Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Life of Pi
I just finished reading Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning novel. He makes a powerful case for the idea of God - and manages to link up Art with the notion of Divinity.
I found the book to drag a bit in parts while he describes Pi's sojourn by sea. As a consequence, I was forced to skip sections which were too detailed or just not palatable for my vegan consumption. However, I received a shock, like I have not got in a long while, towards the end when he knits up an alternate yarn paralleling the longer one. I was forced to re-read the sections that I had skipped in my impatience.
What actually interested me was the contrast that I experienced vis-a-vis his proposition that cold, hard factuality and crude reality offer very little to the soul. It may be that it is my imagination that is both unbridled and deranged - however, I found the alternate storyline to be clinically efficient and mercilessly savage, in rousing me from under the slight torpor that had set in during the earlier part of the book. I really do not know what it means for the initial story to be "better" - fabular or otherwise.
I found the book to drag a bit in parts while he describes Pi's sojourn by sea. As a consequence, I was forced to skip sections which were too detailed or just not palatable for my vegan consumption. However, I received a shock, like I have not got in a long while, towards the end when he knits up an alternate yarn paralleling the longer one. I was forced to re-read the sections that I had skipped in my impatience.
What actually interested me was the contrast that I experienced vis-a-vis his proposition that cold, hard factuality and crude reality offer very little to the soul. It may be that it is my imagination that is both unbridled and deranged - however, I found the alternate storyline to be clinically efficient and mercilessly savage, in rousing me from under the slight torpor that had set in during the earlier part of the book. I really do not know what it means for the initial story to be "better" - fabular or otherwise.
