BOOK REVIEW

The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Taylor
Roberts.

~~~~~

_Max Havelaar, or, The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company_. By
Multatuli. Translated from Dutch by Ina Rilke and David McKay. Introduction
by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. New York: New York Review Books, 2019. Pp. xiv +
357. Paperback, $17.95. ISBN 978-1-68137-262-4.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Taylor Roberts

Copyright (c) 2019 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

What well known nineteenth-century author shocked readers with
anti-imperialist writings against his own country? Members of the Mark
Twain Forum can answer that question quickly--but they are not likely to
name Dutch author Multatuli, pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–1887),
whose satiric writings on this subject were ahead of Samuel Clemens's
efforts by forty years.

Mark Twain enthusiast David McKay is co-translator of this new edition of
_Max Havelaar_--a genre-blending work first published in 1860 that
Niederlanders have long honoured as a classic--which combines satire,
autobiography, history, poetry, fable and metafiction. McKay was born and
educated in the United States, and has lived for over 20 years in the
Netherlands, where he is an award-winning translator who counts
_Connecticut Yankee_ and _Mysterious Stranger_ among his favourite writings
by Mark Twain.

The first English translation of _Max Havelaar_ appeared in 1868, and
although there is no indication that Samuel Clemens was aware of the book,
there are striking parallels between the themes of _Max Havelaar_ and some
of Mark Twain's writing. And while Mark Twain's frequent use of frame
narrators sometimes seems needlessly complicated, this style of
storytelling is taken even further in _Max Havelaar_.

The title character who is drawn from the author's own experience, is a
colonial government administrator in the Dutch East Indies (present-day
Indonesia) in the 1850s who objects to the appalling conditions imposed on
the indigenous residents of the tropical islands of Sumatra and Java--which
includes forced labour, loss of property, and famine--who endure forced
labour, loss of property and famine--in order to produce coffee, sugar and
cinnamon for the benefit of Holland. Intelligent and sensitive, Max
Havelaar is greatly bothered by having to swear an oath to protect his
subjects while being tacitly required to overlook the criminal actions of
his superiors and the native chiefs with whom they conspire. The
exploitation of helpless labourers typifies the hypocrisy of Western
imperialism for "the stately matron named Christendom" that Mark Twain
summarized well in "A salutation-speech from the Nineteenth Century to the
Twentieth."

The most satiric portions of _Max Havelaar_ are narrated by Batavus
Drystubble, a strictly-business Amsterdam coffee broker (hence the
subtitle, _The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company_). Drystubble
has received the writings of an old and poor acquaintance named Shawlman.
Drystubble reluctantly agrees to publish Shawlman's story about Max
Havelaar, but cannot resist providing his own dismissive comments on the
manuscript. Huck's first and last words in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_
question the veracity of Mark Twain's narration in _The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer_. The first words from narrator Drystubble reveal that he, too, will
question the truthfulness of the stories that Max Havelaar will tell about
oppression in Sumatra and Java:

"I am a coffee broker and . . . it is not my habit to write novels or
suchlike, so it was some time before I could bring myself to order a few
extra reams of paper and commence the work that you, dear reader, have just
taken up, which you must read if you're a coffee broker, or if you're
anything else. Not only have I never written anything resembling a novel,
but I don't even care to read the things, because I am a man of business.
For years I've wondered what could be the use of such stuff, and I'm amazed
at the shamelessness with which poets or novelists will dare to tell you
some tale that never happened, and in most cases never could. In _my_ line
of work . . . I could never furnish . . . a statement containing even the
smallest fraction of the untruths that make up the body of poems and
novels.  . . . _Truth and common sense_, I say, and I'll stick to it. For
Scripture I make an exception, of course" (7).

The best parts of _Max Havelaar_, the most Twainian parts, are narrated by
Drystubble the coffee broker as he comments to the reader on the manuscript
he has been asked to publish. Like Huck Finn, Drystubble does not recognize
the irony of his own words. Whereas Huck is innocent because of his youth,
Drystubble is middle aged and is more of a proto-Archie Bunker:

"What do I care about those faraway people.  . . . For as [Pastor] Waffler
has said, God ordains everything so that righteousness leads to riches.
