Heartland (Shiau novel)

Heartland

Author	Daren Shiau
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Raffles Editions (SNP), Ethos Books
Publication date	1999, 2002
Publication place	Singapore
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	228

Heartland is a novel by Daren Shiau, and is the first and best known of his five books.

An existential work, Heartland deals with the paradox of rootedness and rootlessness of Singaporeans born after the Japanese Occupation.

The book received the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award in 1998, together with Alfian Sa'at's Corridor. Heartland was named by Singapore's English daily The Straits Times in December 1999, along with J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year. In 2007, an academic edition of Heartland was adopted into a textbook for Singapore secondary schools offering English literature in their GCE O-Level curriculum.

In 2015, Heartland was selected by The Business Times as one of the Top 10 English Singapore books from 1965 to 2015, alongside titles by Arthur Yap, Goh Poh Seng, Philip Jeyaretnam and Amanda Lee Koe. In the same year, MediaCorp commissioned the adaptation of Heartland into a telemovie directed by K Rajagopal. Heartland, the telemovie, was broadcast in August 2015.

Critical reception

Heartland has been hailed as “the definitive Singapore novel”, by author Johann S Lee and by travel guide "Lonely Planet: Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.”

Playwright Alfian Sa’at, in his review of Shiau’s second book, following Heartland, noted: “One really has to admire Daren Shiau as a writer. Peninsular has its precedent in Shiau’s novel, Heartland, which gives its intentions a solid credibility.”

Commenting on Heartland in his essay on Shiau’s work, Emeritus Professor Edwin Thumboo wrote: “A personal vision. A personal response. That is what Shiau has developed to a remarkable extent. In his interview with Philip Cheah, Shiau said apropos of Heartland, his first book, that he wanted to write about ‘an individual trying to find his sense of place in space (geography) and time (history), and that the Sang Nila Utama myth/history is important in the novel’s structure because ‘its ambiguity (even to the extent of whether he really encountered a lion) questions our reliance on history as fact and reinforces the theme of lost (and false) paternity”.

Dr Angelia Poon, notes of Heartland, in her essay ‘Common Ground, Multiple Claims: Representing and Constructing Singapore’s Heartland’: “Daren Shiau’s Heartland (1999) is one of the first Singapore novels in English to render the experience of living in heartlands a central theme and to link it crucially to an investigation of identity and place. Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng’s feature film Eating Air (1999)... an independent film for the international film circuit, is also a significant contribution to the depiction of the heartland in Singapore… Both texts seek implicitly to claim the heartland space and the figure of the heartlander as authentically Singaporean, disclosing to differing extents and levels of self-consciousness, the cultural, social, and political fissures in Singapore society, as well as the limits of imagining alternatives”.  

Background

The existential narrative of Heartland traces three years in the life of Wing Seng, an ambivalent Chinese teenager who experiences a sense of ennui reminiscent of that of Meursault, the protagonist in Albert Camus’ The Stranger. “Wing, who has just been conscripted, is unable to reconcile his future but unwilling to dwell in the past. He finds his own meaning in an intense attachment to his surrounding landscape. Yet, as relationships and the years slip by him, Wing is irresistibly forced to question his own certainties and the wisdom of the people he values”, Heartland’s sypnosis explains.

Influenced by the style of Czech writer Milan Kundera, the novel juxtaposes “meticulously researched” pre-colonial, colonial and modern narratives, starting with Alexander the Great, believed to be Sang Nila Utama’s ancestor. Scholar Makoto Kawaguchi, in his thesis on Heartland written at King’s College London, notes that “the novel weaves episodes from Singapore’s pre-colonial and colonial past into its main text, drawing on sources such as the Serajah Melayu (Malay Annals) to provide a counter-narrative to balance Singapore’s technocratic obsession with economic progress.

During the contemporary settings of Heartland's narrative, as Kawaguchi remarks, Wing Seng “attends an elite junior college after his secondary school education at a neighbourhood school but fails to do well enough to make it to university. He contemplates a polytechnic education after his national service, a move that has implications for his future mobility and class position in a Singapore concerned with grades and the kinds of schools one attends. The novel’s climax lies in Wing’s discovery that the man he had always though of as Fifth Uncle might actually be his father, a realisation that complicates the idea of origin and birth as determinants of individual identity”.

Kawaguchi observes, in his thesis, “Mapped onto this this economic division is a spatial distinction… In one of Heartland’s most lyrical passages, this spatial distinction is invoked in order to show that spaces of the heartland are equally as important to the nation as the skyscrapers that comprise the financial district. Following an argument between his Fifth Uncle and his mother over the sale of the family flat, a confused Wing takes the lift to the top floor of one of the high-rise flats of his estate. The view he takes in was ‘was nothing spectacular like the cityscape, just mundane places he was familiar with. Yet it was beautiful. In the tiny identical rooms, he knew people were eating, making love, watching TV. People who were, that afternoon, joyous and celebrating, sad and mourning, full of dreams, washed out with despair. Silent as a painting, the estate spoke in its own voice’”. It is precisely familiarity, Kawaguchi argues, “that lies at the heart of what makes the ‘mundane places’ of the estate ‘beautiful’, exemplifying Yi-Fu Tan’s well known assertion that ‘what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value’”.

