniawan. Tahu Eka Kurniawan? Pastinya dia adalah seorang penulis. Beberapa bukunya telah diterjemahkan ke lebih dari sepuluh bahasa.  Salah satu karyanya adalah Cantik itu Luka yang juga membawa Eka memenangkan World Readers’ Award. Sesi Beyond Beauty is A Wound ini bertempat di aula Neka Museum. Disela-sela tugas saya sebagai photographer, saya mengaktifkan applikasi SoundCloud pada tab untuk merekam diskusi umum ini. Dalam diskusi ini Eka menjawab setiap pertannyaan dengan santai dan jujur bahkan membuat para penonton tertawa. Berikut adalah penggalan wawancara Desi Anwar dengan Eka Kurniawan yang aslinya memang dalam Bahasa Inggris. 

Eka Kurniawan, Zi

DESI

I think you have your own voice, sometimes we like sort of original people with this type of genre, this type of school of thought. I am curious who are your favorite writers Eka?

EKA

A lot of writers actually, if I have to mention Indonesian writers, there’s three Indonesian novelist that I really love, one is Pramoedya Ananta Toer of course, I’ve learned a lot from him. There is a martial art novelist, maybe you’ve never heard about that, Asmara Madas Kopingho. I read him when I was teenager and I still read him now. It is not a comic. It is a novel, actually series. Maybe for one title is about 1,000 pages. And then there is a horror novelist Abdullah Harahap. He is famous in 70 or 80 but maybe young readers now never heard about him. But I still read him and find the book last year, it repunlished by Gramedia. And then a lot of international writers of course.

DESI

Is it easy to define what kind of book or novel you’ve written? Would you say it is a horror novel?

EKA

Imagine those the things, if I think to write one particular novel is actually I want to write a combination of a historical novel, psychological novel and at the same time martial art novel and horror stories.

DESI

Wow, but the other novel I think you mentioned Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Eka has also been compared to Promoedya Ananta Toer, one of Indonesians, the greatest writer, I think you are very well in the place that follow his footsteps. In the other novel, this time very very thick it’s called Beauty is the Wound, Cantik itu Luka, and it is actually quite horrific. The first sentence is about a woman, Dewi Ayu who was prostitute who was buried and then for twenty five years later she rose from the grave. You have a first sentence, that staff like that you know, just can’t put the book down. And it was actually horrific but then it was more than just a horror story, it gave a sort of unique of what Indonesians was like under the Dutch colonialism and you traced in a bit sort of like a hundred years story tip type of a narrative. Just why actually the cruciatism why actually she rises from the death, it is sort of like the past, and then the future, the present and then to the future, it is fascinating, I just can’t put it down but then again How did you research something like that? How do you come up with the idea?

EKA

I think like all those writers write their first novel actually “I have no idea what should I write,” I just keep doing it and try to write, actually I just finished University in 1999, and then started to think to become a serious writer and starting to write a marvelous novel. But at the end, I end up wrote three novels but all of them, I am not happy with them.

DESI

But why you are not happy with them?

EKA

I think because it is simply, is a bad novel but then I try to read it again, and I think maybe our terms in a bad way about the material is, all of the materials, one of them is kind of historical novel, based on the colonial era and the other one is about a rhetorical era and the other one is kind of martial art novel,  about the last millennial, and then I try to combine all of them and then I found out that if I write those three novels, rewrite again in one future novel I need, I will tell a story that spend almost 80 years, maybe more than that so I think I need a particular character who can survive all those years so I cannot get the idea of who the character is, I come up with the idea of a character is not human but a gosh, a gosh can live 80 years and forever.

DESI

How do you take it from the beginning to the end?

EKA

Like I mention before, I wrote the three novels and then rewrite again in one particular, one huge novel. The first draft is actually, I keep it in my itinerary book case and then rewrote again a second draft and it became Cantik itu Luka.

DESI

Eka, you mention you want to write something that has everything, I think Beauty is A Wound, it has everything. It has history, it has a horror story, it has a plenty of sex and really a lot of violent, a lot of fights and it is all about revenge, I don’t want to give away, I mean you should read the novel yourself. What was the feedback you’ve got, when the novel was first published, did the particularly readers react to something like this, because this is not the average of Indonesian novel.

EKA

Actually the very first reaction from one critic, and he already said that almost everything inside the book is really bad for a novel. Because maybe he thinks that the novel should be focus on one particular theme and one particular style because yeah I think, I just wrote the novel, I don’t know what style that I have to use back then. I just put everything I know, not much of course, I wrote the novel when I was 22.

DESI

22! Where do you get? How do you come up with different characters and they are amazing, more than two dimensional character, you have the gosh the four dimensional characters, they all basically come to life, very vivid description of their passion, of their anger, of their fear, of their love.

EKA

I used to kind of practice, ones is I stole them from other novels, for example the first paragraph of the Beauty is A Wound, a dead woman who rose from her grave, it is actually from “Metamorphosis” Kafka, it is the same situation but then we can find different level, in Kafka’s book, he wrote about a man who sleep, had a nightmare and woke up in that body. I create something broader, it is already dead woman and poor, rose from the grave, but at the same time I used to borrow real characters, it is easier for me to write some characters, it is not historical characters, I use my neighbor, my friends.

DESI

Do they know?

