The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

REVIEWS 393
progressiste' and the 'genre realiste'). The mania for classification, often
pushed to extremes by the French, becomes totally meaningless, especially
as, having decided on his labels, Peltier does nothing with them, but
promptly dives off into thumb-nail summaries of the main novelists, who
for him are Prince Akat Damkoeung, Dorkmai Sod, Kukrit Pramoj, Bunlua,
K. Surang Khanang, and Botan. Not everyone will agree with this selection,
and Botan's claim to attention rests mainly on one novel only which
was penetratingly reviewed in these pages a couple of years back by
Napa Pongpipat. A curious fact about Peltier's article is that it takes
almost no account of the literary milieu-as opposed to genre-and this
would seem to us to be important: the atmosphere of literary cliques and
hatreds, the wealth of recent critical comment, is completely ignored.
Sataree Chitanonda, writing in what passes for English, appropriately
examines 'M.R. Kukrit and his literary work', though in the summer
of 1973 it could hardly have been foreseen be would have become the
Prime Minister within two years. Miss Sataree's contribution to
scholarship is minimal; she does not know the difference between a
printing and a publication of a book and only skims the surface of the
volumes she mentions; she misnames Unger, who becomes Unker, speaks
of Kukrit as a 'columnist' which is an unhappy slip, gives different
transliterations for the same word from one line to the next, and bas
such perceptive comments as 'The novel' (Huan Nang) 'is regarded as
one of the good novels' and 'Among our living writes (sic), be (Kukrit) is
highly esteemed by his contemporary writers ... His choice of some (sic)
interesting themes suchas (sic) Thai ancient customs (sic) and traditions
inspire (sic) some (sic) novelists to produce the some (sic) type of
novels'. All this is very unfortunate, for a critical evaluation of Kukrit's
work would be very apposite. Even an analysis of Red Bamboo in comparison
with Gallico and what Kukrit makes of his material would have
critical value, and a general study of his source material would be most
interesting. However, this is not to be here.
The two contributors dealing with Lao literature, Saveng Phinith,
giving a broad survey of whole field, particularly the Vientiane scene,
and P. B. Lafont dealing with 'La Litterature Politi que Lao', being very
largely the work of the Front Patriotique Lao, between them put their