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Phaibun Wongthet's
"And So I Come in Search of Fedupness"
Susan F. Kepner
University of California, Berkeley
2003
Paper Presented at
Southeast Asian Studies Conference
University of California, Berkeley
2
Copyright © 2003 by Susan F. Kepner
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A Massacre of Meanings:
Phaibun Wongthet's "And So I Come in Search of Fedupness"
This is the story of two books written ten years apart, during a critical period of
modern Thai history. The first was written by a Thai author and political activist in
1971; the second is a parody of that book, written in 1981. Between 1971 and 1981, two
massacres occungs: ary forces massacred unarmed political demonstrators in Bangkok,
an event which led to the fall of the government, and the exile of its leaders. After three
years of comparatively open political activity, in October 1976 military and paramilitary
forces carried out another massacre in which even more people were killed. This
massacre was followed by the imposition of a government that was perhaps even more
repressive than the one that had fallen in 1973.
The first book, a collection of essays, plays and poems entitled Ch|an cung
maa h«aa khwaam m«aay / ฉันจึงมาหาความหมาย (And so I come in search of
meaning) was published in the heyday of political activism by Witthayakorn Chiangkul,
then 24 years old. The second book, the parody, is a collection of essays entitled Ch\an
cung maa h«aa khwaam ng«øøy / ฉันจึงมาหาความหงอย: (And so I come in
search of fedupness). It was written by Phaibun Wongthet, a friend of Witthayakorn's.
Like Witthayakorn, Phaibun was a political activist and writer; like Witthayakorn, he was
present at both massacres. He was 20 years old in 1973, 23 in 1976; and he was 30 years
old when he wrote his parody, living in political exile in Stockholm.
1
1The final word in Phaibun's title, ng«øøy / หงอย¬, which I have translated
as "fed-up-ness," may also be defined as "despondency" or even
"listlessness," but "fed-up-ness" seems to me closer to the feeling I believe
Phaibun meant to convey.
4
It is my belief that the latter work, the parody, is the more "authentic" expression
of Thai political and also literary expression, and that this is only one example, in Thai
literature, of a parody surpassing an original text in conveying the message that the author
of the original work meant to convey. I would also like to address the very important role
of humor in Thai literature, as well as some of the cultural dimensions and linguistic
details of Thai humor, which often do not "translate" well.
The first book, Witthayakorn's collection, inspired an idealistic generation. He
and every other Thai child had entered school at the age of six to learn to read, recite, and
revere the words, "ch»aat / s\aatsan«aa / phr|amah«aakas\at:" "nation /
religion / king," the triune definition of all that a Thai should hold most sacred. But this
paradigm has sometimes served to mask and to excuse corruption, meager popular
participation in the political process, and military rule. Although most of them did not
think of destroying this paradigm altogether, at the the time Witthayakul's generation
entered the university, many believed that a reimagining of Thai society was long
overdue, and that they were the generation uniquely able and willing to take on the task.
When Witthayakorn graduated from the Economics Faculty of Thammasat
University in Bangkok in 1969, he had already written many of the works that would end
up in his famous collection. All were heartfelt, utterly sincere, and survive less as
outstanding examples of Thai literature than as artifacts of a hopeful and energetic
political movement. Before I describe a few of them, it is useful to consider the Preface,
written by another political activist named Suchat Sawatsri. It is studded with created
Thai terms followed in parentheses by the English terms they more or less resemble:
udomkat\î / อุดมคติ (idealism); khon m\ot alaay taay y\aak / คนหมดอาลัยตาย
อยาก (Cynic and this is an arguable definition he defines the English word
"frustration" using the same term, with more justification); khwaam r|uus\üuk nay
cherng anaath|îpataay / ความรู้สึกในเชิงอนาธิปไตย¬ (anarchist); s\îng th»îi
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consciousness).
2
Witthayakorn's collection of works includes a play in which the four protagonists
are known as Prisoners Number One, Two, Three and Four; as victims of an unjust
system, it is difficult to distinguishable one from another. Poems include "Suw«an
k\ap kaan long thun" / สวรรค์กับการลงทุน (Heaven and capitalism), and
karma of the 'sat-müuang,'" a title describing evil, subhuman, people who have
amassed wealth through crime and corruption, and occupy positions of political and
social power.
ในมุมหนึ่งของโลกที่โศกนี้
ยังคงมีความสุขสนุกแสน
ยืนอยู่บนความยากลำาบากแค้น
ของคนแคลนสิ้นไร้ไปทั้งนั้น
nay mum n\üung kh«øøng l»ook n|îi
In one corner of this sad world
are happiness, and joy
standing upon the poverty and want
of needy people with no hope of help.
