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247 pages

English

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Prolific writer Colin Cheong brings together three classic novellas and 23 short stories in this first-ever collection. Written in the 1990s, each story reflects his prowess as a storyteller. He is known for his sensitive and skillful articulation of some universal human themes - the pain of rejected love, the frustration and anticipation of being 'almost adult', the rites of passage to adulthood, and man's need for woman. This collection comprises:1. Seventeen (novella, published 1996)2. Poets, Priests and Prostitutes (novella, published 1990)3. The Man in the Cupboard (novella, published 1999) - won the Merit Award, Singapore Literature Prize 19984. Life Cycle of Homo Sapiens, Male (short stories, published 1992)5. Five new stories, previously only published in The Straits Times

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Short story

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Publié par	MarshallCavendish
Date de parution	01 mai 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814398770
Langue	English

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2011 Colin Cheong and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196
Poets, Priests and Prostitutes first published 1990; Life Cycle of Homo Sapiens, Male first published 1992; and Seventeen first published 1996 by Times Editions Pte Ltd. The Man in the Cupboard first published 1999 by SNP Editions Pte Ltd (Raffles imprint)
Cover design by Benson Tan
Cover image by Colin Cheong
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Request for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300, fax: (65) 6285 4871. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com . Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no events be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices
Marshall Cavendish Ltd. PO Box 65829, London EC1P 1NY, UK Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Cheong, Colin.
The Colin Cheong collection. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, c2011.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-981-4398-77-0
I. Title.
PR9570.S53
S823 -- dc22 OCN702226862
Printed in Singapore by Times Printers Pte Ltd

