Conrad, Rushdie and modern Sri Lankan literature

by Daya Dissanayake

As published in the TIME magazine of June 3 by Annie Murphy Paul, recent research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that deep reading — slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity — is a distinctive experience, different in kind from the mere decoding of words. No doubt, this kind of reading, as opposed to the often superficial reading we do on the Web — is an endangered practice, one we ought to take steps to preserve as we would a historic building or a significant work of art.

Its disappearance would imperil the intellectual and emotional development of generations growing up online, as well as the perpetuation of a critical part of our culture: the novels, poems and other kinds of literature that can be appreciated only by readers whose brains, quite literally, have been trained to apprehend them.

In such a context, now that the month of literature is upon us, it seems but natural to turn the spotlight on one of the deep readers among us – one who is perfectly attuned to the nuances of Sri Lankan English literature, one who has explored the effects of colonialism on literature with a sensitivity unknown to Western scholars – one who, like Prof. Jorge Luis Borges believes “Reading should be a form of happiness,” a form that makes you feel “the secret portals of heaven” had opened up over your head, as you hold a book in your hand.

Palgrave Macmillan (London and New York) hailed him as “a well-established critic of the twentieth-century and post-colonial literature, and the leading authority on Sri Lankan English literature.” Routledge (London and New York) endorse this high level of international recognition. WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag (Trier, Germany) called him “A major authority on British literature of the Empire and the Commonwealth in general, and on Sri Lankan writing in particular.”

Literary honour

He is D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Kelaniya. In 2006 he was conferred the Sahitya Ratna highest literary honour of the Arts Council of Sri Lanka (for Lifetime Achievement).

Internationally, in the long list of awards and recognitions he received are: 1988 Foundation Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge’ and admission to Contemporary Authors/New Revisions (U.S.A.: Thomson Gale), Who’s Who in the World and so on.

Prof. D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke is considered a Sri Lankan English scholar who has contributed the most number of publications on English literature locally and internationally. He is a world authority on Conrad and Rushdie, who has presented his papers in many an international forum, papers which have always been published in the Proceedings volumes.

International fame

He received international fame with his first publication, Developing Countries in British Fiction (London: Macmillan, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977). For the first time, a critic from a developing country had studied extensively the reactions of the British to such countries in the context of the historical, political and personal circumstances from which these reactions emerged – a volume acknowledged by international academia as a pioneering step in post-colonial studies.

Images of the Raj: South Asia in the Literature of Empire (London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988) is the first study of Raj literature from its origins in Elizabethan times to the present.

The book won the 1992 State Award for English Writing in the category of Prose Non-fiction.

Joseph Conrad: Beyond Culture and Background (London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990) is the only full-length study of all Joseph Conrad’s fiction by a Third-World scholar, so far.

His highly acclaimed study, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (London and New York: Routledge) appeared in 2007.

Prof. Goonetilleke wrote on Salman Rushdie (London: Macmillan, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998) an updated and expanded second edition with 4 new chapters and new conclusion, Salman Rushdie: Second Edition (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan)

Anthologies

Among the anthologies he has edited, we find, The Penguin New Writing in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1992), which is the first attempt to edit an anthology of Sri Lankan literature in all its three languages, Sinhala, Tamil and English.

It was followed by Modern Sri Lankan Drama: An Anthology (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1991), so far the only anthology of Sri Lankan drama in English, Kaleidoscope: An Anthology of Sri Lankan English Literature Volumes I and II (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa)

Sri Lankan English Literature and the Sri Lankan People 1917-2003 (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa, 2005; 2nd edn. 2007) is so far the only one-volume complete history of Sri Lanka’s English literature from its beginnings to the present. It is also a social, political and cultural history of the period.

We can’t help being impressed by the incredible array of books (21 altogether), in addition to the chapters he has contributed to 19 books, published in Sri Lanka, India, U.K., Europe, U.S.A., Malaysia and the Netherlands, 39 entries on British, American, Norwegian, New Zealand and Sri Lankan literature, written on invitation to reference books and encyclopedias published in Britain and the United States, as well as over 50 articles in prestigious journals around the world.

No doubt as he composed these erudite works, shedding light on the “heart of darkness’ created by imperialism, trading on hitherto untrodden turf as regards anthologies of Sri Lankan English literature, the “secret portals of heaven” were opening up over his head. We get the same feeling whenever we read one of his books.