EKA

Sometimes they know

DESI

Actually beauty in Bahasa is Cantik, in this novel, it’s the name of one of the daughters of Dewi Ayu. So we have Dewi Ayu who is the gosh, from the dead emerged who is half Dutch, half Indonesian, and because of her beauty she ends up being prostitute and then blessed by three beautiful daughters, and because of their beauty again they come up to a very tragic. She tried to protect them. And she got pregnant again with fourth daughter but before she got pregnant she basically said I really don’t want a child who is beautiful I want to have the ugliest ugliest child and then she gave birth, she refused to look at the child but she called the child Cantik which means beauty and it turns out to be the ugliest baby that anyone in the village or in that area had seen. And soon after that she dies besides the child, the baby and then she rises up twenty five later in which time Cantik or Beauty id already grown up and to continue the saga, let me ask you, what actually beauty meaning in this context, how do you see beauty, because a lot of them are protagonist, all of them, all women?

EKA

Even, actually the character, the main character name is kind of language of Indonesia. Dewi means goddess and Ayu is beauty but at the same time her daughter is Cantik. Cantik or beauty in the novel is a kind of metaphorical for Indonesian itself. It is a story about Indonesia. I took Dewi Ayu as the metaphorical for Indonesia. She is very beautiful but at the same time her story of very tragic, abandoned by her family, and then being raped by Japanese, create a kind of civil war between men among her because of her beauty. I think her story is actually Indonesian story so when she gave birth to her forth baby, I think what I try to assume with Indonesia is not as beauty as you know it. Maybe it can have kind of different story.

DESI

The novel is a metaphorical, you are telling me and I am looking at the novel completely, I have to say a lot of the scenes, the sex scene is not just horrific, it is actually full of women in your novel and always raped, it is always abused, always mistreated and let’s forget for a moment, that it represents rather be purely eligible why? How do you see that?

EKA

Well actually when I am about to write a novel based on historical events I try to read all historical book and learn about Indonesian story and what I found out is that all characters in historical books or Indonesian story is always about men. The hero is always majority is men. All of the fighters is man, even the villains is always man so I questioned where is the woman, where is their stories. I tried to research deeper in historical books and I found out that women for example in the different time of occupation era were being raped by the Japanese by the gerilya fighters and almost all tragic story about them. So at the same time I want to write this history in point view of them, in this historical background, we almost never mention about them, so I think I want to see the point of view of them but at the same time at least in my novel I make them significant role for example Dewi Ayu is a very central figure in the novel. She is kind of research to the historical books or Indonesian story that I know.

DESI

Because is very rare for me a writer to place himself on a female’s perspective, how do you do that? Do you have, what sort of a relationship you have? Do you have a lot of women friends, what sort of relationship you have with women? Do you feel like you can understand them and what sort of feedback you get from women readers, do they say why you always portrait woman?

EKA

I know about that, I understand that of course, but of course I have limited situation that of course I am a man, but I try to understand, because I think as a writer, we should try to understand everything, I am a man I try to understand women for example. But at the same time maybe for example in simple way I am living in a big city, I think writer can try understand what people in the village or in the rural area think about themselves, I think it’s what writers should learn about.

DESI

Tell me about the sex in your novel, is the description, I mean let’s be honest. Why sex always portrait as very vicious and violent?

EKA

I think the actual reason why sex appears in my novel is first because I read too much photography when I was teenager. I don’t know but if you as old as me, maybe you know even if you are in 80 or 90, there is a lot of pornographic things, very popular.

(Audiences are laughing)

DESI

No I didn’t know that

(Audiences are laughing)

EKA

Ok, you are good, usually they sold them inside the gas station not in the bookstore, they put them in inside of the crossroads, the puzzle, you offered, maybe you said no and then they open the puzzle and you say “of course”

DESI

It is like when you buy DVD, the DVD is about but then inside you know what it is about.

EKA

Yeah it is very popular in 80 and 90 at least for me and my friends, so when the book published people make a lot of comment about sexual explicit and pornographic and I just said “What the… it’s nothing compare to those novel that I read, it is the first reason, and second actually because the book is written in 1999, one year or two year after Soeharto era, I come up with the idea is kind of rebel as a young person as a young writer, I just want to write anything we can’t do in Soeharto Era, l Just put it, this novel should be political, should be sexual explicit, pornographic, anything I know he won’t read it but at least my imagination will make Soeharto like.

DESI

You just wanted to rebel, you wanted to make an impression, you wanted to shock everybody, before I tend to be audiences, you have like other than pornographic, books, comic that you used to read, did you actually have sex education, did you actually have, this is not actually you do to women?

EKA

Yeah of course, teachers in school help us about that, sometimes they know that we faced that and call us and preach us about morality.

DESI

This is interesting because you know in Indonesia where the largest Muslim population but they also the most active of social media in twitter, face book, they adopt very quick of technology, do you know the findings shows Indonesia uses the largest using of internet for porn actually here in Indonesia, may be you didn’t know that, did you? So we are good at searching for porn, is this something that you still do in your past time to look for inspiration?

(Audiences are laughing)

EKA

Sometimes I tried to read those porn staff in internet but actually it is very different, I tried to read almost all staff, I don’t know who wrote those novels but this kind of pending you know, many errors, actually nobody knows who is she or he, but when you read it. It’s actually well written, it is like professional writers wrote them, but if you read in the internet it’s…

DESI

I am also thinking reading in the internet whether you read like Fifty Shade of Gray and that sort of, you know a lot of Indonesians actually log on to porn site and they check up on the internet and the other thing we are good at, we are good at hacking, we are almost as good as Russia when it comes to hacking. Indonesians are very mindless, a lot of our generation is actually like Eka, the millennials, they don’t know what they get up to.