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John McGlynn is a man who follows his passions. His love of Indonesian language and culture took him to Jakarta and eventually led him to establish the renowned Lontar Foundation in 1987. Through this foundation he translates the country’s literature into English.

But this wasn’t always his dream. The US native initially aimed to become a puppeteer.

“I was in art school and studied fine arts and theater,” McGlynn said. “I learned about shadow puppets and started making American shadow puppets with Western characters. But I had no idea how to operate them, so I sought out a dalang [Indonesian puppet master] who was living in the United States at the time and studied with him. I liked it, so I decided to go to Indonesia. But in order to prepare myself better, I started to study Southeast Asian Studies.”

After graduation, McGlynn headed to Malang, East Java, for three months, then moved to Jakarta to study Indonesian at the University of Indonesia.

That was back in 1976, and McGlynn vividly remembers how different Indonesia’s capital was at that time.

“Jalan Sudirman had only two tall buildings on it back then,” he said, laughing. “I lived in a kost [boarding house] in Pasar Minggu, which was still just a forest back then, with a small two-lane road that took me to UI, which was still located in Rawamangun in East Jakarta then. There were no taxis, so once you were home at night, you didn’t go anywhere else. It was really quiet.”

McGlynn soon befriended a number of Indonesian writers, as well as artists he met during his many visits to cultural performances at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Central Jakarta.

“People started asking for my help to translate, and I began to like it,” McGlynn said. “After I stopped going to school at UI, I supported myself as a translator — anything at the time, bank reports, all this terrible and boring stuff.”

He soon found work at a quarterly journal, “The Indonesian Economy,” which paid the bills and convinced him there was a need for translation.

However, it wasn’t exactly his dream job.

“After five years of doing that and helping my artist friends on the side, including subtitling films, I thought, ‘OK, I gotta make a choice here,’ ” McGlynn said. “So I decided to focus on Indonesian literature.”

That’s when the idea of Lontar was born. McGlynn set it up with the help of four Indonesian writers, including Sapardi Djoko Damono and Goenawan Mohamad.

In the early years, McGlynn ran the foundation as a one-man-show. “[The office] was in my house, in my spare bedroom. We had absolutely no funding,” he said.

After a while, grants and donations came in and Lontar started to make a name for itself. Now, every major institution around the world that teaches Indonesian language and literature orders books from Lontar, McGlynn said.

But that doesn’t mean life has become any easier.

“I am functioning with too many hats on my head right now,” he said. “I had intended to be, by this point, just the chairman of the board of trustees, and I hoped the foundation would be on its own. That didn’t happen. Because of the economic crisis last year some our donors canceled their grants, so, well, we’ve been through a hell of a year.”

Despite this, the coming year is set to be a big one for the foundation.

“[The upcoming] ‘Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Drama’ is the first work ever in English with collected plays from Indonesia,” McGlynn said. “It covers 35 plays from the 20th century. We’re also working on the ‘Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Poetry,’ which will hopefully come out next year, and then the ‘Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Short Stories,’ so we will have everything covered.”

Another project is the first book in a series called the “Modern Library of Indonesia,” a translation of the 1929 novel “Salah Asuhan,” by Abdoel Moeis, which will be published under the English title “Never the Twain.”

“For this series, we will bring out some of our older books, and we have 50 or more lined up for the next three years,” McGlynn said.

“Menagerie7,” a collection of stories and essays by Indonesian writers, will be the seventh book in the series. “This one is also the first one to feature translations of gay literature from Indonesia,” McGlynn said.

This might be the beginning of a change for Lontar Foundation, because, as McGlynn put it, “it is time for a new generation.”

He said that while there had been some criticism that Lontar focused too much on classic literature instead of contemporary work, he said it was important to cover both.

“We’re going to do more [contemporary translations] in the future, but at the same time still try to keep the balance. Our goal is to make sure that universities around the world can teach Indonesian literature in translation,” McGlynn said. “You can’t teach it if you don’t have the classics.”

While McGlynn has dedicated his life to promoting Indonesian literature abroad, he said he often felt his success was limited by the high cost of sending books from Indonesia to other countries. But new technology is changing this.

“With print on demand technology, we can upload our files to a company in the United States that works with Amazon,” McGlynn said. “When you order one copy, they’ll print one copy. So it will be printed in the United States, shipped out within three days of the order. We do the same thing in Europe and Australia.”

He acknowledged that interest in Indonesian literature abroad was still very limited. “Pramoedya [Ananta Toer] was the only author who was known abroad,” McGlynn said. “But even though he’s been translated into over 30 languages, publishers have never made any money [with his novels]. I arranged a tour for him in the United States, he was interviewed by every major newspaper, he was on television, but sales did not go up. A number of literary agents I have talked to said give me a young, pretty, talented woman. They want the next Arundhati Roy.”

It also doesn’t help that Indonesians themselves aren’t prolific readers.

“A normal print run [of a novel in Indonesia] is 5,000 copies,” McGlynn said. “In a country with 250 million people, that’s ridiculous.”

“People ask me, why don’t people abroad read Indonesian literature?” he said. “And I say, ‘Hey, if you don’t read it, if Indonesia doesn’t care for it, why do you expect us to?’ ”

But despite everything, McGlynn remains just as passionate as he was when he first landed in Indonesia.

“Perhaps because I don’t have my own children, I’ve been able to devote all my energy to this,” McGlynn said. “I see those books as my children. And you never give up on your children.”
Lontar Foundation

Jl. Danau Laut Tawar No. 53,

Pejompongan,

Central Jakarta

Tel: 021 574 6880