Archives

From book to text

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

This year's state literary festival already displays signs of grandeur. The new Minister of cultural affairs has appropriately named it 'national literary festival of Sri Lanka."

With new regime's desire to portray the 'cultural renaissance' that it sets out to bring about, coupled with the energetic young minister's idealism propelled by well-known organizing skills of JVP, the festival will no doubt be outstanding in its visibility and display.

Any peaceful festival is great; it can bring people into public space. The more they spend time in the public space the more they realize the need of making that space more democratic, peaceful and dialogic. More festivals make democracy stronger.

Glamour and grandeur alone, however, cannot generate deeper interests and enthusiasm for literature in the public. Book launching ceremonies, book exhibitions and the like have become routine activities of urban middle class life in Sri Lanka.

As forms of public life, they also are very important. But what is missing in those festivities is a sense of seriousness about writing, reading and the very idea of literature. In most of the book launchings that I had been aware of, literature itself is nothing more than the other objects that are required for the function. Thus, functionally, literature is almost like chairs and tables of the hall where the festival is held.

Therefore, in those festivals book is more dominant than text.

In Roland Barthesian terms, we might say that the book is held in hand while the text is held in language. Anybody can hold a book in his or her hand. But the text demands reading. Without reading the text is 'asleep' in side of the well-covered bed book.

An active and able reader has to engage with the book to wake up its text/s. This wonderfully energetic and humanly engagement is called reading. Some journalistic book reviews in Sri Lanka lead me to conclude that even many of our critics are not readers of texts but holders of books.

Book fair

It is said that millions of rupees were generated in BMICH by selling books during the international book fair. This success story was repeated for three years already. But a little was said of the texts that were sleeping within those books. How many books of last year did indeed have texts within them? How many of those texts did really wake up waking the readers up along with them? How many of those books had texts, which could be called literary? How of them were computer handbooks? How many of those were guide books to pass exams?

In this age of print capitalism, to borrow Benedict Anderson's ingenious term, a book is, first of all, an object to sell and to buy. Since we are already in the late print capitalism, a book is not only priced but also sexed. (Forgive my jargon). This book with sexiness and a price makes the potential reader into an infatuated buyer.

Any good book, even Jataka Pot Vahanse, cannot escape this fate. Even Noam Chomsky, who is, according to some, the most important intellectual alive and who is the biggest intellectual challenge to Bush-Cheney's corporate America, cannot keep his books from being subjected to this law of the market.

Moreover, Chomsky himself knows quite well that a large part of his readership will vote for George Bush in November. Thus, the effect of the most progressive ideas written in books is always ambivalent and uncertain. This is particularly the case with literature. Post-structuralism has taught us that the effect of literature cannot be fully trusted. It is only a possibility.

Multiplicity of meaning

In the book market, a work of literature is only one among many books.

A book of fiction, only single genre of literature, however, is most likely to have a richer text in it.

A work of fiction, by its very nature, is provocative of multiple readings. This multiplicity of meanings stems from the special way in which, the language is used in literature. That is very much a part of literariness.

Even the most naturalist realist novel resists monolithic, determinate interpretations i.e. readings. Yet, contemporary Sri Lankan criticism, both in English and Sinhala, attests to the fact that critics, ideally the closest readers of texts, are not willing to engage with literary works in such a way that leads to the creation of texts.

Mere attacks on literary realism by critics like Tenyson Perera and Saman Wickramaarachchi, can only harm already fragile Sinhala literature unless those attacks are accompanied by laboriously meticulous readings of the books they are reviewing.

Books, to repeat myself, have to be turned into texts. As Dr. Sarath Amunugama has correctly detected in his Maname Matak Wee, Sri Lankan universities need literary studies of literatuare. Citing examples like, Prof. M.B. Ariyapala's The Society in Medieval Ceylon Dr. Amunugama maintains that the majority of scholarly studies on literature are more sociological than literary. An insightful comment indeed.

The author should autograph a copy of his book to the minister of higher education. Nevertheless. Dr. Amunugama's comment is only partly true. There is no sociological study at all on modern literature by contemporary sociologists of Sri Lanka. Prof. Ariyapala's book is from 1950s! In the west, in contrast, sociological and anthropological studies are among the most interesting ones.

Take Ben Anderson' Imagined Communities for instance, which is already a classic of our time. Anderson has immensely learned from novels to form his ideas on nationalism. Sri Lanka's social scientists do not even write a journalistic book review on fiction.

Forget the West. The social scientific studies on the fiction of Bankimchandra Chatterji and Rabindranath Tagore by Ashish Nandy, Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj will teach our social scientists how to do things with their theories. Of course, if they are humble enough to learn, energetic enough to read and creative enough to think. Dr. Nalin de Silva might say, "they are none of those." Comrades let's prove him wrong!

