by Meg Tufano
If you have ever taken a fiction writing course, you’ll know that the core lesson taught is to make sure your characters do the unexpected thing, but, at the same time, make sure whatever they do seems plausible and true to character. Anne Lamott in what is probably the most engaging book about writing fiction ever written, Bird by Bird, tells about writing so far out into unexpected places that she would become half crazy trying to pull the pieces together for her readers. My own experience, such as it is, in writing fiction is that I find I want to write my own story, about what I have learned and what I have seen, very little of which is unexpected, and even less is probably interesting to a reader.
In Life of Pi, Yann Martel takes the fiction-writer’s advice to the extreme—his book is the most unexpected story imaginable—and if he has lived even one day of the experiences he writes about then my admiration of him knows no bounds because his life must be so interesting that I wonder how he could ever find time to write! How he was able to make the story of a child and a 450 pound tiger surviving a transatlantic journey in a lifeboat believable? This isn’t good fiction writing, this is magic.
I first read Life of Pi when it came out. I remember feeling amazed, exhilarated, breathless, so totally caught up in the story that—like very good writing should do—I just enjoyed the book, didn’t notice the writing (good writing is (according to the fiction writing courses) transparent), set it down, and went on with my life with a little more enthusiasm, and a lot more hope and faith that, if we dig deep, human beings can overcome anything.
I read it again this past month (December 2006) for our book club and, this time around, I’m astounded by Martel’s achievement because even though the story remains riveting, I now can see that what makes the story work is the wisdom that comes through on almost every page. It is the intellectual and spiritual wisdom of the character of the title, Pi, that makes him such a believable character. When the totally unexpected happens, his actions ring true because we have come to trust his judgment about life, people, and, most especially, tigers, all the way through the book.
For an example of his judgment of people, early in the book, Pi has an interaction with one of his teachers, an atheist, who says to him, “There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.” (p. 27) It turns out that the teacher, in his painful childhood, had asked “Where is God?” every day.
Medicine later saved him from his polio and, from then on, he believed in medicine and science; and not God.
To Pi’s way of thinking, the teacher’s “details seemed bleak,” but, more to the point, he didn’t argue with him because, “I was more afraid that in a few words thrown out he might destroy something I loved. What if his words had the effect of polio on me? What a terrible disease that must be if it can destroy God in a man.” (p. 28)
From this moment on in my second time reading the book, I became conscious that I was dealing with a writer who had such a depth of field in his own view of the world that I was going to see things as I’d never seen them before in a novel and, for reasons I’ll explain later, I had missed them the first time I’d read the book. I don’t know what I thought of God when I first read the book, but God is a lot of things to me now, and the most important relationship I have to God is personal, internal, not perfectly defined, but powerful nonetheless. If Pi were to have asked me about this teacher’s atheism at that moment in his life story at that earlier reading during my life story, I would have logically told him to ask the teacher if he thought good medicines could come from God, or our ability to see things rationally and scientifically could be divine gifts. But Pi didn’t need me to point out this rational argument, Pi realizes this for himself a few paragraphs later when he reveals that this atheist teacher became his own favorite teacher, and that, “It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them—and then they leap.”
Pi believes in God, and believes in atheists. A writer who can carry this off—and carry you into understanding how this can make sense—is a miracle worker, wouldn’t you agree?
I have since become an equal-opportunity Christian believer since then (equal-opportunity because I see nothing in the New Testament that won’t admit everyone to the party—and I attend any church I happen to find, especially if a friend invites me, whether to a Mosque, a Buddhist meditation, a Quaker meeting, a Baptist hand-clapping Biblebelt swinging Sunday night foot-stomping celebration, or a serene Catholic Mass.) And I have been seriously humbled and even more seriously edified by the experience of bringing up two boys, then launching them into adulthood. I am reading this book again near the end of (naïve) motherhood—but more on this in a moment.
