january-2011

PHOTO MANDY TAY
W RITE THIS WAY
A novel city
Noelle de Jesus talks to three
international authors about Hong Kong,
their favorite spots, and living and writing
in this one-of-a-kind metropolis
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CHARLES DICKENS HAD London.
James Joyce had Dublin. Henry
James and Edith Wharton had New
York. And for a time, both Hemingway
and Gertrude Stein had the moveable
feast that is Paris. For generations,
writers have mined the riches of
the great cities in which they lived,
gathering grist and texture, taking in
the light and shadows, the air and
atmosphere, and in so doing, capturing
on the page the concrete vistas and
edifi ces that formed the landscape
of their stories. In those days, writers
wrote in garrets, often laboring in
obscurity as well as relative poverty.
Not so these days. Now, in nearly
every city in the world, there are
novelists. Practically everybody, his
brother and his sister is “working on a
novel” or working on “turning their blog
into a novel” or joined the Nanowrimo
(National Novel Writing Month), the 30day
online novel writing project held
annually in November.
And while we all know by now that
writers need not stick with the story of
their lives, they may well stick to the
city they live in, or the cities they’ve
traveled to. Because as any traveler
will tell you, a city makes a compelling
character, offering within its corners and
neighborhoods, endless stories, all of
them fascinating.
Smile visited with novelists Timothy
Mo, Janice YK Lee and Matthew
Harrison in Hong Kong, and learned
how the city inspires them to write
and live.