Volume 46, Number 10 · June 10, 1999
The Man Who Would Be King
By Ian Buruma
The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew
by Lee Kuan Yew
Prentice Hall, 680 pp., $29.99
Can Asians Think?
by Kishore Mahbubani
Singapore: Times Editions, 192 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Not a Singapore story, but the Singapore story: it is a bit grandiose to identify one's life story with that of one's country, but in Lee Kuan Yew's case perhaps not entirely unjustified. Singapore existed as a place before Lee, but the Singapore we know today was shaped to a remarkable extent in his image. The former prime minister's 'earliest and most vivid' childhood memory seems peculiarly apt, given the nature of his later enterprise. Young Harry Lee (as he was called until he began using his Chinese name to please the ethnic Chinese voters) was dragged off by his father and suspended over a well by his ears. This punishment was for having messed with Lee senior's jar of favorite brilliantine. It was a wonder that Harry's ears weren't torn off. The experience stayed with him forever, which was a source of puzzlement to him, for he was a man who took pride in being rugged. But, then, in the 1970s, he found the answer, in Scientific American no less. He learned that 'pain and shock released neuropeptides in the brain, stamping the new experience into the brain cells thus ensuring that the experience would be remembered for a long time afterwards.'
Review, 5966 words
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