Through the generosity of the late Professor Benedict Anderson and Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, the Thammasat University Library has newly acquired some important book of interest for students of history, political science, literature, and related fields.

They are part of a special bequest of over 2800 books from the personal scholarly library of Professor Benedict Anderson at Cornell University, in addition to the previous donation of books from the library of Professor Anderson at his home in Bangkok. These newly available items will be on the TU Library shelves for the benefit of our students and ajarns. They are shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.

In addition to many essential texts on history, sociology, and related fields, there are also a considerable number of books of literature, including popular literature such as mystery novels, thrillers, and detective stories. These books are by recognized authors such as Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Joseph Hansen, Tony Hillerman, Eric Ambler, Elmore Leonard, and others.

All of these writers have received serious critical attention by academic researchers. Theses and academic research projects have been devoted to their works. In addition to the quality of the writing, these books have value for TU students because they help us remember that English is a living literary language.

If we only read English as a foreign language in academic research projects and professional journals, we will rarely get an idea of how to write clearly and with confidence.

Naturally, when we write our own thesis or academic research project, we will want to use a more formal style in English than is found in a thriller or detective novel. But it will be helpful to keep in mind the energetic way of writing that adventure writers use, when we write about our research.

Part of the challenge of writing an abstract and thesis is to encourage readers to share our own excitement about our research discoveries. If we read books that are meant to be intriguing, then we may get an idea about how to capture the attention of our readers. If we write an abstract in a way that suggests that our thesis is interesting, then more people will want to read it.

Among these writers shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library is Arthur William Upfield (1890–1964), an English/Australian novelist who spent his career in Australia. Upfield wrote a series of books of detective fiction featuring the main character, Detective Inspector Napoleon “Bony” Bonaparte of the Queensland Police Service.

The family of Detective Inspector Bonaparte is partly of Aboriginal origin. The term Aborigine is used to describe native inhabitants of Australia. The word derives from a Latin term meaning original inhabitants.

The TU Library owns a number of books about Aborigines.

The book Arthur W. Upfield: Life and Times of Bony’s Man by A. J. Milnor (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) explains that Upfield was born in the United Kingdom, but moved to Australia to live and work:

Arthur William Upfield was an immigrant; and like many immigrants everywhere, he experienced difficulties settling, city, to farm, to country, to city. And as for so many immigrants, he was divided between new land and home, but home as remembered and not experienced as it daily changed. To some extent all immigrants are frozen in one time and traveling in another, caught in the memory of home when they left and unable to experience its ordinary evolution. They are racing to catch up with their new country, inhibited by their own different past, and set apart from novelty, new culture and experience, by missing the new world’s past. Not until generations on are languages forgotten and gained, accents lost and new learned, cultures forgotten and found, worlds rebuilt. So it was for Arthur W. Upfield…  Bony lived on and still does, in print in many languages, in many printings, in many copies. His creation has achieved high status, the rival of Sherlock Holmes, and, even higher, great praise and severe beatings in academic journals. Few fictional characters from Queensland (and far fewer bi-racial detectives) have ever received such attention. If one were to search for a reason to read about Arthur Upfield, his creation should be incentive enough. A bi-racial when race world-wide was a significant social factor; a bi-racial with extensive educational credentials when bi-racial graduates were few and far between in the “white” world; and a bi-racial policeman in a world where the law was both “white” and European. Arthur Upfield overcame these imposed obstacles on his detective by the sheer brilliance of his reported landscapes, the imaginative stories, and the characters.

As Professor Milnor suggests, by reading books by Upfield, we find enjoyment, but we also learn about attitudes and aspects of life in Australia at the time the novels are set:

The books were designed to be entertaining, but a good read should do more than that. Upfield saw himself as a story teller but in that tradition story tellers do more than entertain; they also teach and in the books and articles he sought another lesson, his oft stated desire to have the reader come away with a little more than when he or she began, imagination stimulated by a journey into another world no less real than the reader’s own. The minor characters, those likened to gum trees, are small parts of the large picture of Australia Proper and give the reader a sense of the price and gifts of life in an unique part of the world. A small town completely surrounded by many thousands of broken bottles must be rare in any literature, yet the rationality of that irrationality – too far and too expensive to ship bottles back – gives the reader at least two more realities of Bush life, drink and distance.  Arthur Upfield’s efforts to teach did not end with international entertainment set in an unique locale, or with Gentle Reader learning a bit while reclining for a comfortable read. Two topics dominated his 1920s and 1930s articles and were often reflected in his books. The first was the effect of racial discrimination, particularly against the bi-racial community often found in urban areas. He wrote about the loss to the country of their talents, referring specifically to bi-racials whom he had known as (self) educated individuals able to perform at a higher level than many if not most of their European contacts. He frequently addressed the unique contributions Aboriginal culture could make to the world, if the world would only listen, a culture he believed was based on peace, law and, above all, honor, the latter two essential to the former, and all three essential to survival on a continent not totally suited to human habitation…

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)