Paulo da Costa: Magic Realism and Metafiction

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!

Fabricated Societal Needs

In yet another short story, titled 'My Mother Lived on a Farm in Africa' by Abdulrazak Gurnah, there appears the following two sentences:

In the day, she was expected to stay close to Aunt Amina, and wait for chores to be given to her. She understood it was really to keep an eye on her because she was fourteen and a girl.

It got me thinking, as usual. I've always been vaguely disturbed by the idea of keeping girls 'safe', forbidding them from going out late at night because they might end up being raped or molested, and generally being asked time and again to 'be careful'. Yes, the continued threat of something happening is disturbing, so is the mankind at large for propagating such fears, but what has disturbed me the most all through, with respect to this and any other similar situations, is that the girls are being asked to sit at home (or need to be watched, or carry device some sort of a defense mechanism or various other acts of safety that ones sees or hears about) because someone else might harm them. My issue has always been that why should they suffer for the actions of someone else.

I've always been told that yes, it sucks, but there isn't a way out. It's a necessary evil and precautions must be taken since there's no other way out. That argument would shut me up for the time being because it seemed to make sense, but it still rankled and left me unsatisfied. Reading that line got me started on the issue again, and suddenly I saw a solution, simple, obvious and crystal clear. I don't understand why such an obvious answer had eluded me (or the population in general) till now. It's infeasible but it's just.

If we realize that girls aren't safe in the vicinity of boys in certain places or at certain times, and their presence must be compartmentalized, so be it. But, if the concern is the girls' safety after all because of the untamed carnal instincts of the male population, why restrain girls from going out at night or to places that are unsafe. It should be guys who should be asked to stay at home because if they go out late at night, the world would become unsafe. In this world, the girls would roam free and live without care, stay at home or go out, as they wish and as their needs demand. Since it is the guys who propagate this dystopian outlook, they should be the ones suffering, not the ones they target.

Yes, it needs a radical change in societal needs and outlook for this to happen but isn't it fairer to all? Does it not serve the purpose as well?

It isn't? It's not!

Roy Robin's short story 'The Caretaker' ends with the following sentence:

'It isn't the responsibility,' my mother said. 'I mean it is, but it isn't just that.'

Good story, nice ending, but that isn't why I'm writing this post. After I finished reading it, I was replaying the last sentence in my mind over and over again, and I realized I would have never written it isn't just that. I'd have, instead, gone with it's not just that. Both are valid contractions, but I never thought such differences could exist.

I don't know why this is so, if it's just a personal thing, or has it got anything to do with 'Indian English' as compared to 'British English'. Thought it was an interesting observation nonetheless.

Linguists. Others. Any opinions?

Games People Play

From the story "Independence" by Romesh Gunesekera in the collection New Writing 14, published by the British Council in association with Granta:

[T]hey were giggling over one of Nara's stories about snorting on the beach. 'I thought the Italians wanted to go snorkeling, so I took them down the south coast. How the hell was I to know...'

Of Alternate, Unintended Meanings

WARNING: Adult content

My short story Kaleidoscope begins like this:

Expanse of green. Sheer silk…white…flowing. A pearl necklace. Pearl earrings.

I gave it to Mat, our instructor at the British Council for some feedback. Apart from some pretty useless comments (e.g. it's a horror poem!?), he marked on the phrase "pearl necklace" (adult content - think before you click) and asked me to look it up on Urban Dictionary, if I dared. Of course, I had to check it out once he'd said as much, though I wished I hadn't. "Pearl earrings" carried a similar meaning. Even though I found it pretty disgusting that instead of telling me something useful, that was what Mat was doing with my piece, but it is also strangely fascinating with respect to the people's imagination!

The Key to Friendship

From the story Artists and Models in the collection 'Delta of Venus' by Anais Nin:

'... Someone told me the delightful story of a crusader who had put a chastity belt on his wife and left the key in care of his best friend in case of his death. He had barely ridden away a few miles when he saw his friend riding furiously after him, calling out, "You gave me the wrong key!"...'

Creativity

There's a Ghazal by Jeet Thayil that I'm reproducing here. It's one of my favorite pieces of poetry, mainly because of the flow. It's such a pleasure reading this one aloud.

Listen! Someone’s saying a prayer in Malayalam.
He says there’s no word for ‘despair’ in Malayalam.

Sometimes at daybreak you sing a Gujarati garba.
At night you open your hair in Malayalam….

…Visitors are welcome in The School of Lost Tongues.
Someone’s endowed a high chair in Malayalam.

I greet you my ancestors, O scholars and linguists.
My father who recites Baudelaire in Malayalam.

Jeet, such drama with the scraps that you know.
Write a couplet, if you dare, in Malayalam.

Here's a link to a page with two short stories of Angela Carter. Both of them are rewrites of the 'Little Red Riding Hood'. I had read the first one a couple of years ago. While looking for it today, I came across the second rewrite, which is a little longer. Haven't yet read it but I can bet it's going to be as good and innovative as the first one.


If anyone's interested in a review of the linguistics in Amitava Ghosh's new book 'Sea of Poppies' by Jai Arjun Singh, it can be found here. Click here for Ghosh's full-length interview with Singh.

Bookslaps

As a second exercise in the Creative Writing course, we had to come up with the names of our top 10 books (thank god it wasn't coming up with good titles). I’ve tried to compile a list of the books that have made some sort of a lasting impression on me, but the problem is I cannot recall the names of so many books that I have read. It might have been easier if we were to make a list of top 10 books in each genre. There are loads of others books that I have immensely enjoyed but they’re not the top 10. My list is displayed in the panel on the right hand side. To this list, I must add two plays – Betrayal and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, and three short stories – Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, The Dead by James Joyce and The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol.

These pieces of literature would constitute the best I’ve read, or at least the ones that I’ll remember for a long time, with the disclaimer that some of the works might have been left out simply because I couldn’t recall them.

Mat gave his own list of top 10 books. These were:

• The Hobbit – J R R Tolkien
• Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
• The House at Pooh Corner – A A Milne
• Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
• The Cider House Rules – John Irving
• Flashman – George Macdonald Fraser
• The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
• Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
• The Sandman – Neil Gaiman
• The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling

What are your top 5 books? Looking forward to interesting and unusual titles. See, this is how I make my reading lists. :)