Face to Face
Of lost moorings
CHITRA PADMANABHAN
|
Sunetra Gupta, whose latest novel, So Good in Black, has just been released, talks about the challenges of being a writer today...
|
You have to figure out your role, not con yourself that your actions are changing the world…
Photo: Charlie Lee Potter
Art as re-vision: Sunetra Gupta.
A literary inclination to appropriate tragic forms but simultaneously a modernist voice that consistently rejects the fatedness of tragedy has characterised the novels of critically acclaimed, U.K.-based writer Sunetra Gupta. Coming after 10 years, her latest and fifth novel, So Good in Black, published by Women Unlimited, is a richly layered narrative of moral and emotional dislocation across time and space, which dissolves all notions of static “truths”.
In Delhi recently for the book release, Sunetra Gupta, a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University, spoke about the perils of being a writer in the time of market as straitjacket. Excerpts from the interview...
What did you come to literature for?
There’s a wonderful quote from Alice Munro who sees the short story like a dwelling. You enter and roam around. The essential quality is that you are transformed by being in that space and looking out through the windows. You feel the building is there for its own purpose, not to beguile you. It is a useful description of what I seek in a work of art. Now, though, readers seem keener on a different type of edification — some information about the time, place, smells, sounds — and why not? But for me, when reading — say, Turgenev — I was more interested in understanding human relationships than taking a sledge ride through Russia. The image I retain is that whiplash coming down on the palm as an expression of passion in First Love.
The idea of having international literature at your fingertips I increasingly have a problem with. It’s so vulnerable to superficial consumption. I think that market has been created, validated by certain types of books presented as containing “all of India” and such like.
I do object to the way books are presented as “a darn good yarn”. Narrative is important but can take various forms. The notion that a good story is crucial to good fiction seems very confining, as if there is a quality control checklist on commodities that works of art must meet.
There’s a fundamental tension between having the wide market and producing a saleable commodity, and establishing something that combines unusual elements in an unpredictable way. That is causing a crisis in fiction.
The pressure to remain visible — is it part of that crisis?
Up to a degree. You might want the writer to present the book, participate in public discussions. I’m happy to do that. I don’t dislike being a writer in public; what I dislike is it becoming an essential ingredient of surviving as a writer.
There’s a market for themes of identity and exile. You have said readers looking for the anxiety of displacement in your books are often disappointed.
I am more interested in moral and emotional dislocation than that anxiety. I think exile exists otherwise than just simple, physical exile. Also, I have a problem with the notion that most “post-colonial” narratives essentially progress along the axis of exile. This desire to shoehorn literary activity into a compartment rather than approach it so it challenges you to revise your notions is irksome.
That checklist again...
Yes. Take the current resistance to style. Henry James said there is redemption in style. Style is not just an add-on to what you have created as a final flourish. It’s essential to that process of transformation.
You see it as natural for a writer’s relationship with punctuation to be emotional. Your word flow has rebelled against grammatical halts.
I am writing a book on contrasting narratives in literature and science, gathering examples of visceral responses to punctuation. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra says the semicolon A.K. Ramanujan uses in his sentence acts as an osmotic membrane between the two languages and realities he inhabits. That’s true of so much writing.
As for my writing, reaching a point in a sentence which would naturally beg a full stop I would feel reluctant, thinking of a comma or dash.
It’s about finding a style consistent with how I am feeling. When writing something, I see it as having its own cadence, form, and try and recruit punctuation to create, re-create that.
Fundamental to your perspective is how Calcutta “forced” you into acquiring a moral framework reconciling your privilege with the surrounding poverty. How has it shaped your politics?
In India everything one does seems to be depriving someone of something. You have to reach a personal agreement about what is acceptable and what is not. I grew up amidst socialist beliefs. But my parents and their friends, too, lived a lifestyle that contrasted with the lives of people they were concerned about.
I would feel wretched splurging on a fancy car. I don’t feel wretched about living in a nice house with a garden, and sending my children to private school. But unlike many, I’m happy that 40 per cent of my salary goes in taxes, towards public education and healthcare.
You have to figure out your role, not con yourself that your actions are changing the world — that smugness when you throw a plastic can in a recycling bin.
This is where art comes in, in getting rid of that smugness. Art which aids in the constant act of revision, literally re-vision, which keeps the dialogue between you and outer reality so critical to politics. Art produced for consumption falls short of achieving this.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
