From Hargreaves to Blyton, to Austen, to Creed, to Kristeva

Over the years, reading for me has evolved several times to mean various things at different stages of my 23-year existence. This reading biography is not meant to be exhaustive, as it would be frightfully impossible to effectively encapsulate two decades of good reads on which my soul has fed. As a prelude to this list of golden finds, I’d like to add that my initial enthusiasm in reading was in fact, sparked by my parents, who had fervently introduced me to simple fiction before my pre-school years. I fondly recall the Mr Men and Little Miss series - first created by Roger Hargreaves – and the childishly endearing visuals that accompanied each little book.

At the age of 6 my mother introduced me to the imaginative world of Enid Blyton, featuring giggling girls and their adventures in boarding school, magical gardens replete with pixies and elves, and an entire universe of talking animals. Among these, my favourites were the St’Clares and Malory Towers series, the 2-part installation of The Adventures of the Wishing Chair, as well as the mystery classics comprising the Secret Seven and Famous Five compilations.

My constant exposure to Blyton’s diverse worlds (whether real or imaginary, I loved them all) gradually paved the way for a growing fascination with several other authors of children books. I cannot help but still keep my entire collection of Roald Dahl’s works; my favourites being Matilda, The BFG, and James and the Giant Peach, which I read and re-read (n+1) times because they had a way of making my heartstrings tug so hard and fast – occasionally even crushing my heart into a crumpled ball of woe and bitter nostalgia.

Roald Dahl accompanied me for much of my Primary School years, just as Laura Dower’s Madison Finn collection and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter did. It was during this time, also, that I started to attempt the abridged versions of English classics, mostly pertaining to the works of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. I could never understand how marriage could be deemed so practically essential in the olden eras (as in Pride and Prejudice) or how children could actually survive in the absence of parental figures (as in Oliver Twist and Great Expectations).

At this point, I’ll have to shamefully confess that my leisurely reading encountered a 2-year hiatus when I entered lower Secondary, owing to overwhelming commitments at school (yes, not forgiven, I know). I was heartened, however, that the study of Literature offered me an avenue for much-needed escapes into the literary worlds of Mingfong Ho’s Sing to the Dawn, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the poems of Carol Ann Duffy. Apart from appreciating the alternate realities that were so foreign to my own, I enjoyed analysing these texts as they gave me deeper insight into the world of Literature.

Then Junior College happened and I found myself in a sea of varied texts, most of which I actually adored from the first time I accessed them. Be it the dystopic realm of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, or the tragedy in Shakespeare’s Othello, or the unknown and dangerous depths of Edgar Allan Poe’s mystifying tales, I was intrigued by the infinite possibilities and extreme conditions that the human heart could be subject to. This confirmed my decision to major in English Literature at the tertiary level.

At a not-so-tender age of 19, my love for books took a little twist as I became more engaged in texts that extended beyond British and American fiction. Sure, I became an indefatigable fan of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, as well as Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, but I found myself more taken with the likes of critical theory (omg sorry please don’t judge). I started buying and borrowing more books - beyond the academic syllabus - on the eccentricities of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Barbara Creed.

More specifically, my exposure to film studies at the National University of Singapore afforded me a greater delight in exploring primary texts and secondary scholarship on film and culture. Soon, I was dabbling in Bordwell and Thompson’s anthologies on film techniques and history, as well as the individual works of Laura Mulvey, Sergei Eisenstein, Pier Paolo Passolini … the list goes on.

My fascination with the overlaps between film and psychoanalytical theory finally culminated in my writing of my Honours Thesis on the redefining of the abject other in contemporary Singaporean horror cinema. During this 3-month period, I immersed myself thoroughly in Kristeva’s essay, Powers of Horror, as well as Barbara Creed’s book, The Monstrous Feminine. I found it challenging, however, to physically access books on local film, so I relied largely on regional works in Asia for my research.

I’m coming to the end of this biography, but I would admit that one regret that plagues me, unfortunately, is that I was hardly exposed to Singapore Literature since childhood. The schools which I attended all focused largely on the western canon, so I never discovered the wonders and thrill of reading local literary works till I recently graduated. It must sound ludicrous and very shocking – that a Singaporean student of Literature is barely familiar with locally-produced works. Within the past few months, however, I’ve pondered over the poetry of Boey Kim Cheng, Lee Tzu Peng, Alfian Sa’at, and Suchen Christine Lim, as well as the plays of Kuo Pao Kun, and have garnered mixed feelings with regard to this: joy and bliss, because local productions are really, so much closer to my heart that I had ever thought they would be, but also a reinforced devastation, because I can’t believe I missed out on so much of this for a whole quarter of my life. 

Tribute to Roger Hargreaves, for inventing an ingenious set of books which became the first of the many proper books in my reading journey.