Poet, Essayist, Playwright, Novelist, Critic, ex-Academic in Aesthetics (Poïetics) and Comparative Literature (English, Spanish, Malay and Tamil).
Background
Information
Manual labourer under the Japanese Regime during WWII and later in Europe. Only 1-year of primary and 3 years of Secondary Schooling; then primary and secondary school teacher and journalist. From adulthood in Europe (London, Heidelberg, West Berlin, Madrid, Paris). Studied while earning a living: at the Inns of Court School of Law, London (1953-56); Philosophy at Heidelberg Univ. and Free University, Berlin; Hispanic Studies Diploma at Madrid University and Master's at the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica, Madrid & University of Paris-VIII; Comparative Literature at the University of Paris-III-Sorbonne- Nouvelle and aesthetics-poietics at Panthéon-Sorbonne.
INFLUENCES: Varied, both Oriental and Occidental classics and philosophy (Greco-Roman, Anglo-German, Sino-Indian). In my youthful days, admired mostly Greek, Russian, Spanish and French writers (Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus, Longinus, Dante, Dostoyesvski, Gogol, Gorky, Cervantes, Gongora, Lorca, including (Ibsen, Kafka), Chekov, Rabelais, Sartre, Camus, Voltaire, Goethe, Kalidasa, Valmiki, Ilango Adikal, Ciitalaic Caatanar, Poets of the Five Landscape conventions, the Bakthi Tamil poets, etc.), Lao Tse, Wu Ch'eng-en, Lady Murasaki, but my early (school and personal) reading was centered on Anglo-American and Irish writers and poets, such as, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pope, Gray, Sheridan, the Romantic Poets, Hardy, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Thoreau, Emerson, Twain, Melville, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Salinger, Burroughs, Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, Jonathan Swift, Joyce, Sean O'Casey, etc. During my twenties and thirties, read a great deal very slowly enjoying every bit of every word. Practically stopped reading literature - excepting research chores, mostly on the Post-Colonial Commonwealth kind (V. S. Naipaul, Soyinka, etc.), Ellison, Baldwin, Wright, the Beats, Angry Young Men, Burgess, etc. - from age forty.
I'm also a cinema fiend which means I have seen (mostly via TV) almost all that is worth watching. Of course, add Euro-American painting and visual arts to this ever-lasting vigil. Music, especially classical European masters: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Puccini, Stockhausen, etc., almost at any opportunity, but I enjoy all kinds of music (including classical Indian/Carnatic, Sufi: Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Jazz: Miles Davis, Satchmo or Pop: King Crimson, etc. ) when its well-executed.
Above all, I'm interested in "thinkers" of any trempe: religious, social, ethical, psychological, epistemological, political, metaphysical or mystical. I consider the ancient Chinese Classic of Change, the Yijing, essential reading for anyone interested in the way life on earth devolves day-in day-out, season after season: it is INCONCEIVABLE that human beings put this book together.
Any writer who has nothing original to say bores me right from the start.
https://youtube.com/
Birth Place
Kuala Krai, Malaysia
Accomplishments
University of Cambridge School Leaving Certificate (Grade One: 9 subjects); Cambridge Higher School Certificate (1 A-level & 4-O-levels); University of London General Certificate of Education (4-A-levels & I O-level); Certificate of Academic Standing, Bar Standards Board, Inns of Court School of Law, London; Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, Madrid (3rd-Year Certificates in Spanish Language, Literature and Civilization); Diploma in Hispanic Studies, University Complutense of Madrid, (Extraordinary Prize); Maîtrise d'Enseignement d'Espagnol (Master's First Semester at the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica: Distinctions in all subjects), (M. A. ,Très Bien: Paris-Vincennes); M. Phil. (3ème Cycle: Sorbonne-Nouvelle); Doctorat d'Etat ès lettres et sciences humaines, (State Doctorate: Très Honorable à l'unanimité/magna cum laude), Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris.
Taught school in Malaysia and Spain (including a lot of private-tutoring), lectured on Anglo-American literatures and Area Studies at Maryland (European Division), Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Commonwealth Institute, AGSIRD (Arcadia in Paris); Research Fellow (Chargé de recherches, 1ère Classe with the French National Centre for Scientific Research/C.N.R.S.) from 1973 to 1998.
Journalist ("Malay Mail", "Straits Times Group", "Malayan Times", "Guidepost", etc.) and Publisher's editor (Rayirath Raybooks) in Malaysia-Singapore, London, U.K., and Spain.
Turned down a Five Year-Fullbright to teach English, while doing a Ph. D. in English, at College Park, University of Maryland in 1961 when I was teaching in the European Division of the University at Heidelberg, Germany.
The author is a Stateless Person since 1969 as a result of his British Passport being confiscated by the British Consul in Madrid, Spain, in November 1967. The Spanish authorities, however, refused to grant him the Travel Document, prescribed under the United Nations Convention of New York of Septembre 1954. He was deprived of his citizenship rights in his birth-place, the Federation of Malaya, in 1962, and was thus not permitted to reside in the country.
Check: "Sans Patrie ni Asile" (Neither Country nor Asylum) in daily Le Monde (Paris), December 16, 1972, p.2
"Non-Assistance à personne en danger" in the weekly: "Le Nouvel Observateur", no. 681 (Paris),November 28, 1977 in rubrique: "En on parlera demain", p.63.
For over two years now, I am being subjected to the "Directed Pulsed Micro-Wave Energy" - the Havana Syndrome -
while the ventilation system in my tiny studio has been cut off. All my computers have been hacked with their "operating systems" voided. As usual,the plumbing, water and electricity supply tampered with continually. "House-breaking" and theft and destruction of appliances goes on unabated. Deliberate noise nuisance to keep me from getting even a night's sleep is the order of the day. Looks like after nearly a half a century of persecution, the authorities are looking for a "final solution". Hidden cameras inform a whole "army of culprits" of my exits and entrances in order to do their dirty work in my less than 30 sq. metre abode at the entrance to a 14-storey tenement tower. Any ideas ANYBODY? - apart from suicide, of course.
Do check, if it pleases you, my commentaries on two articles in LE MONDE (daily newspaper in Paris): "Le Mort de André Fontaine" (Editor-in-Chief and later Director) and "Le Mort de Jean Lacouture" (Prix Goncourt for biography and Grande Reporter with Le Monde).
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