I was reading a short story 'Turn The Page' by Paulo da Costa (Luso-Canadian author) and it really struck me as something brilliant, the idea at least. I've come across metafictional works before but this seemed different (rest assured, it isn't a marketing pitch for a Bollywood movie). The story itself is a part of a collection 'New Writing 14' published by British Council in association with Granta, so I'm not sure if you'll be able to find it elsewhere, but the idea is as follows:
The book starts with two characters who have been abandoned by the writer. They have to look for their own destinies, figure out their role in the scheme of things. They sleep at night and when the male character gets up, he realizes that the female character has been 'deleted' from the script. He wonders how it would have been in the pre-computer era when they would either be together because there wasn't an option, or simply be torn apart. Today, through cut-copy-paste mechanisms, their characters, their lives could be modified. He moves out of the 'white room with paper-thin walls' and is thrown in the 'real world' where his quest for an identity begins. He constantly wonders if his author has abandoned him for good, or if his story has been told earlier and he is just following the script, or if this exploration, this abandonment is his story, so he really hasn't been abandoned (sorry for using 'abandon' so many times, I just can't seem to abandon it! :P). Beyond that it gets into the usual realm of the meaning of his life, his purpose in this world, etc. etc. as he takes a more material shape from a nebulous, rather ephemeral existence and ultimately ends with him being slashed by red lines by the editor.
I fell in love with the idea of a character and/or characters being abandoned (again!) by the author and them trying to figure out their own lives. Would make for an interesting writing exercise, if nothing else. I realized that towards the end, the story had a more philosophical bent, but I missed that meaning, and would have to go back to again a few times to understand that. If I do, I'll share it with you.
I found an interview of da Costa here. Do visit the link. He talks about magic realism and how he has been compared to Allende, Marquez and the like. Also, his take on writing, the life of a writer, primarily after a million Creative Writing programs have cropped up in the past decade and how it has become even more difficult to break into mainstream publishing as they all flock to these programs (Creative Writing MFAs, but for Columbia and Iowa, have seen rather low publishing success, and even there it's more related to 'contacts' rather than creative brilliance - that's basically his point - it's forming a nexus that excludes more than it includes, and gives primacy to a certain sort of brilliance, often referred to as MFA Fiction as opposed to literary fiction or just fiction).
Maybe we could have our own Writing competition on this theme (of abandonment of a character by his/her/its progenitor) right here!
The book starts with two characters who have been abandoned by the writer. They have to look for their own destinies, figure out their role in the scheme of things. They sleep at night and when the male character gets up, he realizes that the female character has been 'deleted' from the script. He wonders how it would have been in the pre-computer era when they would either be together because there wasn't an option, or simply be torn apart. Today, through cut-copy-paste mechanisms, their characters, their lives could be modified. He moves out of the 'white room with paper-thin walls' and is thrown in the 'real world' where his quest for an identity begins. He constantly wonders if his author has abandoned him for good, or if his story has been told earlier and he is just following the script, or if this exploration, this abandonment is his story, so he really hasn't been abandoned (sorry for using 'abandon' so many times, I just can't seem to abandon it! :P). Beyond that it gets into the usual realm of the meaning of his life, his purpose in this world, etc. etc. as he takes a more material shape from a nebulous, rather ephemeral existence and ultimately ends with him being slashed by red lines by the editor.
I fell in love with the idea of a character and/or characters being abandoned (again!) by the author and them trying to figure out their own lives. Would make for an interesting writing exercise, if nothing else. I realized that towards the end, the story had a more philosophical bent, but I missed that meaning, and would have to go back to again a few times to understand that. If I do, I'll share it with you.
I found an interview of da Costa here. Do visit the link. He talks about magic realism and how he has been compared to Allende, Marquez and the like. Also, his take on writing, the life of a writer, primarily after a million Creative Writing programs have cropped up in the past decade and how it has become even more difficult to break into mainstream publishing as they all flock to these programs (Creative Writing MFAs, but for Columbia and Iowa, have seen rather low publishing success, and even there it's more related to 'contacts' rather than creative brilliance - that's basically his point - it's forming a nexus that excludes more than it includes, and gives primacy to a certain sort of brilliance, often referred to as MFA Fiction as opposed to literary fiction or just fiction).
Maybe we could have our own Writing competition on this theme (of abandonment of a character by his/her/its progenitor) right here!
2 comments:
hey, thats a brilliant idea .. i would definitely read this novel .. thanks bande !!
What an interesting theme!
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