In Defense of Pi
I've got to jump to the defense of Life of Pi. Though I would direct Pi-haters to Martel's first book, an outstanding collection of stories called The Last of the Helsinki Roccamatios which they may enjoy even if they persist in hating Pi.
The thing I love about Life of Pi is the implicit question of religious belief: Pi offers two stories and asks us to choose between them (to choose either belief in God or belief in No God). Either choices are considered respectable, while agnosticism (the refusal to choose) is abhorred.
What is interesting to me is not this choice, but the unspoken question of choice itself: is it even possible to make this choice?
What, for example, is left to the person who wants to believe in God but is not able to, after considering the world? There is a passage in the Koran which states something along the lines of "no man may believe unless God allows him to" which is to me a fascinating claim and a truly excruciating situation. Of course everybody wants to believe the amazing, magical story of survival that Pi tells. But it impossible to believe. The other story, that horrific yet plausible story, appears to be all that is left to us. Yet the true horror of this situation is not that Pi's story is untrue, but that it is impossible to believe — and thus its telling is merely a torment.
posted by Jonathan Ball @ 2:14 PM
2 Comments:
dude, if premise was enough to earn my approval, i'd have kept watching Jericho after the first two, incredibly bad, episodes. worst screen writing ever.
i am wholly about the authot, tone & the actual writing.
i'm going to drop by the bookstore sometime this week and flip through Pi (wearing big big sunglasses and a hat that's practically seaworthy) to pick out details, etc... but i remember the writing being:
a) boring
b) borderline offensive.
c) something about how he hooks sentences together bothered me.
i really do not need someone to hold my hand through theology. puh-lease.
Nice post, Mr. Ball. I, too, loved Life of Pi. I like how you called the second story "a torment." It's absolutely devastating, isn't it? I think there's another way to look at the theological aspect of the novel too. What is it that he says at the beginning?.. "This is a story that will make you believe in God." ...I sort of agree with that.
The first story that Pi tells is, I think, an elaborate survival tactic -- he can't really talk about what really happened, or otherwise self-destruct. I love how he takes the horror of what really happened, and transforms it into something beautiful. And, by offering up the alternate story at the end, you have to wonder why the hell Martell gives us these two possibilities. Obvioulsy the second story is the true one. Like I said, I think, for Pi, the first story is massive survival mechanism (I mean, the whole novel is about survival). Pi uses his imagination to save himself, even after landing ashore. So, where he says that the story will make you believe in God, I sort of agree. His imagination is God. It's not so much about choosing a story as it is a transformation of something horrific in something beautiful. Life of Pi is a novel that celebrates the imagination and the creative mind. What's not to love?
Post a Comment
<< Home