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Wednesday, 31 August 2011 |
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Water dried up in the creeks leaving nothing but cracked earth. Landowners walked off their holdings. As the pony carts passed by, the Sri Lankan workers struggled from their camp to the roadside, where they lay down in the dust crying out in their own tongue, "Badagini! Badagini! Oh help us, who will help us?" Think this is stuff of fiction? Well it would have remained so had it not been for a 'Sri Lankan friend', who related the tale of 'Badagini' to Yasmine Gooneratne. "I liked his story, and turned it into fiction," says she. It is this intriguing blend of fact and fiction in conjunction with her mellifluousness of language that sets her apart from most writers, making her a desirable subject for the encounter on Daily News 'Artscope'. Q: What inspires you as a writer? A: The starting-point of a poem, a story or a novel for me is invariably deep, intense feeling about a personal experience of some kind. 'Review' is a poem that came to me directly after the death of my father in 1969. 'The Lizard's Cry', an attempt to compose a Sandesa in English verse, was written in 1972, when I was leaving Sri Lanka for another country (1972), and did not know whether I would ever see my home again. Both those poems were inspired by intensely emotional moments in my life. Also, rather than choose a glamorous bird like the Selalihini to carry my message, I chose a very homely creature, the gecko. Regularly present on the walls of Sri Lankan homes, the gecko hears everything that goes on in the human world, and can warn of impending danger since, according to our folk-lore, it is a messenger of the gods. Q: What is your comment on awards that require writers to apply for them? A: People tell me that authors with an eye on awards tend to write according to what they feel the judges want. If that's true, it must surely destroy originality, besides breeding an unpleasantly competitive attitude that has nothing to do with literature and good writing. I have no comment on the subject. I don't apply for such awards myself. Q: Is Sri Lankan literature finally over that imitative, white-washed period that prevailed immediately after independence?
A: Imitation is an inevitable part of the learning process. 'Everybody' tries to write like John Donne! But that's just a stage. Good writers grow out of it, eventually they find their own 'voice'. If what is meant by 'white-washed' is that authors are 'finally' abandoning prudery and becoming sexually explicit in their writing, one would hope that fifty years is a period long enough for writers to mature, even in a prudish and hypocritical society. There's also, of course, the matter of good taste and good sense. If the book or poem or play one is writing calls for explicitness about sex, a competent writer could (and should) provide it. But vulgarity for its own sake eventually becomes boring. Ultimately, it damages one's writing. Q: Could genuine and substantial literature only be produced by writers who remained rooted in one perpetual place; does expatriation dry up creative inspiration? A: I used to think so, since the writer whose work I've most admired throughout my writing life (Jane Austen) seldom moved far from her home. But when I came across V S Naipaul and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, writers who have been very much on the move, travelling between many countries, I had to change my mind. Expatriation and exile certainly can dry up creative inspiration. When writers whose view of the world has been shaped by a particular birth-place and a particular society, move to another country, they often find adjustment difficult. With any luck, they'll rediscover their Muse in a year or two. Q: Why are foreign publishers preoccupied with conflict literature and how can Sri Lankan writers get around this obstacle and penetrate international publishing? A: We live in turbulent times, and with the book industry in its present state, it would seem that the first priority of publishers is to look for books that will sell. Sri Lanka has probably provided a bonanza for publishers in Britain, Canada and the USA, first because its natural beauty is seen by the West as exotic, and secondly because the 30-year war with the LTTE provided plenty of material about conflict and blood-letting that - I regret to say - many of our expatriate authors have shamelessly exploited. I would say, by writing about life as we know it, by writing as well as we possibly can, and by becoming professional about the presentation of our work to a foreign eye. Our writers are not aware, perhaps, how much a manuscript can be improved by first-class editing. They also imagine that the help of an editor can be dispensed with in preparing a manuscript for submission to a publishing house. Publishers are busy people, and if a letter or a synopsis is badly written, if it's too long or carelessly spelled, a manuscript can end up in the waste-paper basket without receiving a second