Contents
Preface
Seventeen (1996)
Poets, Priests and Prostitutes - A Rock Fairytale (1990)
The Man in the Cupboard (1999)
Life Cycle of Homo Sapiens, Male (1992)
Down to the River
Wedding of the Year
The Triumph
Fifteen and Life to Go
Jailhouse Rock
Tempest in a Teacup
Silent Service
One Night Only
Poisson Ivy
The Serpent
You ll Be a Man, My Son
Long Shot Larry
For Whom the Bells Toll
Sweet Child of Mine
Monica
The Hill
His Master s Voice
The River (Reprise)
Bonus Tracks
Family Colours (1992)
A Gift of a Lifetime (2001)
The Farmer s Bride (2001)
All Things Being Equal (1999)
The Widow (2003)
About the Author
Preface
IT S been a long ride.
My first book, The Stolen Child , was launched in 1989, and the last, The Man in the Cupboard , 1999. The last is also my favourite. I think it was with that book that I finally matured as a writer. The rest is, as they say in academic circles, juvenilia.
Old work is sort of like the embarrassing baby pictures your family shows to visitors - or old school photos on Facebook. I would have let these works disappear in my rearview mirrors, but Marshall Cavendish wanted to put them back on the road. They promised a cool cover. I couldn t say no.
So read them with a warning - they come from a heart many years younger and not yet jaded. I can t even recognise the voice in these stories as mine. But there it is, almost familiar, like the distant muscle memory from a gone but beloved motorcycle. So for my old readers, welcome back; it s our ride down memory lane. For those of you new to my work, saddle up.
This collection is like a best hits album. Seventeen is said to be the most borrowed of my books. Poets, Priests and Prostitutes was my first bestseller and banned in convent schools because of its title. The Man in the Cupboard was a 1998 Singapore Literature Prize Merit Award winner. Life Cycle of Homo Sapiens, Male has had some of its stories republished in literary journals or anthologies.
The stories here have been arranged in a chronological sequence like the Riddle of the Sphinx - what goes on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening? Man, in all the key stages of his life, and in his relationship with that vexing creature, Woman. The short story collection repeats the cycle from childhood - you will find extracts from earlier works - and it will also bring characters you ve already met further down the timeline. I hope they will feel like old friends. They did to me.
The festival specials in the last section of this volume have never appeared in book form before, but were probably the most widely read of my work because they appeared in The Straits Times .
Not all of my works are here. The Stolen Child is just too big to shoehorn in. Void Decks and Other Empty Places is in the National Library s online resource database, NORA. Tangerine is held with another publisher.
It s not many books for 23 years, starting from when I signed the contract to write The Stolen Child . I ve lost some time. About a dozen years. Chasing mirages and going nowhere fast in the badlands of corporate writing. I wrote a lot of things that I do not want to remember. It s easy to lose your way out there.
But this collection brings me back to where I took my wrong turn. For that, I d like to thank my fellow writer, Robert Yeo, my editor, Lee Mei Lin, and my academic buddy, Ronald Klein, who s been asking me (for a decade) when I ll get down to writing my next real (that is, fiction) book.
Well, I have. I m back in the saddle again and I ve tweaked that old biker motto: Live to write, write to live . See you down the road.
Colin Cheong
May 2011
Frame S
Sunday, May 10, 1987 .
THE wind breathes and pictures move.
Photographs float like sepia leaves, scratching along the red-bricked ground, scattered like cards in a giant game of memory.
Voices gather, movement blurs, shadows flit along the corridors - a homecoming to a deserted building. People huddle in small groups for the camera, smiling on reflex, making memories of their own while memories of past generations drift around their feet.
Some stop to look, to touch, but no one ever taking the old pictures because the moments are not their own. I bend to catch a leaf floating past. Veined with creases, it shows old young faces smiling between the lifelines, product of a photosynthesis that gives life to matter, life to memory.
The wind sighs again, and the old pictures rustle on the floor, images of us, images of time measured in fractions of a second, the sum of which might have never made a minute. But there are images we never catch on film, leaf-pressed in the pages of the heart, dodged and burned to fit the reality we prefer to remember.
But even memory on a postcard print is brittle. The leaf is beginning to brown. A print made by beginners hands, perhaps even my own. These hands are unfamiliar now. A few short years have written more lines on them than I care to read. The photograph slips from my fingers and it dances away on the wand, a decisive moment shared.
And that is why I tell this story now. Because it is vivid still, fresh and unmanipulated, but fragile, like all things we hold only in our minds and even the foundations of this school building. I want to tell it before the illumination of age burns all away to shadow and tells me such a story could only be a tale from a Chinese studio.
The old Seagull rangefinder hangs from my shoulder. I brought it hoping to take something away with me too, something missed when I was last here, an image of a moment to share with a stranger who could be me years from now, who might not know the boy.
And what would the boy tell the man?
My school was going to fall like a house of cards. They made everyone leave on Friday, but over the weekend, we went back, hundreds of us, not just present pupils, but old ones, like me. We went home to say goodbye .
Wasn t that a dangerous thing to do? The man might ask and I can see no answer for a rational adult.
But I could put between us a deck of pictures, my postcard moments, hot-pressed, heart-pressed, turning each one over, letting him read the past from those browning leaves.
And I could hope old eyes would see what young eyes understood.
Frame 1
THE light is harsh now, at three o clock, and darkness will be a long time coming. I sit on the steps of the forum and look out at the plaza where we used to assemble in the morning, the left and right wings of the main building, like the arms of a protective mother, encircling her brood.
I remember being told that, but I cannot see the councillor telling me. Trying to remember moments, all I can call to mind are pictures. Everything else between pictures - as if we never were. And so we cheat. We remember things, but never in the way they really were, dodging our inadequacies, burning out the pain. And cheating could begin even in the camera. Darkroom work only confirms what you want to believe and the print is not disputed.
The plaza is quiet now, the babble of souvenir hunters starting to fade with the light, but if I can recall enough details to fill in the blank, the space will live again. The people in my picture move, fidgeting in their lines, picking up files, dropping bags, waving. The babble swells again, speakers hiss, a teacher orders maktab , sedia and the school band strikes up as part of our glorious land, sharing her spreading fame, Hwa Chong will firmly stand ... The irony is not lost on me.
Across a school field, traffic rumbles down Bukit Timah Road and there is the sharp smell of exhaust that always brings back pictures of sunlight in the trees around