![\"Janice](\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/files\/2014\/03\/IMG_20140305_181349003.jpg\")
<\/a>Janice Pariat<\/p><\/div>\n
Wednesday evening gave us a rare glimpse into a work in progress. Pariat\u2019s first novel, Seahorse<\/i>, is due for publication in November. Now in the editing stage, this is writing fresh from the wellspring. Instead of a crisp reading copy flagged with bookmarks, the author read extracts of the draft straight from her iPad.<\/p>\n
The protagonist of Seahorse<\/i> is Nehemiah, a young man whose tutor and lover, Nicholas, suddenly and mysteriously disappears. Pariat\u2019s first extract told of this abrupt absence, of the narrator\u2019s visit to Nicholas\u2019 deserted bungalow, \u2018the table set for ghosts\u2019, the space uncluttered and uninhabited, the aquarium empty, the books, once littering surfaces, now gone. But as we learn, \u2018this was not death\u2019 which leaves behind \u2018accumulated belongings\u2019 as mementos of a life; instead \u2018it was as though he had never existed\u2019, as if a tide had come and \u2018washed away completely\u2019 all traces. The loss, and its accompanying hope of reunion, follow the narrator through the 1990s in Delhi and across several years to a new life London. \u2018We are shaped by absence\u2019, Nehemiah claims, \u2018spaces in the trellis by which we trail\u2019.<\/p>\n
In a second excerpt, organic and aquatic imagery gave way to the tremulous sexual tensions of hot-housed university students. 90\u2019s India, Pariat explained, was undergoing a \u2018swift and sweeping liberalisation\u2019; caught up in the clamour, Nehemiah and his fellow students vie to give the appearance of joining in. Young men swap \u2018cigarettes, alcohol and lies\u2019 and watch adult films on late night cable, fantasising over the \u2018montage of flesh and desire\u2019 where intimacy segues seamlessly from initial embraces to rumpled bed-sheets. In this haze of hormones and longing \u2018everything was sexualised, yet it was impossible to talk about sex\u2019.<\/p>\n
Later, desire and incompleteness merge in an unexpected way when Nehemiah muses on Michelangelo\u2019s David. Here is perfection in stone, dominating the gallery where it stands. Yet in the next room, an unfinished work by the same hand shows figures of prisoners emerging from stone whose half-formed presence \u2018will not stun you to silence, but rouse you to it\u2019. Here is the unconsummated, yet tangible: \u2018endless metaphor and infinite possibility\u2019. This is a quality that the narrator recognises in himself. We are all \u2018unconcluded\u2019, and thus we are \u2018full of possibility\u2019. David, for all his power, \u2018will only ever be David\u2019.<\/p>\n
What might seem a passing nod to classicist sculpture takes on a deeper resonance when the novel\u2019s underlying themes are unpacked. Seahorse<\/i> is a reworking of the myth of Poseidon and his lover, Pelops, a young man who becomes cupbearer to the underwater god and ultimately wins the daughter of a tyrannical king.\u00a0 <\/span>As Pariat pointed out, Pelops was sacrificed by his father and served up as a supper to the Olympians, who discovered the nature of the dish and had the boy restored to life. As his shoulder had already been eaten, Pelops could never be completely whole.\u00a0 <\/span>Absence and loss, breaking and repair, love and violence. Grisly myths and watery worlds. Answering questions about the writing process, Pariat stated that \u2018a writer is like an orthodontist, setting and resetting, breaking and mangling\u2019 to find the form a story must take. In the case of Seahorse<\/i>, Pariat planned to write a novella and ultimately created a larger story, one which \u2018unfurled\u2019 and could not be readily contained. There were evidently bigger bones to deal with.<\/p>\n Like the language of the novel itself, Pariat\u2019s voice contained the subtle nuances of literary English and the rhythms of traditional Indian storytelling. It was one of those sweet, melodic voices that could entrance an audience by reading the phonebook, but given the material, we were near hypnosis. At the end of the reading, a colleague turned to me seeking a metaphor for Pariat\u2019s delivery. \u2018Honey in the ear\u2019, I replied. \u2018Yes\u2019 she said, \u2018but all that breaking and cracking!\u2019<\/p>\n Seahorse<\/i> <\/strong>will be published by Vintage Books, Random House India later this year.<\/p>\n Janice Pariat is the current Wallace Trust Fellow at Kent. She is editor of the literary journal Pyrta<\/i>, is widely published as a poet, reviewer and cultural journalist in magazines and newspapers, and won awards for her 2012 short story collection, Boats on La<\/a>nd<\/i>. She divides her time between Delhi and London.<\/p>\n Janice Pariat <\/strong>will be talking more about her work and its relationship to oral story traditions on Thursday 13th<\/sup> March <\/strong>as part of the School\u2019s Postcolonial Research Seminar <\/strong>series. Find these research events in Keynes seminar room 14, 4pm.<\/p>\n \u00a0Next in the Reading Series, novelist Evie Wyld: Wednesday 12th<\/sup> March, 6pm<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>See you then.<\/p>\n \u00a0Sonia<\/p>\n Stop press – last call for submissions to Kent’s exciting new literary magazine Box[ed]<\/strong>, edited by MA students from the Centre for Creative Writing. Deadline for submissions is Friday 14th March. For more info, see boxedmagazineblog.wordpress.com<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wednesday evening gave us a rare glimpse into a work in progress. Pariat\u2019s first novel, Seahorse, is due for publication in November. Now in the editing stage, this is writing fresh from the wellspring. Instead of a crisp reading copy flagged with bookmarks, the author read extracts of the draft straight from her iPad. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}