Four of these stories have already appeared in Authorsden.com. Likewise Poetrysoup.com. The French National Library/Bibliothèque national refused to stock this book and a few other titles of the same author
...mere deaths and the mostly dead: A Collection of Six Long and Four Short Stories by T. Wignesan
Dedicated to my maternal uncle Mathiaparanam s/o V. N. Kandiah and grandson of Mudaliar Vaithilingam, all of a traditionally Ayurvedic physician family of Tamil Nadu and the old Ceylon
The author of these short and long stories spent almost all his adult life in some of Europe's major cities and towns since the middle fifties. He has not included all the short stories he has written or published in this collection. These stories however chart in some way the author's parcours through some of the old continent's major urban centres: London, Heidelberg, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, and thereabouts. The author does not wish to mask the fact that he has drawn from his own experiences to fashion parts of these narrations, but the finished products are, of course, fictional in intent, content, and “habillement”, even if some of the narrative events may be founded on anecdotes and incidents ”vécus”. The frontiers of the “réel” and the “imaginaire” therefore tend to blur, only at the service of the enhancement and encirclement of what may constitute the truth of “le vécu”. True, truth is stranger than fiction, but truth that is exhibited naked - blinds. One therefore has to rely on the “décodeur de la vérité”: the art of dissimulation. Not to tell the whole truth is tantamount to lying, for lying distorts, makes “irréel” what is tangible. And the reader is none the wiser. Here is where the adage: there is nothing new to narrate becomes fictitious. “Le contenu unique” still necessarily holds the primal place in literature. Only, the writer should not fear the censor or the self-slighted litigant. Writing is lifelong dedication, not a vocation. The writer must be prepared to die like a samurai, though this/the author doesn’t see why he should for/in these stories. The long short stories may be thought of as potential novellas or novels in gist. The author would have had need of more time at his disposal to convert them into novels. The long short stories nonetheless were all of them written at one “go” in 1993 during snatches of moments.
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris - 1993-2008.
ISBN 978-81-8253-122-2
Cyberwit.com, Allahabad, India - 2008, 275p.
Excerpt Four stories from this collection have already been posted on Authorsden.com
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris - 1993-2008.
ISBN 978-81-8253-122-2
Cyberwit.com, Allahabad, India - 2008, 275p.
Professional Reviews
Literary Criticism by Adam Donaldson Powell 5.0 out of 5 stars Literary criticism (2009) by Adam Donaldson Powell
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2015
Literary criticism (2009) by Adam Donaldson Powell (based upon “Mere deaths and the mostly dead : a collection of six long and four short stories”, published byCyberwit.net, India, 2008, ISBN 978-81-8253-122-2, 275 pages, paperback, US$20).
T. Wignesan's peculiar collection of short stories is a study in many disciplines (i.e. absurdity, the transcultural, the multilingual and the delicate art of short literary forms), expressing originality, political and social awareness, humor, proficiency in storytelling and visual-literary adeptness. He is most clearly in his "element" in the story entitled "The Viva at the University of Solfège or the under-upholding", which is one of the more engaging and entertaining of his tales. This particular story made me recall the words of Albert Camus : "From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all."
While I would recommend this book as a "good read", I personally feel that there is a slight unevenness in quality due to the challenges of mastering diversity in content and form, artistic intent, planning, execution and polish in a very difficult medium : the short story collection. This is not only a question of planning what events are essential to in-depth description according to the storyline, but also in regards to overall length of the individual oeuvre. In a few of the stories I found myself getting involved in comments or sequences that proved themselves to be confusing or unneeded distractions in the context of the total story. The sharp pen of an independent editor who both looked at individual stories as well as the total sequencing and contents of the book might have produced a different final product.
That being said, the longer short story seems to be a successful genre for T. Wignesan, and one which I look forward to seeing him develop further.
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Reviews for "...mere deaths and the mostly dead: Six Long and Four Short Stories"
All written in 1993. Similar to my storytelling year, 2012. I like the last review best because it sizes up what I have observed of your stories from the little that I've read.
Congratulations for reposting it here because there is a whole new group of authors here that may be interested in reading the book.
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