Consider the times. The year 1971, when the collection was published, was an
amazing year in which to graduate from Thammasat University. This was the heart and
home of the student movement, which was flowering mightily, although it would not
come into full bloom until 1973. Riding high on its successes in publicizing and acting
out against the Japanese economic invasion, the student movement also was taking aim at
other serious problems: Thailand's excruciating position as home base for U.S. bombers
then causing massive destruction and death in the neighboring nations of Laos, Cambodia
and Vietnam; the resultant escalating power and influence of the U.S. in Thai
international and domestic affairs; the immense and shameless corruption of the military
dominated Thai government; and the continuing exclusion of the Thai populace at large
from a meaningful role in the governance of their nation.
Witthayakorn belonged to a number of activist groups: among them were a student
writer's group called "phracan s\îaw" / พระจันทร์เสี้ยว ("Crescent Moon"), focused
on world literaure and international affairs. He wrote short stories, edited student
university in those days was to experience a youth that was something new under the Thai
sun. They imagined, and they worked to establish, a flowering of the arts, and of
literature. They questioned every value that had been drummed into them via the deftly
devised curricula of the Department of Education. They believed that they could and
would be able to do all of these things, if only they had sufficient courage.
On October 14, 1973, when students and other political activists were massacred
in the streets of downtown Bangkok by military forces, military leaders accused them of
being communists, certain that most Thai citizens would need to hear nothing more, in
order to decide that the unarmed demonstrators were grave threats to nation, religion, and
3Abrief biography of Witthayakorn is included in Anderson and Mendiones
1985, 289-290. A translation of his short story, "As If It Had Never
Happened" appears in this volume.
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king. But in this, they badly miscalculated. The guns backfired on the military, whose
massacre disgraced them in the eyes of the public, horrified at the sight of Thai children
lying mutilated or dead in the streets of the capital, all for defying a government that
everyone knew to be corrupt, and which had now proven itself to be brutal as well. The
result was that the military government fell, and its leaders went into exile. King
Bhumibhol Adulyadej personally ordered military leaders to step aside and leave the
kingdom, and there ensued a brief honeymoon between the average man in the street or
woman in the factory, or family in the rice field and the people in the student
movement, and their many supporters.
During the next three years, political activists were continually involved in spirited
debates over the nature of proper government; in calling and joining strikes; in organizing
rural farmers and urban workers; and in a host of unprecedented political and social
activities. At first, they enjoyed tremendous respect and support. But gradually, the
movement began to lose its lustre in the eyes of the population at large. What did they
have to offer, in place of the things they criticized and deplored? And what of the
educated urbanites who had initially rallied to the activists' cause, but who became
increasingly disaffected after 1973?
Literature is a case in point. The most extreme of the political activists attacked
the classical works of Thai literature: for example, the Ramakian, which is the Thai
version of the Ramayana, as well as native works such as Khun Chang Khun Phaen and
Phra Aphaimani]. These tales, which focus on the frailties of human nature, were
attacked as feudal tools that engendered "false consciousness" among the people. Some
activists called for them to be collected and burned in the streets. There were passionate
debates on the correct uses of literature. In one of them, a rather terrifiedsounding
moderator, chosen because he was more or less acceptable to panel members representing
both ends of the political spectrum, introduced the panel with these words: "We are here
to consider is whether the literature of the past was composed in order to drug the masses
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term, "opiate of the masses"] and prevent free thought; or whether this literature had a
(positive) part in the building of the Thai nation.... (Some say that) the literature of an era
that extolled one class while condemning or vilifying or hurting another should no longer
be taught; or, it should be taught on a selective basis. It is also said that the traditional
Thai literature is irrelevant to the people because it is filled with old vocabulary that is
understood today by hardly anyone (i.e., it is understood only by people of the
elite/educated class) and it is not written in the language of the people. This is an
argument that we have seen recently advanced in China, where people have asserted, for
example, that Confucianism does not fit the civilization or the culture [w|
athanatham / วัฒนธรรม] newly created by the Chinese people." 4
One unconvinced scholar who participated in the debate said, "I am quite
confused by all the talk about the word 'values' [kh»aa n|îyom / ค่านิยม] these days.
For example, some people will tell you that Khun Suchat [Sawatsri, also a panel member]
obviously has new "values" because he has a beard and a mustache. But beards and
mustaches are not values they are fashions. Values and fashions are not at all the same
thing. Young men must dress in a certain way today if they wish to be "t»ay. " [A
slang word, new at the time, originally adapted from the English word "taste."] But I do
not see any new values, in this era. I see only old values, in a new society. And what is
this new society? Look at it unstable, lacking law and discipline, toppling as if it were
riddled with termites. I do not know what we are to do. What are our "values" now?
vengeance. But the public mood was quite different from what it had been in 1973. Just
4Boonlua 1986, 265-266. This excerpt is taken from a transcript of a tape
recording made at the conference; passages in parentheses appear so in the
transcript; passages in brackets are my explanatory notes.
