Shards of Glass: The secret ingredient

In literature, liminality has both theoretical and practical value. Taken in a wider sense to include the sense of inhabiting two worlds or those who are without a social role because they are marginalized.

The term postmodern requires careful investigation. Since the 1960s, readers have noticed a difference in some of our fiction. Critics could not reach an agreement on a definition; and because widespread agreement has not yet been reached even for a definition of modernism, we cannot expect a rapid agreement on a definition of postmodernism.

In this situation we might find it effective not to attempt a strict logical definition but simply to list those characteristics that first made us notice a difference. At first one can observe a propensity to contain and reuse all previous forms in a literature of exhaustion and replenishment.

And also such a fiction shows off a zone of the bizarre, where fantasy best expresses our sense of reality. Postmodern novel also presents a turning away from penetration into the psychological depth of character as the primary goal of fiction. And a propensity for metafiction, in which writing draws attention to the techniques and processes of its own creation.

I was delighted to read a Sinhala novel written by Piyal Kariyawasam, which shows off an innovative picture in every postmodern literary aspect. Viduru Kudu Kavunu Kaleka (If Shards of Glass are Swollen) can be taken as a role model of Sinhala postmodern novel as it represents most of the above mentioned features and more.

Kariyawasam carefully builds the character of his magistrate protagonist. The novel starts with the question maa kawarekda? (Who am I). That question itself clearly depicts the instable state of mind of the relevant character. The postmodern concept of liminality came to my mind when I was reading Kariyawasam’s novel.

I found the character of Piyasoma, the magistrate as someone who is not belonging to any place, tribe or group in the society. He has transferred himself to a form of astral body and moves from a time to a time and from an event to another. Liminality is a simple idea developed by anthropologists.

It was originally meant to describe the social position of individuals undergoing a role transformation, such as initiation into adulthood, after they had left behind their old identity and before they assumed a new one. Liminality was seen as being temporarily without a clearly defined role in society and could be both alienating and freeing, as well as a source of greater perspective and creativity.

The characters of speculative fiction are often liminal beings: vampires, werewolves, and cyborgs are all liminal, as are ghosts, mythical hybrids such as centaurs, and those who have both supernatural and human lineage. All of these creatures combine two distinct modes of being into one body. Piyasoma the magistrate of Kariyawasam’s novel is a liminal being in this sense.

The other key postmodern feature of Kariyawasam’s novel is the way it is presented. It presents the characteristics of metafiction other than a fiction. Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as the 9th-century One Thousand and One Nights and Chaucer’s 14th-century Canterbury Tales. When reading a metafiction, reader is fully aware that he or she is reading a fiction other than an experience of real life.

To this point, I was talking about the technical side of Kariyawasam’s Viduru Kudu Kavunu Kaleka. I do not know whether I talked too much on manner over matter of this novel. Kariyawasam’s novel is profound in its content. He has been able to highlight crucial political incidents occurred in Sri Lanka while he was telling a story of an individual. He never fails in presenting the consequences of such political dramas within the life of that individual. It is amazing how Kariyawasam presents that collective effect in a single man’s perspective.

I regretted that this novel was not available when I was teaching the course unit of Modern Literary Criticism at my Sri Lankan university. I would have been used this as the text book on postmodern novel. Fiction should not be an arranged platter of food; it should be a bag of ingredients which can be used by the reader’s own way of thinking.

..................................

<< Artscope Main Page