Where my faith stands now is that I believe, along with C.S. Lewis, that any true good that any person attributes to God, God accepts as you or I would accept a compliment about something we’d made even if someone, by some accident, did not know our name. I’m not even sure God has a name. The name Jesus, in his day, was as close to calling a person John Smith as you could get. And I suspect that was the point: “There among the least am I.”
In other words, I believe “The kingdom of God is within . . .” each and every one of us. (Christianity is not—despite its current reputation—a religion at all but has been taken over by the modern equivalent of the hypocritical Pharisees, but don’t let me get lost and drown in the modern current of disputations.) In sum, I love God, therefore I love people, and, therefore I love what makes us human (intellect, ability to love, and friendship above all). In these respects, I now have a lot in common with Pi. As to motherhood—again, let me digress.
With regard to science, my favorite person in history is Galileo, the inventor of the scientific method. How did Galileo begin his world-changing revolution? He began with the thesis that a rational God created everything. Therefore, everything must have rationality. So? Look around long enough (following strict rational rules) and you will find elegant, rational and amazing truths. Frankly, in my opinion, scientists appear to take the second half of Galileo’s method for granted, but if I try asking a scientist why he or she believes he’ll find anything sensible in his observations—evolutionary theory, for example, seems an extremely sensible, elegant, way to “grow” the world—he or she can only gulp helplessly, and maybe blush if honest; just as I must do when asked why God would permit a child to suffer. My faith in the Christian God demands a leap over what Jesus called his offensiveness, “And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended by me.” (Matt. 11:6; Luke 7:23); and, for scientists, their faith demands a leap over what they might call paradox (two truths which are opposite, but both true, such as human life which grows more complex and intelligent but integrated, but includes the reality of ever-increasing entropy).
But Pi knows the “offense” and paradoxes well, and that’s why he finds that scientists are his brothers. The little doubts that are part and parcel of Pi’s faith (if you have no doubt, you have knowledge, not faith), are also the very foundation of scientific method. Science has faith that it will find something rational, but it never says it “knows” anything, only that “the hypothesis has not been disproven,” that is, it keeps Cartesian doubt close to its heart, as a kind of faith in the human tendency to overrate itself. Both atheist scientists and believers float, but in a shaky, shaking, boat. However, for Pi, even as one has doubts, one must move past them in order to stay on course, just as in science one goes past hypotheses to theories: “[If Christ] burst out from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” (p. 28) Doubt as a basis for coming to faith in ideas is
something Pi can accept, but it is agnostics who “get stuck in [Pi’s] craw.” (p. 28)
Which leads me ineluctably back to the main part of Martel’s wonderfully riveting story:
Pi and the tiger crossing the ocean in a lifeboat. But to tell that part of the story might ruin it for a new reader, so I won’t go too close, but just talk around the edges as to how Pi survives the trip (something we know he will do from the first chapter, so I’m not spoiling things).
Pi’s faith is what is most important to his survival and he has many experiences of the divine during his life. Martel’s description of Pi’s boyhood experience of God is worth reprinting in its entirety:
“One such time [I felt in touch with the sacred was when] I left town on my way back [home], at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven. The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed. The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbour, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a small circle coinciding with centre of a much larger one. Atman met Allah. . . . The presence of God is the finest of rewards.” (p. 62-63)
Faith is Pi’s rudder; and, probably, the entire meaning of the story of Pi’s whole life is encapsulated by his (fictional) biographer in the phrase, “the better story.” (p. 64) Which brings me to what I alluded to earlier, why my interpretation of the book changed so much in the years. “The better story,” certainly describes my own coming to faith. The night I made my own leap over “the offense,” I was surrounded by philosophers, scientists and new acquaintances at what was termed a “Bible study,” something I vaguely assumed would be something like my undergraduate Greek classes, translating the New Testament for homework, vainly arguing about what “is” is. But this study was in the living room of a family home and was more like a (happy) family discussion about important life issues.