Parallels to James Joyce’s Ulysses

The novel Heartland bears several parallels to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, with at least fifteen counterparts and analogues. Kawaguchi notes, in his thesis: “Heartland's second epigraph is a quote attributed to an exiled James Joyce, who was said to have declared that ‘when I die, Dublin will be engraved on my heart. The use of heart as a metaphor for ‘home’ in Heartland is apparent from the novel’s title.”

Like Ulysses, Heartland examines the life of a suburban community through its mundane yet profound daily routines. Among the sub-themes in common is that of lost (and false) paternity, and among the motifs in common is that of water.

Reference to Ulysses	Significance in Heartland
1st chapter Martello Tower, where Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist, lives with his house-mates is rented from the government.	Wing examines the idea of 'ownership' of one's home. He decides that his inability to truly 'own' his property is, at one level, attributed to the fact his flat is leased from the government.
1st chapter Stephen surrenders his key to the Tower to Mulligan and becomes symbolically and literally homeless. Also 4th chapter Leopold Bloom realises his latchkey is not 'at his hip' and goes out without his key instead of waking his wife up. He is also symbolically and metaphorically dispossessed.	Wing loses his house keys (Part One, Chapter X) and, through that incident, meets Ruth, which opens his world to the Philippines, Thailand and eventually Malaysia (Malacca).
2nd chapter Headmaster Deasy proclaims with nationalistic fervour, 'We are all Irish, all kings' sons'.	The novel hints that Singaporeans are the sons of kings but suggests that this heritage is both ambiguous and premised on ambiguity.
3rd chapter generally Stephen thinks about his life while on the beach. He considers, among other things, Samuel Johnson's philosophy that the objective existence of matter can be refuted by kicking a rock.	Wing reflects on his life along the East Coast beach and ends his reflection by throwing a handful of sand at the sea (Part Two, Chapter I).
3rd chapter While on the beach, Stephen sees Tatters, the dog, sniffing at the bloated carcass of a dead dog. The image reinforces the novel's predominant 'dog-god' concept.	Wing remembers, when seeing the live vivisection of a dog, the bloated carcass of a dog he saw washed up onto Labrador beach (Part I, Chapter V).
3rd chapter Stephen muses about the philosophical question of whether a sound exists if no creature hears it.	The question of whether a tree makes a sound when it falls if there is nobody to hear it is dealt with both literally and metaphorically in the course of Wing and Chloe's relationship.
4th chapter Bloom wonders if his cat thinks he is 'as tall as a tower'.	Wing has a similar thought when seeing the cats at the base of his flat (Part Three, Chapter II).
5th chapter Bloom addresses his desire to escape from his responsibilities.	Wing deals with his yearning to escape at various points in the novel (especially at Part One, Chapter IX and at Part Three, Chapter V).
6th Chapter John Henry Menton, who was beaten by Bloom at a game of bowls when he was 17, still holds a grudge.	Wing had a disagreement with the leader of the paikia in his estate over a game of marbles when he was young and the paikia still hold a grudge.
7th chapter This chapter parallels the episode in the Odyssey in which Aeolus, the custodian of the winds, gave winds to Odysseus and his crew on their return journey	Aeolus is paralleled by the Lord of Rain, qi song zu, (Part One, Chapter III). An extended parallel is to the title given to Sang Nila Utama from the messenger of the Kingdom of Winds (Part One, Chapter VIII).
11th chapter This chapter parallels the episode in the Odyssey in which the Sirens intoxicate with the power of their music.	The effect of music is seen in, among other things, Joshua's concert (Part One, Chapter VI) and the Zouk scenes (Part One, Chapter VII).
13th chapter This chapter parallels the episode in the Odyssey when Odysseus is awakened from sleep when he is struck by a ball misthrown by Princess Nausicaa and her friends.	Wing is 'awakened' from his feeling of rootedness when Fifth Uncle appears; Fifth Uncle's appearance is preceded by Wing's stupor as he sees a football game in his void deck.
14th chapter The newspaper article on foot and mouth disease in cattle by Headmaster Garett Deasy (which was discussed in the 2nd chapter) is published in the evening paper due to Stephen's influence.	Wing commits a faux pas by mistaking the refusal of May's Taoist relatives to eat meet as fear of the mad cow disease.
15th chapter Bloom's visit to the red-light district has a cathartic effect on his sense of debasement.	Sham reaches the end of his self-searching in the Geylang brothel.
16th chapter Stephen's retort to Bloom's insult is that 'Ireland must be important because it belongs to me'.	Wing believes in but eventually questions his 'ownership' of his surrounding landscape.
Ulysses major parallel to Homer's Odyssey is that of Telemachus deciding to leave Ithaca to seek his long-lost father so that he can return to expel invaders.	At the end of the novel, there is an implication that Wing went to Malacca to seek Fifth Uncle, his ambiguous 'father'.