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Madhubhashini Ratnayake

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Fiction and the Dream
Sinhala

I like the writing of this.  I read it as a creative piece, and the first insistent reflection about dreams I found slightly boring - because the dissection he feels he had undergone was captured pretty clearly and effectively quite soon into the piece.  It picks up pace when another human being gets into the writing and the reaction of the wife, though pretty misogynistic, is something that is not surprising.  One almost expects such a reaction in Sinhala writing, sadly - a sensitive man as opposed to an insensitive woman who does not have the capacity to understand him. 

 

As the writing went on to talk about the spirituality of the writing process - my thoughts were actually along the lines of 'crap' - and when it went to actually calling the process that, I could identify with what was going on.  In the previous section what I had thought was that writers have no answers - they are as confused and perhaps more - than normal human beings and the fourth movement of this piece (the first - about the dream and his dissection, the second - his attempt to convey his changed state to another human being, the third - writing as spiritual quest and the fourth - writing as not spiritual quest) seemed to bear this out.  And right till the end, I found myself agreeing with what the writer was saying.

 

The last para is a beauty.  Probably one of the best things I had read in Sinhala about what a writer is trying to do.

 

This is my reaction - one reading, one unedited response.

 

Good translation!

Author type: 
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John Banville

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