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a year earlier, in 1975, the war had ended, ushering in an atmosphere of uncertainty and
fear. This time, scare tactics in Thailand concerning "communist" threats to the stability
and the very survival of Thailand fell upon very receptive ears, compared to 1973. Many
Thais were simply tired of the disorder and pandemonium that characterized the open
political system, and they also were terribly fearful of what the coming years would
mean, with communist governments now on their borders.
One political figure who managed to escape, and go into exile abroad, was
Phaibun Wongthet. Phaibun, who was born in Prachinburi and remained a selfdescribed
"country boy" in his outlook, always had seen things a bit differently from his
companions. He remained greatly attached to the Thai literary tradition of parody and
satire. He was, and still is, a naturally very funny man. While his friends were poring
over Thai translations of Che Guevara's Diary, or mimeographing the works of banned
Thai radicals like the late Chit Phoumisak and writing earnestly about the social problems
of the day in terms laboriously translated from English, Phaibun exhibited a certain
cynicism, and skepticism, about the value of Che's, or even Chit's, ideas for dealing with
contemporary Thai problems.
Phaibun's parody of Witthayakorn's earnest collection was quite purposefully a
massacre of meanings. Phaibun did not disagree with his colleagues who wrote
passionate and often tendentious poems, plays and essays about politics and society. But
his instinct, in the face of disaster, was to retreat into satire. Phaibun's work became
better known and better loved than the work that inspired it not the first time such a
thing has happened in Thai literary life.
Parody has always played a special and important role in Thai literature, and Thai
society. The work that is generally considered to be the first Thai novel, Khwaam
phayabaat / ความพยาบาท (Vengeance, 1900), was a Thai version of the Victorian
novelist Morie Corelli's work, Vendetta; or, The Story of One Forgotten. The Thai novel,
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written by Phraya Surintharacha (พระยาสุรินทราชา), made perhaps its greatest
impression on another writer, his friend Luang Wilat Poriwat (หลวงวิลาศปริวรรตถ์).
Luang Wilat thought that Khwaam Phayabaat was hilarious a terrible piece of writing,
and altogether hilarious. So he sat down and wrote a parody entitled Khwaam m»ay
phayabaat / ความไม่พยาบาท (No vengeance, 1915). I believe that the event of
Phraya Surintharacha's 1900 novel, followed by Luang Wilat Prawat's 1915 parody,
presages the event of Witthyakorn's 1971 book, followed a dozen years later by Phaibun's
1982 parody. A serious work was followed by a parody that became more popular than
the original. Through parody, Thai writers have reflected upon, ordered, and digested
events in the cultural evolution of Thai society; and this literary process is hardly limited
to twentieth century works. In earlier centuries, parodies of socalled classical works
were popular at the Siamese court.
5
In contemporary Thai society, literary parodies are something like a "roast," in the
U.S. In a backhanded gesture of honor, a person's best friends throw a lavish party at
which they insult him or her with "toasts" so scathing that they amount to "roasts." This
delight in "roasting" and ridiculing one's friends plays a significant part in Thai humor,
and figures largely in popular Thai literature. As in many societies, Thai literary works
of humor and/or parody seldom win literary prizes, even if they find far more readers than
the prizewinners.
Like many of his friends who were fortunate enough to escape prison or death,
Phaibun Wongthet fled Thailand in 1976, and somehow ended up in Sweden, where he
was miserable in the snow and the cold, with no Thai friends, much less Thai food. But
he had brought with him a copy of Witthayakorn Chiangkul's And So I Come in Search of
Meaning. In his misery and loneliness, quite literally during the winter of his discontent,
5See Grow 1996, 47-67, and Kepner 1996, 9-11. In the latter, reference is
made to the scandalous, obscene parodies of respectable poems written by
Khun Suwan, a lady of the court at the end of the eighteenth and beginning
of the nineteenth century.
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Phaibun wrote eleven parodies of works by Witthyakorn and ten other friends who had
been the most important writers and political activists in Thailand from the late 1960s to
1976.
Even the subtitle of his collection warns the reader of what is coming. He plays
with words, another key feature of Thai humor. Elegant words are altered ever so
slightly...rendering them ever so nasty. If you don't listen too closely, the sound of the
subtitle of "And So I Come in Search of Fedupness" sounds like, "Contemporary
Literature in Celebration of the Ratanakosin Era [i.e., the "Bangkok Era"] in Its 200th
Year." Which would be, "Wanakam r|uam sam«ay somph»oot krung
ratanakosin pii th»îi 200" / วรรณกรรมร่วมสมัยสมโภชน์กรุงรัตนโกสินทร์ปีที่ 200. But
that is not what it says. Phaibun has changed a consonant here, a vowel there so that
"Contemporary lies fornicating the grand ratanakosin in its 200th Year..." 6
Phaibun also rewrites the names of the writers in silly ways. His own brother,
Suchit Wongthet, becomes "Suchit Manth»eet" สุจิตต์ มันเทศ) "Suchit Potato."