glance. Q: What can be done to promote Sri Lankan English writing in the Sri Lankan market, that seems to be overwhelmed by foreign books? A: By being on the look-out ourselves for good Sri Lankan books. Every time we attend a launch or a book club meeting at which Sri Lankan books are intelligently discussed, we're promoting Sri Lankan writing. Every time we buy one ourselves, or give one as a gift to a child or a friend, we're promoting Sri Lankan writing. Every time we make a donation of books or money to a local library, we're promoting Sri Lankan writing. We can haunt local bookshops, ask our favourite booksellers to advise us by mail when a good new book becomes available, and discourage the importation of trash by just refusing to buy it when we see it in the bookshops. There are many ways in which readers can help writers improve their technique. Our appreciation of their work can go a long way. Q: Was your success as a writer due to readers identifying you as a member of the influential family through your book, Relative Merits: A Personal Memoir of the Bandaranaike Family of Sri Lanka? A: Very unlikely, I'd say. I had 'successfully' published poetry, short fiction and literary criticism long before 1986, the year Relative Merits was published. In doing so, I had consistently written under my husband's surname, 'Gooneratne'. After 1986, and all the way up to the present day, I have continued to write and publish as 'Gooneratne'. This is the result of a deliberate choice. I have always wanted my writing to win readers on its own merits: I certainly did not want it admired - or attacked and rejected - because readers admired or disliked some political relative of mine. My family's 'influence' has no connection with my literary and academic life. Q: Why do you use humour and irony to tone down themes such as diaspora, hybridity, and transcultural dealings? A: Humour and irony are certainly among the literary devices that I like to use in writing fiction and poetry, but although both are capable of amusing and entertaining the reader, they are very different from each other, and serve the writer in different ways. As brilliant exponents of humorous writing in Sri Lanka, I would cite my three personal favourites: first, 'Cox' Sproule, the witty Burgher lawyer who practised in Kandy in my grandfather's day. I published Sproule's matchless 'Epitaph on a Turtle' in full in Relative Merits, hoping this would help it survive into the 21st century. Second, the late E M W Joseph, who wrote a column for the Observer in the 1940s and 1950s under the pseudonym of 'Sooty Banda', inventing such unforgettable characters as Mabel Rastiadu, Simon Kankendiriya, and the pompous civil servant Nathaniel Gonthambili, (CCS). Third, our contemporary Carl Muller, whose account of the doings of Sonnaboy von Bloss and his lively family - especially in Yakada Yaka - has done so much to relieve the dark days of war. I miss the writing of 'Sooty' very much. We need some non-political humour. Irony entertains the reader too, but its great virtue is not so much in prompting laughter, as in helping the reader to keep two contradictory and opposing ideas in balance. The classic example of this is, of course, the opening sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. And for Sri Lanka, the best example I know of is Tarzie Vittachi's piece 'Snowballs in the Sun'. As for my own writing, while I use irony consistently in the satiric novel A Change of Skies to explore what is referred to as 'diaspora, hybridity, and transcultural dealings', I use it not to 'tone down' these or any other themes, but to sharpen the edges of my concerns. I want my readers to laugh, but I also want them to think. Q: Critics claim that you tend to look down on certain aspects of Australian as well as Sri Lankan culture as inferior to that of Britain. (For example questioning work ethics in Australia. Saying that such work ethics eroded every moral principle with which they grew up) Please comment. A: It's very easy to mistake the opinions of a fictional character for the views of the author. Some readers do it all the time. But critics, even more than 'common' readers, should keep in mind the fact that the novel they are reading is, in fact, a novel. It's not the author's diary. The views expressed by the rather pedantic academic Barry in A Change of Skies are his. They are not mine. Q: Did you intend The Sweet and Simple Kind as a novel of social criticism or as a historical recreation of that era? A: Both. I feel very strongly that many of our current ills, including the 30-year war from which our country has just emerged, can be traced back to errors made during the 1950s, not only by politicians, but by us all. I wanted my readers to think about that, and if possible work towards ensuring that such errors are avoided in the future. At the same time, I have very happy personal memories of the 1950s, of school and university days in particular. I wanted to recreate, if I could, the atmosphere of 1950s Ceylon.
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