Life of Pi, Yann Martel,
(Harcourt, Inc., N.Y., 2001).
This book has been
around my house for quite some time but I have only recently discovered it and
read it. It was given to my late wife by her best friend but I don’t remember
her saying she had read it (she probably did). Anyway, after two different book
buyers were here buying books I found it staring up at me every time I passed
by this particularly ravished bookcase. And, because of the publicity about the
movie I finally decided to read it. I confess that I had been avoiding it
because of the title. All my life I have instinctively avoided anything having
to do with arithmetic or mathematics above the level of basic addition and
subtraction and I assumed that Pi was involved with that mysterious universe.
This Pi is not, except in an extremely marginal way.
It turns out this book is quite fascinating, as they say
these days “a jolly good read” (I absolutely despise using verbs as nouns), but
fascinating for an unusual reason. A clue to this can be seen on a statement on
the cover that reads, “A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power
of fiction.” I don’t know about the “soul-sustaining” bit but it certainly says
something about the power of fiction. It is in fact a most outrageous and
fantastic work of fiction, but even so you experience it as a real adventure.
It is the finest example of verisimilitude I have ever encountered.
Realistically, you have to know it is absolutely fictional, but that doesn’t
seem to matter as you are completely caught up in the story anyway. It proves
to me that fiction merely has to be “realistic” to be somehow “real.” The critic, W. H. Gass, once wrote: “…The
worlds which… the writer creates, are only imaginatively possible ones; they
need not be at all like any real one, and the metaphysics which any fiction
implies is likely to be meaningless or false if taken as nature’s own.” But of
course there always has to be some connection to reality, in this case the
ocean is real, lifeboats are real, tigers are real, as are orangutans and
zebras, animal training and zoos, but putting all of this together in one small
lifeboat for a period of 277 days, and leading the reader to believe and enjoy
it is a most remarkable feat.
I am not a great fan of Hemingway, although I was when I was
in college, as were most of my peers. But as Hemingway’s reputation rested so
heavily on PR his reputation has diminished over the years. Even so he did
sometimes offer observations about books that are worthy of thought : “All good
books have one thing in common—they are truer than if they had really happened,
and after you’ve read one of them you will feel all that happened, happened to
you and then it belongs to you forever: the happiness and unhappiness, good and
evil, ecstasy and sorrow, the food, wine, beds, people, and the weather.”
Life of Pi seems to me like one of those books that may well
be “truer than true.” Having now read it I am sure it will never completely
leave me, the story is so compelling, but at the same time so completely
far-fetched, so thought provoking and philosophical, and at the same time sometimes
so fantastic as to leave you pondering not only the nature of fiction but also
the meaning of life and relationships in general. Once you get past the first
chapter or two (which I found not obviously connected to the actual story) you
find it one of those really well-written books that are hard to put down until
you know the ending. The ending of this book is largely left up to the reader.
I do not believe a movie made out of this book can possibly
capture the real essence of the story although I can see how the situation can
be exploited for that purpose. I rarely watch motion pictures anymore (as they
are always far too fictional, being nothing but make-believe), but I suspect I
will make an exception for this one if only to prove the point. Books yes,
motion pictures not so much. I suspect if you watch the movie but don’t read
the book you will encounter two widely different experiences, one rather
profoundly different from the other.
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