Serious criticism

All forms of serious criticism and teaching of literature can turn mere book-buyers into readers. In this regard, the minister of cultural affairs has done again the right thing by naming October "the month of reading." Now the buyers of September have to become the readers of October.

The books of September have to become the texts of October. Some of those buyers are sure to find that there are not any worthwhile texts in the books they have bought.

Post modernism

The very idea of reader has been revolutionized by post-structuralism and by some schools of post-modernism. One would go so far as to argue that the reader is the producer of texts.

This does not have to be taken literally. It simply means that the source of the meanings of a text does not exclusively belong to the author alone. Reader actively participates in decoding the network of signs codified within a book. With that interaction, the meaning is created; it is always a co-production.

Yet, even today Sri Lankan criticism uses expression lie "author's intention", "author's goal" and the like. One cannot deny authorial intention altogether. There is always an intent of meaning' in a literary work. But the instrument called language is not transparent enough to fully convey that intention.

Between an author and a reader there is this elusive net called language with which both have to grapple. Thus reading is a struggle, a fight and a tiresome job. Any serious reader might realize soon that reading is difficult; it needs many sacrifices. Much of the other easy fun stuff has to be put away.

In a way, his commitment to reading cost Walter Benjamin his life. Beanjamin, one of most brilliant minds in the last century could not flee from Nazis in time mainly because he had his books and his reflections on books with him. That is only one famous example. In Sri Lanka, many truly committed readers fail exams, disappear into obscurity; some join the army to die in Vanni.

This essay is meant to be abstract since it targets really active readers. But now it is time to be concrete. Big festivals are fun. yet, there much smaller things that could be done to create a reader-community that is capable of turning books into texts and silence into dialogues. Book discussion groups of American public libraries have been rewarding experience for me to read contemporary fiction.

Nearly all public libraries in American cities have one or two assistant librarians whose job is to organize monthly book discussions, among other things. Books for the discussions are selected a few weeks ahead. On the discussion day, anybody can participate as speakers or as listeners. This is very simple. Not always largely attended either. But these occasions invite readers for show reflective readings.

By the time of this writing, I am participating in an interesting reading project directed by the Cornell University. This is how it works. The university has started a special reading for program making all of the new first year students (freshmen) to read one selected book over the summer, which is the three months before coming to the campus.

The copies of the selected book are sent to the students by mail along with their admission packages. When the students come into the campus on the first day, they have supposedly read the book for their special reading requirement. Academic and other staffs are also encouraged to read the selected book.

The Trial

This year's book is Franz Kafka's The Trial. Each and every new student, to describe it in Sri Lankan terms, coming into all the different faculties is required to read this book. The university has published a new cheaper edition of the book. When the students come in, there are series of seminars, discussions on Kafka and Trial. A drama version of The Trial is being staged in one of the city's theatres. University cinema has showings of The Trial, movie.

With George Bush's failing to find weapons of mass-destruction in Iraq, Kafka's novel has new meaning in the US today.

In the novel, Joseph K is arrested before he commits his unknown crime. In the middle of the novel, Joseph K. realizes that law is everywhere; any attic could be a courtroom, any person is a potential judge. Such is Kafka's metaphor of human condition in modern states. Those who study law; do sociology, political science, for instance, with reading Kafka, do not know what they are missing. Not to mention, Kafka was nearly five decades prior to Foucault.

Reading project

This type of reading program, to come back to Cornell reading project, is only feasible in a wealthy country and in a university town where more than a half of the population is with post-graduate education. But it is a program for us to learn from.

In addition, the university has extended this project to the entire city by making the city's public library a participant of the project. This is how it works: The university has donated 1100 copies of the book to the public library and citizens are encouraged to read the book and to participate in discussions during several months long period.

For the second time in my life, I am too reading Kafka's book and discovering new things about it. Surprisingly for us, perhaps, the city's female mayor too is reading the book. Imagine, the mayor of Colombo reading Kafka.

According to a recent Lakbima article, only Tamil politicians spend time in the parliamentary library.

Good for them! In Sri Lanka, if we ask all university students to read, there will be riots. The parents of the students of medical faculty will come to street shouting, "Doctors read literature? No way! They are for those who cannot go to medical school!" Such is our social modernity. Of course, there is a few who read even they are asked not to.

Reading is an act of citizens. We have to choose between becoming book-buyers and becoming text-readers.

 **** Back ****

www.ceylincoproperties.com

www.Pathmaconstruction.com

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries

Produced by Lake House
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager