Romesh: the 'melancholic optimist' at the British Council last week. Pix by Mettasena
Romesh Gunasekera is back, this time almost incognito, his celebrity discarded for the moment. Gunasekera, for the neophyte in these matters, (or for the man from Mars ) was the man who almost won the Booker prize, but not quite. His corpulently colourful "Reef" won rave reviews, before it was overtaken in the race. Gunasekera now writes for a living, rara avis, definitely as far as that is concerned. But, he eschews the "market dynamic" and by a process of default slots his novel in the "serious" category, right there, while we are having this conversation.....
Romesh Gunasekera defies a rigid definition, because he is literally neither here nor there, but he definitely likes his food, but we wouldn't want these days to label ( God forbid ) anybody, leave alone the innocent Mr. Gunasekera , as having Epicurean tastes. "That Romesh, all he thinks about is food" says the head of the British Council in a chiding acknowledgment of his presence. Romesh is fundamentally a thinking man's writer, and his novels tend to be beautiful more than powerful, yet extremely readable.
He answers questions lavishly.
Romesh, this is a personal reaction, but I enjoyed Monkfish Moon more than I enjoyed Reef, because living here, I felt Reef was romanticized, hopelessly romanticized, in reference to the JVP period which it dwells on. Perhaps, it won rave reviews in the West, because the Westerners do tend to like these romanticized versions.
Well, I would say the book is about the individuals, the characters in it, rather than about a certain period. The book is not about the JVP or the ethnic crisis, it is much more traditional in that it has to do with individuals.
Not that I have any grouse with that, but one can't quite get behind the fact that the book at least tangentially has to do with the youth unrest the violence here, and all of that. I distinctly remember British reviews ( more than one of them ) which said the book is about lost innocence, the country's transmogrification from paradise to paradise lost.. ... So, perhaps for the reader here, who has lived in these times, the book might be romanticized and removed, a kind of a spectator version of what happened . On the other hand, it might sound like a faithful version of what happened here for the foreigner, particularly the Westerner. ....
Well I guess there are different ways of looking at the book. A novel which is published here about Sudan or Nigeria or Latvia will read differently to a person who had lived in these places. You don't necessarily know the political in's and out's of these places unless you really study them, so if you don't you have to treat these books purely as novels and then the reactions can be different.
But for the person who has lived here, your novel might be terribly artificial, and you wouldn't be able to fault them for thinking it is a bit of a misrepresentation of things.
That I have no control over. But you cannot also expect too much from the book. There are hundred and ninety pages before the period you describe figures in the novel.
But of course, ( though you didn't do it ) Reef has been described by review writers in the West as a tale of a country's lost innocence and all of that, and by that yardstick, there may have been books written here which were more faithful to the true events of such a transition. But they never got the same exposure because you had an edge? You were published in the West, and you came with a lot of attendant publicity, and all that. Your playing field was such that you were easily anointed with this celebrity status.
What you have is a very different environment over there, and in that sense I would think the people over here would have the edge because they were here. There are over 1000 new books published in England every week, and that means 52000 books every year. Out of these there are about a thousand serious novels every year, so it is not as if its a cosy task being published and getting noticed. An equal number of books die every year, they just get discontinued.
What was your trick then, to get noticed?
Writing for a very long time. Of course there are different kinds of exposure, and there are those who are published in India for instance, but getting published anywhere is difficult. Before I wrote, there were lots of people who told me to "just forget it." There are around a hundred which are rejected for every book that is published.
TIME magazine for instance made something of the new effluxion of Sri Lankan writing citing you, Muller and Shyam Selvadurai.
I think there has been Sri Lankan writing for a long time, but the real phenomenon is not that itÕs new but newer, and of course that there are more people willing to read now, which makes all this writing quite vibrant and exciting. On the other hand this kind of reaction can be purely on spurious foundations because there is nothing really in common about any one of us who have been bunched together in terms of location
Have you read Muller?
No. I have had no opportunity but I'm going to.
Have you been published in America?
Yes I have been.
How would you contrast American publishing say in comparison to British for instance, because I've heard the American publishing industry being decribed as being "run by stupid people"? There is a lot of the market dynamic in America, and therefore a lot of ignorant editors who sit in judgment on books. It fits in with America's instant ethos, and a lot of good books get rejected.