Witthayakorn Chiangkul is renamed, with the syllables of his last name reversed from
Chiangkul to "Kunchiang," meaning "Chinese pork sausage." Perhaps the favorite parody
in the collection is the scandalous reinvention of a famous and beloved poem by his
Khun Thong goes to the forest"). "To the forest" is a code term for going off to join anti
government forces, particularly communist groups in the rural Northeast. But Phaibun's
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6The word wana-am , a made-up word meaning "lies," sounds almost exactly like
the word wanakam, which means "literature," while the word s«omph»aat, meaning
"fornication," sounds very much like the word "s«omph»oot," which means
"celebration."
7The official title of this poem is W|at ?˙y w|at b\oot / วัดเอ๋ยวัดโบสถ์ An
English translation entitled, "Oh! Temple , Temple of Bot!" appears in Phillips,
1987. 336-338. Another English translation by Savitri Suwansathit appears
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a scatalogical masterpiece that I admit I was embarrassed to translate, when a Thai
colleague asked me to do so. In the original poem, Khun Thong's confused but proud
parents figure prominently. In Phaibun's parody, they are replaced by flies in the
outhouse. At the end of the original poem, Khun Thong's mother and father are proud of
their son, now gone, now lost. In Phaibun's parodies, Khun Thong is gone, gone from the
outhouse, and only the flies remain, but they are proud of what they have witnessed.
On and on Paiboon writes, and rants, ridiculing his friends and making fun of the
most treasured essays, stories and poems of his generation. Works that were written with
passion during the one brief shining moment "s\îp-s\îi tulaa / สิบสี่ตุลา literally,
"the fourteenth of October" (1973), the day on which, following the initial horror of a
massacre, all dreams had seemed possible. But following the second massacre, on
October 6, 1976, all dreams seemed shattered, and the dreamers had scattered, from the
forests of Thailand to the frozen streets of Stockholm. Some languished in the prisons of
Bangkok. Their written works were banned. Phaibun's parodies kept them alive.
Chetana Nagavajara, a Thai literature scholar, has written, "Phaibun's parody
helped to keep them alive in an age hostile to them. To secure them their rightful place in
the Thai 'republic of letters' was not to present or represent them in their original form,
which [would have been] anathema to the establishment, but to translate them into
parody." Chetana once remarked to me (I don't think that these remarks have appeared
8
in print), "One reason Thais don't make good revolutionaries is because, when things get
very bad, someone always thinks of something ridiculous. Successful revolutionaries do
not have much of a sense of humor."
Phaibun Wongthet's response to oppression, violence, and tragedy has its roots in
a longstanding Thai literary tradition. Perhaps he did not change anything, with his
under the title, "The Saga of Khunthong," in the Thai P.E.N. Anthology: Short
stories and Poems of Social Consciousness, , 94-96.
8Chetana 1996, 252. Italics appear in the original text.
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parodies. But he survived, lived to write another day, gave hope to his friends, and made
them laugh when there was little to laugh about. It was some kind of a victory.
Sources
Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. and Ruchira Mendiones. In the Mirror:
Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era. Bangkok: Duang
Kamol, 1985.
Boonlua Thepyasuwan. Waen wanakam / / แว่นวรรณกรรม (Lens on literature). A
collection of essays on literature. Bangkok: Aan Thai, 1986.
Chetana Nagavajara. "Parody as Translation: A Thai Case Study." In Comparative
Literature from a Thai Perspective. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press,
1996.
Grow, Mary L. "Tarnishing the Golden Era: Aesthetics, Humor, and Politics in Lakhon
Chati DanceDrama." In State Power and Culture in Thailand, 4767. Edited by
E. Paul Durrenberger. New Haven: Monograph 44 / Yale Southeast Asia Series,
1996.
Kepner, Susan F. The Lioness in Bloom: Modern Thai Fiction about Women. Berkeley:
The University of California Press, 1996.
Morell, David and Chaianan Samudavanija. Political Conflict in Thailand: Reform,
Reaction, Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain,
Publishers, Inc., 1981.
Phillips, Herbert P. Modern Thai Literature: An Ethnographic Interpretation.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987.
Thai P.E.N. Anthology : Short Stories and Poems of Social Consciousness.
Bangkok: P.E.N. Internatonal Thailand Centre, 1984.
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หาความหงอย¬
(And so I come in search of fedupness). Bangkok: Ruan Kaew, 1982. (Note:
Chetana Nagavajara, cited above, indicates a later printing of this work by
Kampaeng Press, also in Bangkok, in 1988.)