On one side of the room were believers, speaking about life in ways that were so attractive, so meaningful, that I listened more to the tone of their words than their logic. I wondered, just for a moment, while still sitting on the agnostic other side of the room, “Could it be true?” And then, in the next instant, I re-evaluated my life as if the story were true. Like Pi, my life was no different from when I’d evaluated it not long before, but my way of seeing my life had changed. A life with ultimate meaning was the better story and, suddenly, it seemed much more plausible, much more likely, made much more sense out of why in the world I cared so much about beauty, doing the right thing, above all, why I cared about my family and my friends, about loving and being loved. It even made more sense out of my suffering, especially my suffering with a very sick, suffering, child (my younger son was seriously ill at birth).
For a long minute I imagined what it would be like to be sitting on the other side of the room with the believers, to see life their way every day, all day, and, just like Pi, I suddenly felt the center of my small circle of self coinciding with a much larger—infinite—one. My chair didn’t move, but I was transported to the “other” side and so entered the mysterious, mighty Kingdom of God. I was launched into the greatest story, and Christened with a kind of spiritual champagne that still bubbles up within.
Which is not to say I haven’t fallen prey to doubt and fear. The tiger that I’m afraid of in my lifeboat weighs not quite 450 pounds, but is represented—not by striped fur—but by the two young men I call my sons. Anyone who has children knows the total anxiety of watching one’s children become adults, each one of whom is now required to be in a separate boat, must deal with his or her own dreads as all of us weave our way across our oceans, the tides working their way on us. I have spent so many nights saying to God, “Why have you forsaken (me, them, us)?” that I fear God will one day reply, “Stop being a nag!”
Pi advises that we face our fears head on: “[Fear is] life’s only true opponent.” “. . . so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. If your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly attacked the opponent who defeated you.” (p. 161) A better description of the method and meaning of depth psychology was never written (at least never so succinctly!) Facing fears is the daily practice that keeps my faith alive!
Writing such as Martel’s in Life of Pi is a “light of words” shining in the darkness that can so powerfully attack us. For all I know, his story may have very well contributed to my having enough imagination to receive faith. I should add that making the story of a tiger and a young boy crossing the ocean believable, Martel has also contributed to my hope that my own two boys will sail safely over the deep. In sum, Martel has written not just an unexpected story, and a believable one, but one that can lead one to “the better story,” the one that not only enlightens, but saves. It is not just good fiction, but, to me, more like a miracle.
If you have ever taken a fiction writing course, you’ll know that the core lesson taught is to make sure your characters do the unexpected thing, but, at the same time, make sure whatever they do seems plausible and true to character. Anne Lamott in what is probably the most engaging book about writing fiction ever written, Bird by Bird, tells about writing so far out into unexpected places that she would become half crazy trying to pull the pieces together for her readers. My own experience, such as it is, in writing fiction is that I find I want to write my own story, about what I have learned and what I have seen, very little of which is unexpected, and even less is probably interesting to a reader.
In Life of Pi, Yann Martel takes the fiction-writer’s advice to the extreme—his book is the most unexpected story imaginable—and if he has lived even one day of the experiences he writes about then my admiration of him knows no bounds because his life must be so interesting that I wonder how he could ever find time to write! How he was able to make the story of a child and a 450 pound tiger surviving a transatlantic journey in a lifeboat believable? This isn’t good fiction writing, this is magic.
I first read Life of Pi when it came out. I remember feeling amazed, exhilarated, breathless, so totally caught up in the story that—like very good writing should do—I just enjoyed the book, didn’t notice the writing (good writing is (according to the fiction writing courses) transparent), set it down, and went on with my life with a little more enthusiasm, and a lot more hope and faith that, if we dig deep, human beings can overcome anything.
I read it again this past month (December 2006) for our book club and, this time around, I’m astounded by Martel’s achievement because even though the story remains riveting, I now can see that what makes the story work is the wisdom that comes through on almost every page. It is the intellectual and spiritual wisdom of the character of the title, Pi, that makes him such a believable character. When the totally unexpected happens, his actions ring true because we have come to trust his judgment about life, people, and, most especially, tigers, all the way through the book.
