Making new space in the Thai literary canon

Preamble and caveat As someone not trained in literary studies and teaching in America, I am contesting the Thai literary canon from the margins--disciplinarily and geographically. This paper examines three early Thai novels that have not been included in the Thai literary canon. In my assessment, these three novels represent important examples of the Thai novel that helped the Thai public deal with the west during the turn of the twentieth century. My own interest in politics and the novel began in the mid-1970s when I used Kulab Saipradit's Lae pai khang na [Looking to the Future] (1955) in a class at Thammasat University. The novel describes the political awakening of a boy from Isan, Thailand's poorest region, privileged to study at an elite school in Bangkok. There, he meets students from all classes and ethnicity, and a favourite teacher who would later become involved in the overthrow of absolute monarchy. The novel focuses on the years immediately following the 1932 coup, showing how the good intentions of the leaders turn sour when the new democratic regime itself becomes authoritarian and repressive. The novel was to be in three parts, corresponding to human life cycles: formative years, mature years, and declining years. However, Kulab was unable to finish the last volume after his self-imposed political exile in China following the Sarit Thanarat coup in 1957. I used Lae pai khang na to help contextualise the cultural and social milieu surrounding the 1932 coup that ended absolute monarchy in Siam. During the late 1960s and into the 1970s, heated debates occurred frequently on campus between faculty members who resisted the proliferation of what were seen as trashy leftist novels read by the students, and other lecturers who were willing to discuss what the students were already reading. The schism took on political and disciplinary dimensions when the Thai language faculty argued that they were the true protectors of not just 'good' Thai literature, but also the nation, religion and the monarchy. Those who did not agree with them were labelled left-leaning rua hang yao [long tail boats] lecturers out to destroy Thai culture and the Thai nation by encouraging students to read seditious novels and books that celebrated socialism, communism, and social justice. (1) The (re)discovery of Thai novels as good sources for social criticism was the work of radical students and some young Thai literary scholars who were looking for ways to critique the inequities of Thai society. Student activists and other young literary critics republished many novels that were banned during the previous dictatorial regimes. In addition to Lae pai khang na, students were reading, for example, Seni Saowaphong's Pisat [The Demon], the many works of Asani Pholachan, and lit Phumisak's Chomna sakdina Thai [The Real face of Thai feudalism]. (2) Many years later, beginning in 2000, I began teaching a graduate seminar on the Thai novel at Cornell University. These seminars analysed selected Thai novels in light of Hayden White's theory of tropes, the New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt, and translation theory, especially post-colonial translation theory. (3) In one seminar, we read in the vernacular several of Kulab Saipradit's novels such as Luk phuchai [The real man] (1928), Khang lang phab [Behind the painting] (1937) and Lae pai khang na (1955) to try to understand why his novels are considered by many to be politically radical and socially relevant. In another seminar, we read and compared Mae Wan's (pen name of Phraya Surintharacha) Khwam phayabat [The Vendetta] (1902) with Corelli's Vendetta, and Nai Samran's (pen name of Luang Wilatpariwat, who is popularly known as Khru Liam) Khwam mai phayabat [The Non-vendetta] (1915). What I discovered is that although Kulab's Luk phuchai (1928) was one of the three canonical novels designated as the first authentic Thai novels, Phraya Surintharacha's Khwam phayabat and Luang Wilatpariwat's Khwam mai phayabat that predated them were not. …