'Look around you,' he said, 'isn't there a lot of wealth here in the
Netherlands? That's thanks to the true religion. Isn't France rife with
murder nowadays? That's because they're Roman Catholics. Aren't the
Javanese poor? That's because they're heathens. The longer the Dutch people
associate with the Javanese, the more wealth will come our way, and the
more poverty theirs. That's God's will!' I am impressed by Waffler's
insight into business. . . . Isn't this is a sign to follow the straight
and narrow? To keep up full production over there and persevere in the true
religion here?" (223–4).

Drystubble places such high value on truth that he cannot tolerate poetry:
"I have nothing against rhymes as such. If you want to regiment your words,
fine! But don't say things that aren't true" (9). When he discovers a
sentimental poem among Max Havelaar's writings, he begrudgingly consents to
his publisher's request to include it, with his preface: "Lies and
tomfoolery! I will refrain from offering my own comments, or my book will
be too long. All I will say here is that the poem was apparently composed
in 1843 or thereabouts, in the region of Padang, and Padang is not premium
grade. The coffee, I mean" (26). Twainians cannot help but think of Huck's
unknowingly ironic assessment of the literary talent of Emmeline
Grangerford, who "could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever
have to stop to think. . . .  [S]he would slap down a line, and if she
couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap
down another one, and go ahead."

Drystubble does not believe Max Havelaar's descriptions of forced, unpaid
labour in West Java, preferring instead to believe the account of another
former administrator (a more polished friend of his father-in-law), who has
recently returned with a different account of his posting there:

"The Resident and his wife were dear, generous people, who told us many
things about their way of life in the East. It must be an agreeable place
after all. They said their estate in Driebergen [Netherlands] was not half
the size of their 'grounds' in the interior of Java, where they'd needed a
staff of more than a hundred for upkeep. But--and this shows how beloved
they were--all those people worked for nothing, out of pure devotion" (261).

Earlier, Drystubble's pastor Waffler has preached a sermon, in florid
language worthy of the pastor in Mark Twain's "The War Prayer," asserting
that the Dutch forcing the Javanese to work is beneficent and brings them
closer to redemption: "God is a God of love! . . . that is why Holland has
been chosen to save what may be saved of those miserable souls! . . . Dutch
vessels sail the great seas and bring civilization, religion and
Christianity to the wayward Javanese!" (120). By Mark Twain's time and the
Philippine–American War, the language had not changed:

"The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines
are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will
not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our
opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of
our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world" (United
States Senator Albert Beveridge, 9 Jan 1900, qtd. in Zwick, _Mark Twain's
Weapons of Satire_, xviii).

The Twainian reader of Multatuli cannot help but compare two authors'
approaches to imperialism. Multatuli clearly conveys his outrage--asking
King William III, for example, if it is "your imperial will . . . that your
more than thirty million subjects out there be mistreated and exploited in
your name?" (289)--but his best satire is delivered through the unreliable
narrator Drystubble. Mark Twain makes similar criticisms with greater
artistry. (Multatuli, always a step ahead of his readers, anticipates the
criticism.) Although Mark Twain was not speaking directly to the
Philippine-American War while writing "The Chronicle of Young Satan"
(_Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts_), the official indifference to abuse in
the Dutch East Indies, and Multatuli's shocked reaction to it, brings to
mind the chilling concision of Mark Twain's Satan when he declares people
are "of no value." When Max Havelaar does not receive any official response
to his reports of abuse, he would have sympathized with Theodor's horror of
Satan who "destroys in cold blood a hundred helpless poor men and women who
had never done him any harm! It made us sick to see that awful deed. . . .
And we were witnesses; we could not get away from that thought; we had seen
these murders done and it was our duty to tell, and let the law take its
course. . . . we could hardly bear it, but he was as bland about it as if
it had been so many imitation rats in an artificial fire" (50).

_Max Havelaar_ ends with the author discarding the characters and
addressing readers directly. Kurt Vonnegut's best metafiction has nothing
on Multatuli.

