From: "Faulk, Tina" <FAULK-AT-cbr.smtpgate.amsa.gov.au>
Date: Mon, 05 Aug 96 09:48:00 EST



Tony, you asked me about Michael Ondaatje's The Cinnamon Peeler -  I was 
interested  in Ondaatje (who happens to come from the same Dutch Burgher 
community as myself - his mother took his family to the UK, my parents 
brought their children to Australia) using the same image of the Cinnamon 
Peeler in two separate instances, the first, as a poem, in which he seems to 
suggest that the scent of cinnamon, which was one of the most compelling 
reasons for the Dutch to take the island from the Portuguese, the spice 
trade- was imprinted in the body of the peeler, who then transferred it 
 -during sex,implied - to the body of his woman, so that she, henceforth, was 
'stamped' or imprinted with his scent.  The second instance is the anecdote 
where his father picks up a cinnamon peeler on his drunken drive back to his 
home in Kegalle.  I'm not sure of the veacity of this ancedote - cinnamon 
cutting/peeling is a dying trade, a bit like harness making, but it is a 
trade unique to the island, a bit like the kretek/cloves of Indonesia.
On subalternation and Kip - I think there is a lot of Ondaatje himself in 
Kirpal Singh, but the return to India is somehow uncharacteristic, unless 
Ondaatje still thinks of Ceylon/Sri Lankan as a meterphorical home.  On the 
'where shall we place Ondaatje as a writer' I believe he calls himself a 
Eurasian Canadian - anyway, some thoughts  to mull over. Tina Faulk


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