I can't say I agree, because I for one am a person who likes editors and I think there should be more of them. Of course I haven't really had these same problems anyway because my books have actually been re- published and not originally published in America. Of course about being market driven, I think those publishers who depend on short term commercial publications eventually die out because there are no long term publications to sustain them.
I was talking to Penguin India's publisher David Davidar sometime back, and he was saying that any publisher needs bad books to sustain the good ones.
Maybe in the beginning, but Penguin India has been around for ten years.
Well, I spoke to Davidar last year..
On a personal note, how does it feel like living in London, and trying to imagine on a foggy perhaps snowy London day the kind of vivid bright and sunny locales that you have described in Reef?
Well, even if I had lived here I would have had to go back in time almost ten years to write the book, so if a writer had to live next to the situation he describes , then almost nothing would be written.
Well of course, but that was not exactly what I was talking about; what I'm asking you is how it "feels" like to be writing about tropical Sri Lanka from cold London. Dismembered?
Well, actually I like to be distanced from the environments I describe . In fact, there are a lot of British writers who now go to some remote place in Scotland to be sufficiently distanced from the milieu they want to describe.
Did you feel terribly disappointed not winning the Booker after all the publicity that followed the book, a build - up that was hard to match, really?
No, actually its good I didn't in a way because if you win on your first book then it might remove one reason for wanting to write. It really wouldn't have made a difference had I won it or not, on the other hand.
But you did mention earlier to me ( not in the interview ) that you write for a living, so its hardly likely that it wouldn't have mattered if you had won the Booker.
I think it's difficult to write a book in order, to say "I'm writing a bestseller" and then going and writing one. I don't think it quite works that way.
I'm not asking you to comment on somebody else's work, but, I did read in an Indian review that Micheal Ondatje's English Patient was a "designer made novel" written to win the Booker prize.
It sounds like one of those things people say after the event, but I donÕt think it is easy to fit the Booker to any pattern and then go ahead and write the book in order to fit that pattern. But why don't you really ask Mr Ondaatje whether his book was a designer made novel written with the Booker in mind.
.Maybe it was, but its a prize.....
While we are on the subject, there has been a lot of publicity on the Booker itself, I mean the prize, and a lot of it has been negative. For instance, it has been said, I think in the Spectator, that the Booker is a sort of a politically correct award which can be predicted, because if it goes to a man for two years a woman has to get it sometime, and so on and so forth. In other words, it's not literary merit but how politically correct you are that counts.
I donÕt think it can be analysed that way. If you were a judge, would you continue to be one if you were asked to fit in the selection in that way?
But the process might not be as sacrosanct as you believe. There was a judge for the Nobel who is supposed to have said that the Nobel prize for literature "will be awarded to Graham Greene over his dead body." All this, largely because Greene was Catholic (as if that had to do with anything).
There are certainly a lot of things that are said about the Booker, no doubt, for instance that it gives a lot of attention to certain books and takes away the attention from others which might have been actually better. But I think it's largely a matter of luck as well...
"I'm a deeply melancholic optimist," is one of the things Romesh Gunasekera said during his animated and fascinating talk at the British Council last week. It kind of sums him up perfectly for me. The last time we met was a couple of years ago, when I was a struggling student and he was the author of the moment, with Reef's Booker Prize nomination.
He still found the time to let me interview him, and waited patiently in a McDonalds' while I rushed to make our appointment.
When I see him today , he looks more relaxed and convivial. Perhaps doing innumerable press tours and interviews to promote his books has given him a kind of professional joie de vivre. Or it could be because he's away from the cold, grey climes of his adopted home and here in warm Sri Lanka. Whatever the case he looks less restrained , sporting a rather fetching pink shirt and shoulder length hair.
Romesh, it looks like you haven't had a haircut since we last met
I had it cut just before I came here !
How are you coping with the media frenzy on your arrival ?
(While we talk, there are camera crews, other journalists and people from bookstores hovering around waiting for him)
It's actually died down a lot - but there are still translations of the book coming out in French, Italian, Norwegian. I'm on my way to the Philippines for a University conference there and I grabbed the chance to spend a couple of days in Sri Lanka.
