TIME: BALANCING FORM AND CONTENT

Chart Korbjitti is a highly honored writer in Thai literature. He proves it by brilliantly grabbing two SEA (South East Asia) Write Awards: in 1982 with his breathtaking novel, The Judgement, and in 1994 with his slow-moving novel Time. Yet, he is still away from being renowned among literary readers in South East Asian countries including Indonesia and Malaysia. As a matter of fact, he is among the most unique writers in the world and all of his works are worth re-reading.

With ever-fresh and nonstandard narrative styles in all of his novels, Chart Korbjitti is among literary anchors in South East Asia that are skillful in tailoring narrative styles. For Southeast Asian context, he is comparable to Danarto and Iwan Simatupang, two prominent Indonesian writers. Each of Chart’s novels applies a unique narrative style that significantly corresponds to its theme. In his first SEA Write winning novel, The Judgement, he explored guilt and finally came up with a guilt-ridden narrative style. In this essay, however, I will focus on the novel Time, in which he tries to combine the standard form of novel with play and movie script. Following are the synopsis of the novel, a record of the uniquely-shaped narrative style and, finally, an interpretation of the theme of this novel in relation to the narrative style.

The Story in Brief

Time tells about a protagonist, a senior movie director in Thailand, who is watching a play about old

people living in a nursing home played by young actors of twenties. In the beginning, the protagonist wonders how those young people of twenties have become so interested in old people’s life that they present a play about the inner feeling of elderly people, while he himself, already sixty three years of age, wants to make movies about young people. Yet, some points of the play, that he knew from its reviews, finally made him decide to watch it upon finishing the shooting of his latest movie.

The drama visualizes an indifferent one day in a nursing home inhabited by Old Nuan, Old Bunrunean, Old Jan, Old Sorn, Old Erp, Old Thapthim, Old Yoo, some other old woman who can no longer wake up, a mentally ill old man occupying a special cell in the same room, and several maids working taking care of the house. The play opens while the clock shows 04.45 early in the morning. The clock, with a customized clicking speed, will show the time during the show and this seems to give the novel its title, Time. The day opens with the wake of the house residents and goes on with morning bath. A small quarrel follows when one of the residents reports to have lost some of her money. A food vendor visits to sell his goods. Some time later, a monk visits to bless all the residents in the house. Another boy selling food and drinks comes afterwards. Later in that morning, a big family visits the house in order to celebrate their grandmother’s birthday; another shocking fact is revealed, that this grandmother was actually Old Bunrunean’s housemaid in the past. Then, approaching the afternoon, a young man with mental disorder, Old Thapthim’s son, visits. Afternoon bath follows. And, prior to the closure of this play, people find that Old Yoo, a resident in the house who cannot communicate well, is dead and her body is taken care of by the villagers and brought to the cemetery.

During the play, our protagonist comments the play he is watching. Most of his comments show different ideas of how parts of the play should be presented to the audience. Sometimes he disagrees with the way the director chooses to present certain scenes, and here he shows his different way of presenting the scenes by imagining the movie version of this drama, if it were the director. He doesn’t like the fact that he has to wait for five full minutes—and five minutes is not a short time for the audience to spend watching an empty stage. He considers it an abortive act and a waste of time, and he reckons things would be different, and better, if the story were produced as a movie. In his opinion, in movies, audience does not have to wait for five full minutes because the clock can be accelerated and the technique of picture taking will prevent boredom on the part of the audience. Later on, we will know that most of his dissatisfaction with the play is because he considers the minor flaws in the play can be easily handled when the same theme produced as a movie. However, there are times when, without any clear reasoning, he directly translates the drama into a movie of his style. During this time, readers will read a movie script that is actually the movie version the drama as the protagonist imagines it to be.

There are times when the protagonist recalls moments in his life because some actions or dialogues in the drama remind him of monumental incidents in his life. When a food vendor said “Today she looks bright, but better not say anything: it might bring her bad luck (page 36),” he remembers of the premonition he got when his daughter died several years before. When he sees the powerless residents spoon-fed, he remembers his fear of how his life will turn out to be when he’s already old while his wife and daughter are already dead. It continues with how he used to escape his tragedy by drowning himself in alcohol when his wife died. These small pieces of memory introduce us to the protagonist as a person with past and personality. The facts were separate but comprehensive enough for us to know the protagonist’ life—and, this even shows how this book is really a novel although a third of it is written in the form of movie script and another third written in the form of a play.

