Blue: Short stories for adults

Reviewed by Dylan Perera

Potter Stewart, a celebrated justice of the US Supreme Court, and until he ruled himself out, a main contender for chief justice, left us with one of the finest assessments about censorship. "Censorship is for societies which lack confidence". He is however better known for his differentiation of pornography from art with the immortal words - "I know it when I see it". The two epigrams may serve as the starting point to review the first publication of a book of erotic fiction in a country trying to Talibanise its deep rooted lack of confidence.

Of course one can well look upon with wonder and bafflement at the insular, self-obsessed insensitivity of this project erotica, what with plague of ills visiting this blighted country. On the other hand why not read and write erotica in the same moral vacuum as the debate on war crimes takes place. Surely our moral vacuum is big enough - then why not jolly salaciousness instead of sanctimonious outrage. Why not construct a fantasy narrative of transitory joy and love instead of hatred and conspiracy. After all it matters so little if it did really happen - its how good and comfortable we feel.

Published by the irrepressible and flamboyant fixtures on the arts scene in Colombo the dynamic duo of Perera & Hussein, Blue has an unaffected casual surefootedness of writers who know clearly what they want to say and do so with passionate enthusiasm and refreshing honesty if not with greatest of craft. And if you are slightly allergic to the pretentiousness of the English literary circuit, Blue is the bracing change that might well keep you getting fresh all day.

Erotica really is not serious literature. It is escapist, predictable and shallow. That still does not make it easy to execute. The single die on which the success of a piece hinges on is intensity - ultimately the capacity to invest a single biological urge with an aching significance. And all the while the writer must weigh his (or her) course between the Scylla of prudery and the Charbydis of porn. After all the merits of a piece of erotica is not merely a matter of rising to the occasion but the manner of one's rising - without an accompanying pizzicato of laughter, surprise, excitement or wonder it is nothing.

One disappointment was to find that most of the stories tended to be within a narrow band of time and place and class. Apart from an occasional wobble, our erotic imagination orbits the middle class Colombo of the present. Disappointing that our glorious history littered with potentially risqué anecdotes (what queen rubbed food on her body with which to feed her imprisoned husband), a steamy tropical island, a society with a myriad of social cultural and religious identities waiting to be transgressed, did not inspire a more imaginative exploration. Dare we not in these repressive times let our imaginations out of our bedrooms I wonder?

Shehan Karunatillake is a fine writer despite the fact that Rajpal Abeynaike says so. And he's had a pretty good world cup what with the piece in the Guardian and all. Sadly he slaps his erotica down on the table in great grubby portions of remorselessly sordid squalid suburban desperation washed down with equal parts of coarse gutter humour and scatological references that one is forced to stiffen ones wilting resolve in order to read 'Veysee' through to its flat, stale and wretched end.

If erotica were the art of gilding the golden lily Karunatillake lays it on thick with a particularly odious gritty paste. The saving grace - some hardboiled crime fiction one liners a la Mickey Spillane.

The undoubted jewel in the circlet was Hussein's own bold, remarkably sensitive, cleverly written 'Undercover'. The sexual yearnings of a middle aged, lower middle class Muslim woman is hardly the ripping stuff to flame the loins - but Hussein's rendition transforms the work, raising it above its genre into a fine and powerful short story of the sad small triumph of the human spirit.

Drawing on the thrill of the forbidden with undertones of Somerset Maugham and Anais Nin, rarely has a Sri Lankan writer found a voice of such perfect conviction and clarity as in this piece.

Located at the other end of the social scale is Sam Perera's The Proposal - an urbane uber-sophicate, tongue in both cheeks, GQ styled, brand obsessed tale of love masquerading as lust.

To venture a variation on the theme that Men are from Mars and women Venus, men it seems write more explicitly while women write internalis ed erotica. Compare the syrupy delicacy of the Lava Lamp or the tremulous transgressions of Me and Mrs J, both by women, with the self absorbed, action driven, grasping sexuality of I Want to Hold Your Hand or 76, Park Avenue where (dare I say it) a projection of power always underlies the narrative. Tariq Solomons, in Bus Stop, stands out in the casual pre-lapsarian innocence with which he invests his tale of utterly naughty young lovers of the 60s.

Of the poetry Sunela Jayawardena's 'Courtyard' in particular was quietly pleasing in its crafted cinematic juxtapositions of sensual close ups of lovers and panning long shots of a vibrant nature beyond an ancient courtyard with its 'silvered pool and windblown lotus'. The peculiar ephemerality of a fast fading, dry zone sunsets, the wind among the ruins itself heavy with the lingering weight of the moment. To sleep naked with moonlight and Jasmines. Exhilarating stuff.

One wonders whether Blue had it origins in an inebriated game of truth or dare. In any event it is a worthy experiment, a great exercise both in writing and for finding a sure honest voice of one's own. More's the pity that more of the 'names' among current writers did not care to find their way into the volume. That being said one looks forward with an unabashed, ill concealed and prurient delight to the forthcoming second volume.