Has it changed much?
I don't know. I still haven't seen enough of it to know ! I'm just taking it all in, it's been a couple of years.
Visiting any special haunts ?
Since the next book is about death, probably the cemetery !
You've got a morbid frame of mind!..
You were the one who talked about haunting!!..
What's it like being able to write full time ? Was it like bye bye job ,nice knowing you ?
Life isn't that simple. But I realised I needed time to write my next book and also handle the paraphernalia that comes with it .It's great fun..but a bit anxious. It feels like I've been waiting a long time just to write full time, to write in a different rhythm and to have the time to do it. One of the things I did was sit down and reply all the letters I've left lying around for the past four years. Whether I should have is a different matter.The pace changesÉ. But where I thought I had all the time in the world, it never seems to be enough.
Work expands to fill the time allotted to it ?
That sort of thing..I was telling someone earlier there is writing as in the actual writing of the books, and the writing that is living life.
How about your new book ?
I'm in the last stages of it, and the title still hasn't been decided on.. The last book "Reef" was a "what am I doing here" kind of book, and so it occured to me the next question should be, given the shortness of life, "how do you know what you're going to do?" It's set in Sri Lanka and Britain, like the previous books, but the balance is different.
Does it have an immigrant perspective like Hanif Kureishi?
Well, the character does tend to straddle both worlds. It's not the same protagonist or perspective as "Reef", it's got a different kind of flavour. I hope it's fun but it deals with someone dying in London .
Unexpectedly dying ?
No, not the kind of thing they expect, but dying of old age.
You're being very tantalising aren't you ?
I hope so ! I'm looking forward to it coming out - it's got a bit of love and a bit of murder in it. While "Reef" was about ordinary people , this is about extraordinary people having fun.
What are you calling it, what's your working title ?
I don't know if I should tell you. Oh, alright the working title is "The Sandglass" - as in hourglass
It's got the right resonances of time and dying I guess.
Hmmm..also some of the marine analogies of ÒReefÓ.
Has there been anything happening with the film and television rights of "Reef" ?
Yes, there has been some interest.
Who would you cast in it, if you had the chance ?
I don't like to speculate on things like that.
Is it because of "kata vaha"?
Yes.
Why did you choose to write another novel and not a book of short stories ?
Because I like the idea of novels. I like the idea of having a relationship with a novel.
A love-hate relationship ?
Not hate, you can't have that because it spoils the book. You can have difficulty though .
Like marriage ?
More like dealing with a child I think. You grow as much as it grows. It's a way of seeing the world, a way of handling reality.
Ever considered branching out into other aspects of literature ? Poems, plays, screenplays ?
I've written some poems..I think "Reef" had a poem in it. I will get back to them. I've done occasional bouts of travel writing for magazines, and I was doing something for TV but I didn't have the time. I like the freedom of prose fictionÉ..but screenplays and plays are something I would like to do.
Let me play devil's advocate for a second and ask you whatÕll happen if your next book backfires?
I'll write another one. It's a great luxury to be a writer in any country but it's an option I've taken. Of course I might be in a completely different job three months down the line. It's not cut and dry When did we meet last ? About two years ago ? Back then people were asking me the same question: how did you manage to find the time to write a book while working ? Ever since I started writing full time they all ask me "Do you need all that time to write?" Amazing. For me writing is an urgent business.
Creeping mortality kind of urgency?
No, there are some writers whose work is of supreme importance to their life and it's like every sentence I write keeps me alive.
I've often thought that the two things writers are afraid of are aridity and death. The fear of your flow of words drying up before you die, or of dying before you get everything in your head on paper.
It's the idea that every word you write could be your last, and by extension every book could be your last, so you have to put everything of yourself in it.
So how do you know when your ideas will dry up ?
It goes back to the idea of a relationship you have with a book, where you keep trying to bring the freshness back in different things. But I'm not keen on newness for newness sake. A striking image isn't enough, the thing has to be an organic whole.
How about the other aspects of your life ?
You mean there's another aspect to life than writing ?! Life is OK. Life goes on. You know me, IÕm very evasive. But life is good.
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