Inspiration for
Gus:
The Life & Opinions of the Last Raffles’ Banded Langur

Gaia

The novel is inspired by, and grieves for, the adverse impact of human development upon nature. The world faces existential crises — the climate crisis and declining biodiversity — all due to the impact of unfettered greed and human development. The biggest disaster in our history was when humans forgot we are part of nature. We forgot how interconnected humans are with each other and with nature.

The novel shows how people and animals behave as the world falls apart. The novel explores how our only future is together, finding new forms of kinship — beyond inherited genetics, race, religion, corporations and countries — in care and shared experience.

Books & Stories

The novel is also inspired by asking what it is like to be another species.

I read JM Coetzee and Barbara Smuts, Thomas Nagel’s paper on What is it Like to Be a Bat?, William Olsen’s poem A Fallen Bat, Philip Larkin’s The Mower, Kij Johnson’s 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss and The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change, Gerry Alanguilan‘s Elmer, and a wonderful Australian novel about communication between species sparked by a pandemic, Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals in That Country.

I also read plenty of dystopian novels — we were in the middle of a pandemic after all — such as Severance, Station Eleven, Day of the Triffids, Zone One, Children of Men and The Road.

Music, Movies & TV Shows

I listened to and watched The Kinks and The Monkees and The Goodies on Top of the Pops.

And I re-watched The Omega Man and Planet of the Apes, reassuring myself that my heroes would be anti-Charlton Heston post-apocalyptic heroes.

You can find Gus’s Spotify playlist here.

Paintings

Another inspiration for the novel is the 1988 painting Fear of Monkeys/Evolution by David Wojnarowicz created at the height of the AIDs crisis which touches on mortality and the abuse of the natural world by man. Goya’s Saturn was another painting I returned to when I thought about man’s relationship with nature.

There is also a lot of Charlie, Juliette & Gus in Picasso’s Family of Acrobats with a Monkey from his Pink Period.

The Rail Corridor

In Singapore, we are taught to be functional, utilitarian and pragmatic and to see ourselves isolated from, rather than entangled with, nature. Nature is our tool, a means to human ends of profit and recreation. I think we need to remember we are one with nature and that we’re communicating with nature all the time. I think we need to remember how inter-connected we are with nature, that we are one with the planet, and that only empathy, grace and kindness with all living things make life worth living.

I walked and cycled a lot along the Rail Corridor and asked myself what all the living things would say if they could speak.

Raffles’ Banded Langurs

These critically endangered primates provided a unique, mischievous inspiration. Find out more about these primates here at my Raffles’ banded langur page.

Read an Excerpt from Gus

Listen to Jon talk about Gus