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  • A Certain Age: Colonial Jakarta Through the Memories of its Intellectuals
  • Teresa Bergen, Independent Scholar
A Certain Age: Colonial Jakarta Through the Memories of its Intellectuals. By Rudolf Mrazek . Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. 310 pp. Hardbound, $84.95; Softbound, $23.95.

Much of this book is lovely, especially the voices of the elderly Indonesians recalling the earlier periods of their history. The narrators are of an age where they remember Dutch colonialism, Japanese occupation, a nationalist revolt that brought bloody clashes between Sukarno and communists, and then the Suharto regime. All that together with Java itself, a tropical island with its own long, distinct culture, and there is plenty to remember.

Author Rudolf Mrazek teaches history at the University of Michigan. He spent every university vacation from 1990-2000 in Jakarta, interviewing elderly people who had been educated in the Dutch times (1815-ca. 1920). These intellectuals made up only 0.5 percent of the colony's population, but had a big effect on ushering in new ideas, including the rising nationalism.

What is most striking about this book is its style and organization. Mrazek makes very unusual decisions for a history book. He provides only brief historical context and avoids biographical introductions when narrators speak. Having a good knowledge of Indonesian history before reading this book would help. [End Page 118]

A Certain Age is divided into five sections: "Bypasses and Flyovers," "The Walls," "The Fences," "The Classroom," and "The Window." Each section is an extended metaphor, combining chunks of interviews, Mrazek's narration, excerpts from his notebook, and a tremendous number of quotes from mostly European architects and philosophers. The subtitle "Colonial Jakarta through the Memories of its Intellectuals" could just as easily be "through the Metaphors of Rudolf Mrazek."

This approach focuses extreme attention on the author, often overshadowing the narrators. The reader might find herself confused—why is this writer, who is so obviously anticolonial, constantly using quotations from Europeans to interpret these Indonesians? The reader will only find the answer in the footnotes. One explains, "The Westerners were not invited to 'speak for the silent'; they fell in (and sometimes with a thump), and they remained in the book by the force of their fragility, their will or inability to resist their temptation to join in, their affliction with the modern, and the constant fear of homelessness in their own metropolises, just a step aside, behind, or ahead of that in the colony. They are here as the other urban intellectuals of the book" (235).

Most of the book is written in this kind of breathless, circuitous, and dramatic style, even when talking about ordinary things. It reads like Mrazek is trying to set things down just right to make sense of it all himself. Whether the reader understands is of secondary importance, as further evidenced by his regret in another footnote that his editor would not allow him to print what people said in their original Indonesian, Dutch, French, German, and Czech, rather than translating it all into English.

For all the confusion a reader might feel, many moments are successful in a poetic way. And the interviews beautifully evoke childhood and school days in the colony. The chapter called "The Walls" captures the fluidity of Indonesians by considering how they lived in their houses. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Professor Selo Soemardjan recalling his childhood in a house without partitions:

Soemardjan:

I might have my own place, my own sleeping mat, but, in fact, I always chose whatever mat I wished. There were many sleeping mats, for every family member, and each time we went to sleep we just took one and spread it out, here or here, or wherever we liked.

RM:

As you wished?

Soemardjan:

Yes. I might like to sleep with my cousin or brother, or whoever: "Let's go and sleep." And he takes a mat and I take a mat and we go.

RM:

So, what some might call privacy—there was none; because you were a family?

Soemardjan:

There was no privacy. There was no privacy.

(38) [End Page 119]

The classroom chapter delves into the intricacies of schooling based...

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