Multatuli had indeed worked as a civil servant in the Dutch East Indies,
and so his alter ego is not only Max Havelaar, but also Shawlman (the
character who wrote and sent the manuscript to Drystubble). Shawlman's
writings are presented via an omniscient narrator named Stern, a young
apprentice who Drystubble has hired in order to please Stern's parents,
whose firm is one of his good customers. Fortunately, these changes of
narrative voices are handled with humour, such as when Drystubble
periodically interrupts the story to assure us that he (Drystubble) will
return to write a few more chapters about what we are really interested
in—coffee--and that we can just skip the boring chapters written by Stern.

An excellent 1976 film adaptation of the novel (none of Mark Twain's full
length works have received one as good), with Rutger Hauer in a minor role,
wisely simplifies the confusion by removing intermediate narrators
altogether. However, whereas the bigoted narrator Drystubble is the star of
the book, he takes only a minor role in the film, and so the book is richly
ironic in a way that the film is not. But even the film contains a Twainian
touch in one scene when the family of Max Havelaar dines on canned
cauliflower--a la Colonel Sellers, who feasts on raw turnips--because the
idealistic Max has given all of his money to people he feels need it more,
including even the corrupt chiefs.

As if the original book did not have enough layers of narration, another
was introduced in 1881 when Multatuli added sixty pages of comments and
endnotes to the text, most of which appear in this translation. These
endnotes especially show that the author became embittered as he aged, much
as would Mark Twain. Multatuli explains that he had not wanted to write
_Max Havelaar_, but only did so after his private entreaties to superiors
were ignored. In 1860 he had been optimistic that his book would effect
change in the Dutch East Indies when, suddenly facing negative publicity,
ministers of government feigned indignation and passed new laws against
abuse. With the added experience of twenty years since the original
publication, Multatuli realized there had not been anything wrong with the
existing laws, other than that they were not enforced by the officials who
had been sworn to uphold them. He could also report dishearteningly that it
made no difference whether the government was conservative or liberal, and
that the public always remained gullible--a story that, a century and a
half later, sounds familiar to more than just Twainians.

A jacket blurb appearing on this 2019 translation repeats D. H. Lawrence's
assertion in 1927 that Mark Twain and Multatuli shared the dynamic force of
'hate'--which may reveal only that Lawrence did not understand the two
authors as we do today. The better descriptor is that the two satirists
shared anger at politicians who are skilled at disguising their own hate in
order to feed their greed. Despite a satiric talent comparable to Mark
Twain, Multatuli seems to wield it without pleasure when he asks: "Why must
outrage and sorrow so often wrap themselves in the motley cloak of satire?"
(208). His question contrasts sharply against Mark Twain's better known
affirmation, "Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand."

An essay by the late Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer that
appeared in the _New York Times_ in 1999 as "The Book That Killed
Colonialism" is reprinted here as the introduction, and succinctly places
the novel in historical context, describing two centuries of colonization
by the Netherlands, mainly for spices. Pramoedya argues that _Max Havelaar_
and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ shared similar fates, falling from popularity once
the government addressed the problems they criticized. Multatuli mentions
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel several times, and he clearly hoped that _Max
Havelaar_ would have the same positive social effect in the Dutch East
Indies that Stowe's novel would have in the United States.

Although it is arguable whether either novel truly had such direct results
as their readers would like to believe, modern admirers of Mark Twain's
opposition to Western imperialism will find much to enjoy in _Max
Havelaar_, and will surely wonder if indeed Mark Twain ever owned a copy
that has not surfaced. This translation is easy to read. The only potential
confusion likely to be caused is by the multiple layers of narration, but
not by the language itself. Because the Dutch original had a modern style
and tone for its time, the translators have succeeded well in delivering an
experience as close to the original as an English speaker can hope to have.
This edition also contains a glossary of titles and foreign words in Malay
(351–5) and a chronology of the author (356–7). Readers may wish that a map
with both colonial and modern place names had been included, since they
pervade the story.

This attractive and accessible new translation of _Max Havelaar_ is highly
recommended to lovers of satire.

Multatuli predicted correctly that the Netherlands would lose its East
Indian possessions because of rebellions against its rule, though many more
years would pass before Indonesia would achieve independence (to say
nothing of its later political instability). When considering the brief
lives of so many people in Sumatra and Java as described by Multatuli, Susy
Clemens's question as a child sadly comes to mind: "What does the world go
on, for?"