Elizabeth Bukowski – Pramoedya Ananta Toer may have lost more than a decade of his life to the forced labor camp on Indonesia's Buru Island. But he hasn't lost his spirit, his sense of humor or his hope for a stable, democratic Indonesia.
The author of several novels, short stories and works of nonfiction, Mr. Pramoedya is Indonesia's most famous – and outspoken – writer. In 1965, he was living in Jakarta, writing fiction and populist essays. Then an abortive coup threw the country into chaos. President Sukarno was ousted, Suharto took control and thousands of people, many of them communists, were killed or imprisoned. As for Mr. Pramoedya (pronounced "pra-MOO-dee-ya"), he was arrested and spent the next 14 years in prison, most of it on Buru. He was never charged with a crime.
"The Mute's Soliloquy" (Hyperion East, 375 pages, $27.50) is his memoir of those years. It is not a continuous narrative but a collection of the notes he managed to hide from his captors, mostly recollections of his life before Buru, records of the island's severe conditions and letters to his children that he knew would never be sent.
Last week, at a Manhattan hotel during his first trip outside Indonesia since the 1950s, Mr. Pramoedya explained that he never planned to publish these secret writings. They were intended for his eight children "as a witness to history and testimony that I, their father, did once exist."
"I am surprised the book has appeared in English. I never even thought it would be published in Indonesian," Mr. Pramoedya remarks, smiling as he "blames" his friend and American editor, John McGlynn, for the book's publication. "It's not that I wanted to announce my suffering to the world," he adds.
Dressed in slacks and a batik shirt, Mr. Pramoedya, 74, is a compact figure with wispy white hair. His expression flickers from grave concentration when considering his country's history to a mischievous grin when making a joke. He speaks in Bahasa Indonesian, and Mr. McGlynn, seated on his left, translates. Mr. Pramoedya has been almost deaf since soldiers beat him with rifle butts in 1965; his left ear is his "good" ear.
Mr. Pramoedya had been under either house or city arrest since his release from Buru in 1979. Then the government of B.J. Habibie, who replaced Suharto last year, granted him a passport to make this trip, his first to the U.S. He admires the way New Yorkers of different ethnic groups seem to live together harmoniously. But, as he lights a clove cigarette, he jokes that the restrictions on smokers in America leave something to be desired. "I feel like a member of the oppressed class once again," he quips.
Mr. Pramoedya was imprisoned for his opinions twice before 1965: first by the Dutch for his anticolonial views, and later under Sukarno for a text deemed too sympathetic to Indonesia's ethnic Chinese. "In Indonesia's case, writers are needed as leaders of the nation-building process," he says. "If politics and science can't give answers to society's needs, then literature must."
His best-known work is the "Buru Quartet" of novels, so named because he composed them – in his head, because he was not allowed paper – while incarcerated on the penal island. They were written down and published upon his release. The story of a young man named Minke who comes of age during Indonesia's struggle for independence, the series has been translated into several languages and is considered a classic of modern Asian literature.
Mr. Pramoedya describes fiction writing as "almost a biochemical process. You open up a subliminal valve, out come stories and memories, and then you add a drop of experience, and you have a story," he explains. "The writer just keeps a record of the process." A moment later, though, he smiles at his improvised theory. "Of course, it doesn't work exactly like that."
His favorite writers are Western, including John Steinbeck and William Saroyan. But not Hemingway: "I see a negative sense of humanitarianism in that man." As for Asian writers, "I have not gained enough from them," he says dismissively.
Mr. Pramoedya is "hopeful but under no illusions" about Indonesia's elections to be held in June. "Suharto is gone, but the power structure has not changed. All of the same people are still in control," he asserts.
Critics say Mr. Pramoedya tried to control public debate in the 1960s, when he worked for a Communist Party newspaper. Some of the writers he named in an essay titled "Those Who Should Be Encouraged, And Those Who Should Be Cut Down," which criticized authors who were not "revolutionary" enough, saw their works censored by officials. Mr. Pramoedya claims it was a "matter of polemics"; he never had the power or desire to silence anyone. He points out that one of his own books was banned during this period.
"The Mute's Soliloquy" ends with a list of 276 people who perished at Buru, a small fraction of the total. How did Mr. Pramoedya stay alive and keep writing? He thinks international attention to Buru was crucial to his survival. But he also credits himself. "I swore I would not die before I saw this period end. I also wanted to provide symbolic opposition to the authorities," he recalls. "So many of my friends died. They didn't know how to stand up to the authorities; instead they got trampled by them. From that I surmised that opposition to injustice must be an integral part of a person's life. Without opposition, the spirit will die, as will the body."
After a pause, he cheerfully, sheepishly asks, "Do I sound bombastic?"