Bali Echo Visitor's Guide

On the Edge of a Dream: Magic and Madness in Bali.
by Michael Wiese.
Michael Wiese Productions.
California 1995.

The Edge Of Bali
by Inez Baranay
Collins Angus & Robertson Publisher.
Australia 1992.

Two novels set in Bali for review - both featuring 'edge' in their titles. What is this fascination with edges? Things one generally falls off or bangs into. And indeed it would seem many of the characters in these stories are off the edge or hanging on the edge of either society or sanity. If this is the case one wonders if given any say in the matter perhaps the Balinese might prefer them to stay at home with their edginess rather than seaking some cathartic experience here. But that aside, people have been coming to Bali in search of something for decades now, and the temptation to write a novel depicting this complex interaction between West and East remains strong. So how do Mr. Wiese and Ms. Baranay set about this task, and how successful are they?

On The Edge Of a Dream follows the adventures of Nick, the draft-dodging narrator, and his friend Eddie, an erstwhile theology student. They try, with spectacular lack of success to 'find themselves' in Bali at the same time trying to preserve the innocent Balinese from the onslaught of tourism and its resulting western evils - "..... polution, prostitution, disease and the ultimate loss of this culture" caused by thousands more Nick and Eddies. It culminates with Nick's unlikely ascent of Mount Agung on LSD and Eddie's inevitable descent into madness. At which point this readers and presumably the long - suffering villagers of Sindhu can breathe a hearty sigh of relief as Eddie's well-heeled pop wires money and our two heroes get on a plane and flee.

Nick and Eddie assure us throughout that they are travellers, not, I repeat not, tourists. "There are already 10.000 tourists a year and that's 9,998 too many for me," laments Nick. They bring little beyond the essentials, two shirts, camera, cassette player and rock 'n' Roll tapes — but this deceptive simplicity is amply compensated by their hefty load of cultural baggage.

Determined to leave the 'impure' Kuta area and find that much sought after 'real' Bali, Nick and Eddie head for Sindhu, a painters' village where no westerners have set foot for 30 years (bar the ubiquitous Walter Spies). Here they live as the villagers, apart from the odd trip to Denpasar for hamburgers and coke, Nick tries to paint and learn gamelan. Eddie, being of an even more culturally sensitive bent steals a rangda mask from a temple, tries every magic charm in the book to short cut his way either into bed with a Balinese beauty or into a state of trance and even kidnaps some westerners in his futile attempts to stop tourism.