For an example of his judgment of people, early in the book, Pi has an interaction with one of his teachers, an atheist, who says to him, “There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.” (p. 27) It turns out that the teacher, in his painful childhood, had asked “Where is God?” every day.
Medicine later saved him from his polio and, from then on, he believed in medicine and science; and not God.
To Pi’s way of thinking, the teacher’s “details seemed bleak,” but, more to the point, he didn’t argue with him because, “I was more afraid that in a few words thrown out he might destroy something I loved. What if his words had the effect of polio on me? What a terrible disease that must be if it can destroy God in a man.” (p. 28)
From this moment on in my second time reading the book, I became conscious that I was dealing with a writer who had such a depth of field in his own view of the world that I was going to see things as I’d never seen them before in a novel and, for reasons I’ll explain later, I had missed them the first time I’d read the book. I don’t know what I thought of God when I first read the book, but God is a lot of things to me now, and the most important relationship I have to God is personal, internal, not perfectly defined, but powerful nonetheless. If Pi were to have asked me about this teacher’s atheism at that moment in his life story at that earlier reading during my life story, I would have logically told him to ask the teacher if he thought good medicines could come from God, or our ability to see things rationally and scientifically could be divine gifts. But Pi didn’t need me to point out this rational argument, Pi realizes this for himself a few paragraphs later when he reveals that this atheist teacher became his own favorite teacher, and that, “It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them—and then they leap.”
Pi believes in God, and believes in atheists. A writer who can carry this off—and carry you into understanding how this can make sense—is a miracle worker, wouldn’t you agree?
I have since become an equal-opportunity Christian believer since then (equal-opportunity because I see nothing in the New Testament that won’t admit everyone to the party—and I attend any church I happen to find, especially if a friend invites me, whether to a Mosque, a Buddhist meditation, a Quaker meeting, a Baptist hand-clapping Biblebelt swinging Sunday night foot-stomping celebration, or a serene Catholic Mass.) And I have been seriously humbled and even more seriously edified by the experience of bringing up two boys, then launching them into adulthood. I am reading this book again near the end of (naïve) motherhood—but more on this in a moment.
Where my faith stands now is that I believe, along with C.S. Lewis, that any true good that any person attributes to God, God accepts as you or I would accept a compliment about something we’d made even if someone, by some accident, did not know our name. I’m not even sure God has a name. The name Jesus, in his day, was as close to calling a person John Smith as you could get. And I suspect that was the point: “There among the least am I.”
In other words, I believe “The kingdom of God is within . . .” each and every one of us. (Christianity is not—despite its current reputation—a religion at all but has been taken over by the modern equivalent of the hypocritical Pharisees, but don’t let me get lost and drown in the modern current of disputations.) In sum, I love God, therefore I love people, and, therefore I love what makes us human (intellect, ability to love, and friendship above all). In these respects, I now have a lot in common with Pi. As to motherhood—again, let me digress.
With regard to science, my favorite person in history is Galileo, the inventor of the scientific method. How did Galileo begin his world-changing revolution? He began with the thesis that a rational God created everything. Therefore, everything must have rationality. So? Look around long enough (following strict rational rules) and you will find elegant, rational and amazing truths. Frankly, in my opinion, scientists appear to take the second half of Galileo’s method for granted, but if I try asking a scientist why he or she believes he’ll find anything sensible in his observations—evolutionary theory, for example, seems an extremely sensible, elegant, way to “grow” the world—he or she can only gulp helplessly, and maybe blush if honest; just as I must do when asked why God would permit a child to suffer. My faith in the Christian God demands a leap over what Jesus called his offensiveness, “And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended by me.” (Matt. 11:6; Luke 7:23); and, for scientists, their faith demands a leap over what they might call paradox (two truths which are opposite, but both true, such as human life which grows more complex and intelligent but integrated, but includes the reality of ever-increasing entropy).
