'English Patient' writer speaks

He's the man behind The English Patient -- the Booker Prize-winning novel that became an Academy Award-winning film.

He's acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, and Wednesday, he spoke at the Annenberg School for Communication, addressing an audience of about 80 students and literary buffs and sharing his experiences and insights as a reader and writer.

Born in Sri Lanka and having moved to Canada in his teens, Ondaatje alluded to his multicultural perspective on life, reinforced by his reading habits.

"We grew up in a tradition of writers living somewhere else," he said.

Ondaatje said that the written word quickly became his window on life.

"The books I've written and the books I've read are where I come from," he said. "Reading a book and then entering the invented time and place is still for me one of the most magical acts."

Meanwhile, "that transporting quality" of reading rubbed off in Ondaatje's writing, he said.

"When we write, we are always open to influences from everywhere near and far," Ondaatje said.

Reflecting on writing The English Patient, Ondaatje stressed the joy of discovering new elements to his characters.

"There is a kind of archaeology that occurs in the writing of the book," he said.

Relishing the joy of developing new characters in his mind as he went along, the author joked that "it would be excessively boring to spend four years writing what I already know."

With time, Ondaatje said, "gradually all these plural energies kind of connect" in an "exhausting and terrifying" process where his plot strands converge.

"You're not sure where it's about, where it's going or whether you're completely mad," he said. "The thing you play at the beginning is the territory. What follows is the adventure."

Ondaatje proceeded to read extracts from his novel Anil's Ghost, tracing the novel's main character, Anil, a westernized expatriate Sri Lankan returning to her unfamiliar, war-torn homeland.

Reacting to the talk, Bakirathi Mani, an English professor at Swarthmore College, said, "He's so gentle with his craft.... There's this beauty in his prose."

Wharton freshman Daniel Cope also noted that Ondaatje "doesn't start off with a definite plot line. It kind of comes off as he's writing."

When asked for his advice to young writers, Ondaatje offered a simple piece of advice -- "rewrite a lot."

The talk was organized by Penn's Women's Studies Program and the Alice Paul Center for Research on Women and Gender, as this year's installment of the annual Judith Roth Berkowitz Endowed Lectureship in Women's Studies.

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