The Narrative Style

Indeed, the most eye-catching part of this novel is its unique narrative style. At the first sight, of course we will find parts written in paragraphs, like the form of common novel. Henceforth, we will call it the novel element. After that, we can see that this book contains parts which resemble a play—or, let us call it the play element—complete with instructions around the expressions and actions by which actors are expected to perform the dialogue. Here it goes:

(NB: These bedpans are for patients who … the mattress will not be dirtied—real mattresses should be used.)
Ubon “There’s nothing, you know, granny.” (Then puts the bedpan back when it was.)
Voice offstage “There’s nothing! There’s absolutely nothing!”
Ubon (Head turned toward the cubicle shouts back.) “So you didn’t either, did you?” (page 14-15)

A bit deeper, we will find that there are parts that look like a play but accompanied with jargons of instructions commonly found in a movie script. Let us call it the movie element. We will find such jargons as “close up”, “medium-range,” “dolly”, “fade in", "fade out", "panoramic", etc. Following is a short example:

Medium-range (High-angle shot.) Fade in / Of the clock hung on the central pillar of the room. Behind it, the mosquito nets of patients’ beds are line up on either side of the aisle running into darkness. / Cut
Medium-range (dolly) (At eye level.) Of the aisle between the beds. Slow traveling to one bed, stopping at the nightstand at the head of the bed. /Fade out
Close-up Fade in / Of the things on the nightstand. (page 11)

We can see now, that this time Chart is employing a narrative style that combines novel, drama, and movie.

In the novel element, we will find descriptive sentences. Generally, this kind of part consists of 1) the protagonist’s appreciation and verbal criticism of the play he is watching, 2) the protagonist’s narrations of anything he sees and feels and remembers, including significant moments in his life—he usually tells what he remembers of his past after seeing some parts in the play that remind him of those moments. As a result, here is the part where we can gain information about the life of the protagonist himself. In this part, the novel performs its task as a normal novel. Sometimes, the novel element also relates what happens in the old people’s house, especially during the time when the protagonist considers indifferent and do not need special discussion. So, it feels like we read a story about the life in the nursing house from a third person point of view.

Meanwhile, in the play element, we will read a real play. This is the time when the protagonist reports the play he is watching without giving any comments. In this part, the protagonist lets the play talk by itself to the audience, while the protagonist is nowhere to be found until a special part of the drama reminds him of something that happened in his life in the past—usually followed with the protagonist’s narration in the form of normal novel.

Also unique is the movie element. This part, generally, is the product of our protagonist’s interpretation of the play in the form that he desires. We can conclude that this interpretation mainly comes from his dissatisfaction with the play. Therefore, prior to the start of this element, we will easily find such expressions as: “If it were a picture of mine, how would I manage it?" (page 10) or “Outside it must be bright by now, I think. If it were a movie, you’d get to see more than the scene in here," (page 28) or “The audience won’t know where to look, which is different from movies. In a movie, we’re able to force the people to look at the pictures we want them to look at” (page 135). As the three examples imply, the movie element mostly results from his dissatisfaction of the play and his imagination of how the ideal scene should be, when it is presented as a movie, his movie. In some parts, the stage is occupied by only one person that ponders for quite a long time. At this time, he considers wasting so long a time only to see a small woman against a wide stage can be avoided if the story were produced as a movie. In movies, a pondering woman can be fascinating because the picture can be shot from various angles and distances, not to mention the illustrative music.

From the last two paragraph, we can say that the play element is the original sound of young people involved in the play production—therefore, it represents the younger generation—and the movie element is the result of the protagonist's wishful thinking—thus, it represents the elder generation. This distinction will be discussed more thoroughly in the next section.

