Writer, critic and scholar Randy Boyagoda is the chairman of the English department at Ryerson University, Canada. He has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Paris Review and Harper's Magazine. His debut novel, Governor of the Northern Province, was long-listed for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Boyagoda talks to The Times of India about his latest novel, Beggar's Feast, and much more
Tell us about yourself (your childhood, your parents and your early experiences). I was born in a small Canadian town located about 30 minutes outside of Toronto in 1976. My parents immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s and settled there. Along with my sisters, mine was a typical Third World-into-First World childhood: a combination of classic Canadian experiences like ice hockey and classic immigrant experiences like elaborate family trips to the airport to greet relatives who arrived smelling of Tiger Balm and immediately began praising all things Sri Lankan in comparison to all things Canadian. Sometimes they also praised all things British over and against all things Canadian, certainly the older visitors did.
Is your writing autobiographical as according to the overview, it involves family, travel, and religion? If yes, how and why? My writing isn't directly autobiographical in this novel but the story of the main character, Sam Kandy, was inspired by a family story. My travels to Sri Lanka over the years, and the many stories of the island that I've heard from my parents and others, certainly informed the novel. But at the same time, everyday commonplace experiences as a husband, as a father, as a man working in a city - all these came into play as well, transformed and mutated and sublimated such as the story and moment demanded.
How is your book different from other authors/filmmakers in the context that it deals with the life of a small town boy trying to achieve success in a big city? This is an excellent question, because I think it identifies the universal story at the heart of my novel, one that I think a lot of Indian readers will identify with: the experience of leaving a small town behind to seek a better life in the big city, which always involves the great need to return to that small town and prove to people there that you did, in fact, make it in the big city. For all the many adventures and misadventures that Sam Kandy has in Beggar's Feast, at base he wants the people in his birth-village to know that he's made something of himself in the great world because no one there ever thought he'd amount to anything.
Does the protagonist symbolize the struggle of the common man in early 20th century? I think so, in many ways - Sam really is a nobody from nowhere who discovers how much there is to be had in the world at large, a world that, as it becomes increasingly modern and interconnected, means that blood and geography and caste aren't the sole factors in determining someone's success in life: a common man with ambition and smarts can also succeed, though not without costs, as Sam also discovers.
Would there be any parallels that one could draw in the modern world today? I'd say the same phenomenon continues, only in more intense and rapid ways thanks to unprecedented levels of migration and intercultural contact made possible by our technology-dominated daily life.
Through your novel, do you intend to comment on the hypocrisy of colonization? Not in any direct, ideological way. But because the novel tells the story of Ceylon becoming Sri Lanka, of moving from a colonial possession into postcolonial self-possession, some critique of colonization itself is inevitable.
Were there any Indian authors that you appreciated and were influenced by? If no, then who are the people who inspired you? This is a loaded question because I'm not sure how fully Indian any of the authors I'd cite would be! That said, Tagore affords the novel's epigraph, and some of the Indian authors who have influenced me include R K Narayan and Salman Rushdie. Other influential authors include William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. What do all these authors have in common, from my vantage? Their books reveal whole worlds through the telling of stories set in small, out-of-the-way places.
What is the book that you are currently reading? I am currently reading Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
With the advent of the electronic media, do you think, a books success is more to do with the way it is marketed rather than its content? I think its immediate success - meaning, the "buzz" it generates - depends largely on electronic media, especially for emerging authors. Long-term success depends on great writing itself, which will always win out.
Great writing will win in the end: Boyagoda
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Great writing will win in the end: Boyagoda
