"Judge not and you shall not be judged"

By Dr. Wilfrid Jayasuriya

So judges too at book contests are not immune from this dictum from the New Testament. Recently and, in previous times too, audiences at book judging contests have criticised the choices.Is there some authentic basis for disagreeing with the judges. I do think so. Judges are driven by the need to satisfy not only literary criteria (if such exist as objective yardsticks, which they don't) but also the audiences before whom they make their judgements.

Thus over the few years that book contests have been promoted judges were naturally prone to satisfy the local audience, which they judge to be filled with the echoes of the major public events that have filled the public mind. These of course include the Tamil/Sinhala issue.

If one could statistically identify the themes that dominate the books shortlisted in book contests, themes which naturally find an echo in the heart of the local audience, you might find that more than half the short- listed books dealt with that issue and more than half the winners also dealt with that issue.

It's easy to find a response to a story or essay which currently engages the minds of the audience. The judges feel themselves justified in preferring the theme of public concern because that is what the public (according to the predisposition of the judges) want. At the same time the writers who write on this "eternal theme" have a ready- made response from the audiences they assume to be there, and so there isn't much need for artistry, innovation and in depth inquiry on the side of the suppliers of such content. Aren't the judges who sit in judgement similarly conditioned since they too are in the same context? Both writer/ supplier and

judge are in the situation of the ready-made response and because of that will anyone contest the judgements? It's somewhat like the "best seller" criterion used by the American reader and publisher.

To make this point of view with a little more punch and effectiveness I will take a single example of a book which dealt with the Sinhala/Tamil issue and was not selected as winner. That was "The Road to Elephant Pass" which did not evoke stock responses on the ethnic issue. There were no blood, sweat and tears stuff but controlled and modulated feelings. The book was rejected by the judges and had to be re-submitted by the publisher in the subsequent year, when it was finally chosen.

Can one doubt its artistry? But it arouses the hackles of the proponents of the two communities because both hero and heroine are "traitors" to their race and therefore do not arouse the stock responses.

At the short listing event at the British Council, which took place on Monday this week, there were two novels again which dealt with the Sinhala/Tamil theme. In one the Tamil characters are the victims of the IPKF and in the other a Sinhala speaking Tamil is shot by Sinhalese soldiers bent on revenge for the death of their comrades. Both these stories are dependent on existing responses among the readers (including the judges who present them to readers). Do these leave room for other thoughts and other contexts?

I am reminded of an experience I had teaching undergraduate rhetoric and composition in the USA in the early 1990s. An adult black student was presenting a succession of papers dealing with the black issue. It did not matter that the paper was narrative of a remembered event, or a portrait of a remembered person, or a comparison and contrast paper.

All of them were about the "blacks and their problems." Since I was not one of the "whites" I told him "Why don't you write on another topic?"

After some discussion he agreed. When he submitted his next paper I was eager to read it and I found that again the subject was the same. I told him "WHY?". He said.

"That's what fills my mind." "But does it help you to learn to write?" I said.