Life of Pi, some people say (and sales figures suggest), is a must-read. They don’t really say why, only that it is a fascinating story or “just because.” That’s not the reason why I chose to read the book; it was actually given to me as a belated birthday gift. My ex-girlfriend had gone through the trouble of finding me a book she enjoyed and that I might enjoy, in an American pocket edition—which was a good start.
Regretfully, once I started reading, the book did not live up to its start. Don’t get me wrong, the story is well-written, in that it is a smooth and generally enjoyable read. The author spends a lot of attention to details and making the story realistic. There are, however, a few things that bugged me about the book.
First, there is a dragging 100-page character introduction, seemingly with the sole purpose of justifying the title of the book: it introduces the name of the protagonist and establishes that the book is not merely about survival at sea, but about Pi’s life in a larger sense (namely, the contextual importance of preserving Piscine’s life). While it also serves with much detail the purpose of justifying his knowledge about animals that the reader scantly comes across in the rest of the story, it simultaneously makes the book thematically askew, as the introduction is unbalanced by a similar post-adventure digression.
As a vegetarian, I am confronted by how easily Pi gives in to ruthlessly killing and eating animals on board of the boat, even when there is other food to be had. Wondering about the realistic level of the story (that the Pi finds himself in such an ordeal that survival instincts take over from ideals and civilization), I also pondered and played with the possibility of a different story: one that involves a struggle to maintain ideals of the intrinsic value of life in the face of hardships and hunger. Perhaps that would be too unrealistic, and are our morals a mere layer of varnish to cover evolutionary instincts to save ourselves over others, but it could have made for an intellectually stimulating story. (I wonder if it’d sell as well and receive such raving reviews as it has now, even though Martel is obviously a gifted storyteller.) This, of course, is a very personal mesmerizing, of one who thinks a lot about the borders of vegetarianism and its morals.
If the bulk of the book is reminiscent of a Moby Dick and Rubinson Crusoe, in geography and that it breathes the same naturalistic self-preservation alluded to in the previous paragraph, the author seeks refuge in a bit of an absurd ending. It is as if Martel wanted a twist away from the drifting story: it seemed to go nowhere and therefore needed redirection. As a solution, he comes up with an island made out of algae, which stretches the imagination and made my attention wander for sheer lack of plausibility.
In fact, the entire story is, at first, not believed by those who welcome Pi back into the civilized world: two representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Transport. Pi then makes up an alternative short version (in which a French cook first butchers a Chinese sailor and his mother, before being killed and disposed of by Pi) that is supposedly more credible. The irony is, of course, that although the reader is led to believe the first story to be more true than the latter (because of sheer length, if nothing else), either story is exactly as truthful as the other. After all: they’re both fictional.
In a way, a case is made for one untrue story over another, and I’m not buying either, because all the while I am too aware that, realistic aspirations aside, it is a piece of literary imagination. If this story was fascinating, afterwards it felt empty and meaningless. I had learned nothing, other than people can make up elaborate stories that make for swift reading. For that matter, I could have been reading about a miraculous cure for Sibi disease: an actual cure for an actual disease would be much more impressive.
Consider James L. Swanson’s observation about his Manhunt: the 12-day chase for Abraham Lincoln’s killer: “What happened in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1865, and in the swamps and rivers, and the forest and the fields, of Maryland and Virginia during the next twelve days, is far too incredible to have ever been made up.” Apparently, “truth is stranger than fiction,” and all the more amazing for it. I will stick mainly to non-fiction, from now on.
