Some stories are written on the covers themselves ~ Malinda Words

We have always been told not to judge a book by its cover, and yet it’s the ‘cover’ that is most often purchased. After all, even if you’ve read all the reviews written on the particular book, you still have to read it before you can come to a conclusion about its literary worth.

Obviously ‘book’ and ‘cover’ are metaphors here. The problem is, few things in this world come naked as morning, as first love or a baby’s smile. There’s wrapping paper, ribbons and even enticing payoff lines. The judgement comes later.

And yet, we flip through the pages. We browse. We try to get some inkling of the flavour within. A few glances won’t give us enough to make a determination.

All this is known. I try not to be overly moved by appearance, but I am as fallible as the next person. Time fixes this problem of course. We get to read or we have it all read to us. Eventually we come to some assessment of the book and have something to say about the cover that we might not have said when first we saw it.

What got me going about covers and what’s between them is a book of short stories written by Rangana Ariyadasa, ‘Me kaalaye kisivekuth kehel leli mathin lissaa vetenne natha (These days, no one on plantain peels slips and falls).’ It’s a strange and enticing design idea, with the first half of the title on the back cover. The first word appearing on the front cover is clipped, forcing the reader to flip the book to see how it beings. That’s just the text. The image is as intriguing. There’s a human figure standing on the ‘layanna (the Sinhala equivalent of the letter ‘L’)’ with an arm outstretched. Imminent slippage is indicated and yet, in print, at no risk whatsoever.

Yes, it’s a long title, but there have been longer ones. For example, ‘We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda,’ Philip Gourevitch’s account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus are estimated to have been killed. There’s also ‘This way to the gas chambers, ladies and gentlemen,’ a collection of short stories by Tadeusz Borowski, based on his experience in concentration camps.

Rangana is an old friend. I had translated one of his earlier short stories (included in this collection). So the book was a gift. Rangana has an extraordinary imagination. He can conjure metaphors at will, it seems. He can extract an entire political economy, separate it into different colours and lay it out on anything which, at the particular moment, captures his attention.

‘Samarapala wondered why the corpse of the boy did not weigh more than this. It should, it must weigh more than it felt. What was even more perplexing is the fact that he would at times think that it was as light as a ball of cotton wool. Therefore, instead of carrying the corpse, he held on to it firmly as he walked, fearing that he might lose his grip and it would rise up and float away.’

‘What a wonderful first paragraph!’ This was my wife, essentially, putting into words exactly what I had felt when I read those lines. I haven’t had the opportunity to continue reading so, as per the ‘early warning’ above, I will reserve my judgment.

I am aware that many believe that the best first paragraph is the one with which Charles Dickens started ‘A tale of two cities’: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’

Seems easy. After all it’s about tossing in a bunch of words, each with its antonymic. Something like the ata lo dahama: laabha-alaabha, nindaa-prashansaa, duka-sepa, yasa-ayasa. But then, no one ever thought of it before!

Rangana’s first paragraph is an amazingly detailed painting. He’s describing that which is seen and dips into the unseen as well, the latter bing the more challenging exercise. Even if I was not captured by the cover (and I am), this paragraph most put the issue beyond doubt: I am imprisoned and it is in this state of incarceration that I will have to read and, if called upon to do so, pronounce judgment.

And I am thinking, right now, at 1.29 am on a Thursday with a deadline still more than 10 hours away, ‘It is the best of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the epoch of belief, it is the season of light, and it is the spring of hope. Some ethereal light has entered my quarters. It floats around, flitting from table to chair, to bookcase, to book, and from one fingertip to the next and the next and so on, tracing an indelible legend: ‘some stories are written on the cover itself.’

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

16 February 2023

Some stories are written on the covers themselves

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