36 Views: A Play

By Naomi Iizuka
On my current visit to my birth town, Bandung I happened to visit the newly opened QB World Books who just had its soft launched the day before. I can see that Richard Oh (once upon a time I used to work for this literary man as well as novelist) the owner of these chain of book stores is really spreading his wings with a bunch of new outlets.

Browsing around looking at the still half empty shelves around the store I found this book with an interesting cover on the Play and Poetry section. 36 Views is a play where the plots at heart are about combining East and West, represented by an Art Dealer and an Oriental Art Historian. It explores the meaning of beauty in art as well in life itself. The hidden value in the work of art and what it represent economically and whether originality and truth carry the same emotional value in real life relationship between people.

The dialog is full of pillow talk poetry of ancient time mixed with urban punk rhetoric and cynicism on modern realism about work acknowledgment, achievement, eroticism and the game of human heart on greed, love and passive aggressive mental game.

Related Link
The Great Wave from 36 Views of Mount Fuji by Japan's greatest artist Hokusai