Fire in the Belly

By Seneka Abeyratne

If someone were to ask me, “what are you?” my likely response would be: “An economist and a creative artist rolled into one.” I have several hobbies, including reading, creative writing (plays, novels, short stories), music (playing the piano), dancing, choreography (ballet, contemporary dance), photography, digital art, and part-time journalism. They are serious hobbies in the sense I invest a great deal of time and effort in them. Fire in the belly: this is the kind of passion I experience when I’m doing meaningful creative work.

Creative writing

I’m now retired and deeply immersed in my hobbies. If I were to prioritize them, I think creative writing would top the list. When I was working for a living, I was an economist by day and a playwright by night. Doing a bit of creative writing every night eventually became a habit. All the hard work, I put into my creative writing, eventually paid off. The 2006 Gratiaen prize was awarded jointly to Isankya Kodituwakku and me. She won the prize for a collection of short stories while I won it for my ‘noir’ play, Three Star K (manuscript). It was performed at the Lionel Wendt and directed by Tracy Holsinger. I also won the 2008 State Literary Award for my book, Three Star K and other Plays (published). In 2017, my novel, Asmita, was published in New York by Dr Cicero Books, a small publisher. My first novel, Fragments of a Fugue, was published in London by Excalibur Press in 1992.

Growth Mindset

In 2008, Carol Dweck, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, published a seminal book entitled, ‘Growth Mindset: The New Psychology of Success’, which brought her instant fame. According to Dweck, children with a growth mindset are likely to become game-changers in adult life in contrast to those with a fixed mindset, who are unlikely to realize their full human potential. Dweck says in her book that ability and core intelligence are not carved in stone. They can be acquired through a concentrated effort by a person of any age. A great deal of emphasis is placed by Dweck on discipline, hard work, and perseverance.

So what is the relevance of the growth-mindset narrative to literature? Well, growth-mindset writers tend to be progressive thinkers, whereas fixed-mindset writers are perfectly content to live in a neophobic cocoon which serves as their comfort zone. It goes without saying that one cannot become an authentic creative writer without possessing a growth-mindset. Had Gabriel Garcia Márquez possessed a fixed-mindset, he could not have written a book like One Hundred Years of Solitude. Márquez was not only an enormously gifted writer; he also had fire in the belly and a boundless capacity for hard work.

Neorealism

Neorealism, a quintessentially Italian artistic movement focusing on the lives of ordinary working people, is a thing of the past. Neorealism in Italian literature commenced in the late 1920s, spearheaded by Alberto Moravia, and ended in the late 1950s. A parallel movement in Italian cinema commenced in the mid-1940s and ended in the early 1950s. This powerful, naturalistic movement brings to mind writers like Quasimodo (poet), Pratolini, Calvino and Moravia (novelists), and movie directors like Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, and Fellini.

From time to time someone writes an unforgettable novel. The first book to knock my socks off was The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia (1907-1990) – a leading figure in 20th-century Italian literature. I was only 13 when I read it and wish I could remember who gave it to me as I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. This was the book that lit a fire in my belly and inspired me to take up creative writing as a serious hobby. Since the book had a picture of a voluptuous, half-naked woman on the front cover, I was afraid that if the boarding master saw it, he would give me six on the backside with his cane for reading obscene literature! So I had to read it on the sly. Though I completed my education at Royal College, I was then at Trinity College (mid-sixties), and there was a secluded spot behind the stone chapel (with the celebrated David Paynter murals) where I surreptitiously read The Woman of Rome and began to see the world in a different light.

Over the next few years I read any book by Moravia I could lay my hands on. What impressed me most about this radical, existential thinker was his stark, unpretentious style of writing and his ability to demonstrate with consummate skill how the lives of ordinary working people (especially women) are viciously manipulated by those in power. Violence, alienation, exploitation, and sexuality are regnant themes in his novels, many of which were made into movies in the fifties and sixties. The Woman of Rome (published in 1947) was the first adult novel I read and it transformed my mind. The main character in this story (Adriana) is a prostitute who becomes a victim of the corrupt heart of fascism, and I recall telling myself (way back then) that one day I’m also going to write a novel about a prostitute. Eventually I did, about 50 years later! My second novel, Asmita, is about a highly intelligent and beautiful young woman from a privileged background who gives up everything to become a freelance hooker.

Another Moravia novel that had a profound impact on me was The Conformist (also published in 1947) which makes a mockery of fascism vis-à-vis the interlocking themes of alienation, loveless sexuality, treachery, political intrigue, and graphic violence. It was made into a movie by Bernardo Bertolucci (1970), starring Jean Louis Trintignant and Dominique Sanda. The film has a distinct baroque flavour that one encounters in many of Bertolucci’s movies.

Though the Italian neorealist movement in literature and cinema ended a long time ago, the fire it ignited in my belly, way back in the sixties, will continue to burn as long as I live. Sadly, due to the unwillingness of mankind as a whole to confront current social and political realities, we are deeply immersed in various forms of denial and escapism. Ironically, it was the disconnect from reality which sparked the Italian neorealist movement in the first half of the previous century. Perhaps the rise of neo-fascism in Western Europe combined with the threat of global environmental catastrophe will trigger a neorealist revival in Italian literature and cinema in the first half of this century.