The Theme in Relation to the Narrative Style

The most visible theme of Time is generation gap. Most members of elder generation we can find in this novel—the protagonist, old inhabitants of the nursing home, the visiting old woman who celebrates her birthday—dream or imagine ideal world or situation to them. Meanwhile, the younger generation—the director and actors of the play, the character of young girls working in the nursing home—choose to do things in the manner that shows their tendency to come up with innovations and new things.

Chart present generation gap in at least two layers, namely the real world and play-world. Firstly, by real world I mean the real world of the novel. In this case, the real world is the world where the protagonist lives. Characters in the novel’s real world are the protagonist who is a movie director, two young people sitting next to the protagonist during the play, the protagonist’s daughter and wife, etc. Secondly, the play-world is the world in the play our protagonist is watching. This world is composed of the nursing house inhabitants, a monk, a woman vendor, a vendor, a woman celebrating her birthday together with her family, Old Thapthim’s son who has just escaped from the mental hospital.

On the first layer, we can see how older generation—represented by our protagonist—feels uneasy with the way younger generation—here represented by young director and actors of the play, the protagonist’s late daughter, young movie director and a female contemporary movie director who are the protagonist’s friends—sees the world and do things. We can see how the protagonist expresses his disapproval—although not always—of the young director’s experimental way of directing the play. In response to the five solid minutes of quiescence seen on the stage at the beginning of the play, he says “If this sequence was in my film, it wouldn’t take more than one minute for the time shown on the clock to reach five o’clock as desired. But this is the time on a theater stage (page 12).” Added with the fact that he has to smell the stench of urine on the stage, which is superfluous to him, he comments that young people “only want to do something different for the sake of it, and forget what it is they’re doing (page 230)”. We can see how he considers the young generation these days prefers something controversial and different, or let us say superficial aspects, but forgets the real quality of things. He shows similar demeanor towards younger movie directors.

On the second layer, the one we call the play-world, we can see that old people inhabiting the old people’s house face a certain problem with younger generation. Some of them face problems with young people, who visit the old people’s house regularly, such as, the woman vendor, Lamjiak, etc. Among the old people’s house inhabitants, there are also those who have suffered problems with their family members. Old Thapthim, one of the members, admits that her family has treated her badly. For example, her sons and daughters bounce him from one child to another child. She considers herself a “Takraw” ball from someone’s foot to another’s food. While those old people appreciate everyone, even those who are not related biologically to them, young people tend to send their elders to old people’s house. One of the old people says that she has been sent to the old people’s house by a taxi driver paid to take her there without knowing the reason.

However, with generation gap as its theme, it does not mean that we can only find stories of ungrateful young people, difference of perception between younger and elder generation, demanding old people, etc. We can also find times when the older generation admires the young generation: the protagonist admiring the play director's sensitivity to present certain scenes which are rarely found at stage, the old woman’s—who celebrates her birthday—gratefulness for having children who give her a happy days while she is already old, Ubon’s patience in being a nurse in the old people's house, etc.

It is time now for us to discuss about the relevance of the narrative style with the theme of this novel. The different ways of presenting stories, namely novel element, movie element, and play element, reflect the different ways by which younger generation and older generation see things. The play element, in which the real manuscript of the play is presented to the reader, experimental natural of the play, represents younger generation’s tendency to be interested in superficial charm. While the movie element, which results from the protagonist’s imagination of how the story should be presented, represents older generation’s wise and sometimes demanding nature. As for the novel element, this part does not “take side”, since it sometimes retells the younger generation’s play and sometimes acts as a medium for the protagonist to tell about his past.

The unique narrative style shows Chart’s awareness of the balance between the importance of form and content in literary works. He does want to avoid the kind of literature that uses language as a mere media to express ideas. With Time, he shows that language, not only theme or ideas, is also a field in which an author can play. This reminds us of how James Joyce uses 18 different narrative styles in Ulysses’ 18 chapters. Although some people might find this kind of novels onerous, those who enjoy literary adventure will surely appreciate them. Yes, if in normal novels we can only interpret their stories, this time, with Time, as with similar novels, we will get a wider field of interpretation: interpreting its story, its narrative style, and the correlation between both.