John McGlynn grew up on a farm in Cazenovia, Wisconsin, a tiny town with a population of 300 and falling. After graduating from high school in 1970, he enrolled in the theater arts program at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where he saw his first wayang kulit puppets which one of his design teachers had picked up on a trip to Southeast Asia. It was love at first sight, and John began to produce his own wayang for an imaginary Western-style shadow theater. In 1976, his involvement with Indonesia deepened further when he won a scholarship to an Indonesian language study program in Malang. John co-founded the Lontar Foundation in 1987, the only publisher in the world to have as its primary goal the promotion of Indonesian literature in translation. John has since worked as an editor or translator of more than 100 books, establishing himself as a zealous proponent of Indonesian literature on the international scene.
How did you first become interested in Indonesian literature?
In the 1970s and 1980s, virtually the only articles to appear in the international press about Indonesia were generally about the nation’s dismal human rights record or the pervasive corruption that riddled the country’s political and judicial systems. These were stories that needed to be told, but they were not balanced by any information of a more positive nature. From my studies of other cultures in college, I had come to firmly believe that the only way to truly learn about another country is through its literature and, having come to enjoy translating—after having foregone my plan of being a puppeteer—I came up with the idea of starting an organization devoted to introducing Indonesia to the world through literary translations.
What is it difficult in the beginning?
Formal establishment of Lontar was easy but making a go of it was, and continues to be, a much greater challenge. For the first four years of its existence, from 1987 to 1991, Lontar’s “office” was my spare bedroom and I was its entire staff—and an unpaid staff member at that! Lontar’s first publication, Suddenly the Night, a collection of poetry by Sapardi Djoko Damono, was made possible with a grant from the Jaya Raya Foundation. Our second, Shackles, a translation of the novel Belenggu by Armijn Pane, was published with financial assistance from Mohamad Hasan. Finally, by the time we were ready to publish our third and fourth books, the novel The Weaverbirds by Y.B. Mangunwijaya and On Foreign Shores, a collection of poetry by Indonesian poets about the United States, I had begun to get the hang of successful proposal writing—the art of separating potential sponsors from their cash—and the situation improved somewhat after that.
How was it breaking into Jakarta’s publishing scene?
When Lontar was established in the late 1980s, there was no English-language publishing scene per se. About the only books being produced about Indonesia in English were travel books, which were being published in Singapore. Gradually, more and more coffee table books on Indonesia began to appear—ones devoted primarily to architecture, interior design, and landscape —but most of these were also produced in Singapore and imported to Indonesia. Possibly for that reason, because Lontar was the first English-language literary publisher on the block, the organization initially received a great deal of positive media attention. Attention doesn’t necessarily translate to income, however, and the road to making Lontar a sustainable force in Indonesian publishing remains a rocky one to this day. While I had always suspected this would be the case I had no idea of how truly difficult it would be.
How do you find your writers?
Over the years Lontar has published works by more than 250 writers, both Indonesian and foreign, but Lontar didn’t have to “find” almost any of them. While we welcome the submission of original manuscripts, because Lontar focuses on the publication of translations, it is, in fact, the Indonesian public who determines which authors we publish. If funds are available for publishing the translation of a new work by an unknown writer, we certainly would consider publishing it, but our focus is on “classic” texts, ones that have withstood the test of time and have been deemed by Indonesian readers to be works of note.
That said, in choosing what titles to release, we also take into account the views of foreign scholars—the people who actually teach Indonesian language and literature abroad and will use our books in their classes. Some books, even if somewhat short on literary artistry, might very well reveal aspects of Indonesian culture that are not found in more popular publications. We don’t want to produce books that are just a “good read.” We want books that illuminate knowledge of Indonesia.
What about your personal future plans?
Outside the Foundation, during the past two years I have served as a consultant to the World Bank, working on a plan to integrate arts and culture into the country’s development planning process—a concept that recently found support from the Indonesian government’s National Program for Community Empowerment. The idea behind this program is that culture, more than anything else, is what unifies a community; that culture is what defines a nation. Building roads and bridges is fine but if culture is not given a commensurate level of support, the roads and bridges that are built will only serve as a faster means for members of a particular community to leave the place they were raised.
Didn’t you leave the place where you were raised?
Exactly my point! It was almost inevitable that I left. My home town didn’t offer enough space for alternative or creative expression. At the same time, part of my heart is still there which is why, perhaps, I have struggled so hard to maintain Lontar’s existence. Lontar is building the bridges—the books it has produced—that will enable the people of my hometown, especially my family, to be able to visit me, if only on the written page.
John will be speaking on the role of translation in bridging cultural divides at the next Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in October of this year.
For anyone interested in being considered for Siapa, please contact: <pakbill2003@yahoo.com>