But Pi knows the “offense” and paradoxes well, and that’s why he finds that scientists are his brothers. The little doubts that are part and parcel of Pi’s faith (if you have no doubt, you have knowledge, not faith), are also the very foundation of scientific method. Science has faith that it will find something rational, but it never says it “knows” anything, only that “the hypothesis has not been disproven,” that is, it keeps Cartesian doubt close to its heart, as a kind of faith in the human tendency to overrate itself. Both atheist scientists and believers float, but in a shaky, shaking, boat. However, for Pi, even as one has doubts, one must move past them in order to stay on course, just as in science one goes past hypotheses to theories: “[If Christ] burst out from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” (p. 28) Doubt as a basis for coming to faith in ideas is
something Pi can accept, but it is agnostics who “get stuck in [Pi’s] craw.” (p. 28)
Which leads me ineluctably back to the main part of Martel’s wonderfully riveting story:
Pi and the tiger crossing the ocean in a lifeboat. But to tell that part of the story might ruin it for a new reader, so I won’t go too close, but just talk around the edges as to how Pi survives the trip (something we know he will do from the first chapter, so I’m not spoiling things).
Pi’s faith is what is most important to his survival and he has many experiences of the divine during his life. Martel’s description of Pi’s boyhood experience of God is worth reprinting in its entirety:
“One such time [I felt in touch with the sacred was when] I left town on my way back [home], at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven. The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it had changed. The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful. Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity. Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with sun. Every element lived in harmonious relation with its neighbour, and all was kith and kin. I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal. I felt like the centre of a small circle coinciding with centre of a much larger one. Atman met Allah. . . . The presence of God is the finest of rewards.” (p. 62-63)
Faith is Pi’s rudder; and, probably, the entire meaning of the story of Pi’s whole life is encapsulated by his (fictional) biographer in the phrase, “the better story.” (p. 64) Which brings me to what I alluded to earlier, why my interpretation of the book changed so much in the years. “The better story,” certainly describes my own coming to faith. The night I made my own leap over “the offense,” I was surrounded by philosophers, scientists and new acquaintances at what was termed a “Bible study,” something I vaguely assumed would be something like my undergraduate Greek classes, translating the New Testament for homework, vainly arguing about what “is” is. But this study was in the living room of a family home and was more like a (happy) family discussion about important life issues.
On one side of the room were believers, speaking about life in ways that were so attractive, so meaningful, that I listened more to the tone of their words than their logic. I wondered, just for a moment, while still sitting on the agnostic other side of the room, “Could it be true?” And then, in the next instant, I re-evaluated my life as if the story were true. Like Pi, my life was no different from when I’d evaluated it not long before, but my way of seeing my life had changed. A life with ultimate meaning was the better story and, suddenly, it seemed much more plausible, much more likely, made much more sense out of why in the world I cared so much about beauty, doing the right thing, above all, why I cared about my family and my friends, about loving and being loved. It even made more sense out of my suffering, especially my suffering with a very sick, suffering, child (my younger son was seriously ill at birth).
For a long minute I imagined what it would be like to be sitting on the other side of the room with the believers, to see life their way every day, all day, and, just like Pi, I suddenly felt the center of my small circle of self coinciding with a much larger—infinite—one. My chair didn’t move, but I was transported to the “other” side and so entered the mysterious, mighty Kingdom of God. I was launched into the greatest story, and Christened with a kind of spiritual champagne that still bubbles up within.
Which is not to say I haven’t fallen prey to doubt and fear. The tiger that I’m afraid of in my lifeboat weighs not quite 450 pounds, but is represented—not by striped fur—but by the two young men I call my sons. Anyone who has children knows the total anxiety of watching one’s children become adults, each one of whom is now required to be in a separate boat, must deal with his or her own dreads as all of us weave our way across our oceans, the tides working their way on us. I have spent so many nights saying to God, “Why have you forsaken (me, them, us)?” that I fear God will one day reply, “Stop being a nag!”
Pi advises that we face our fears head on: “[Fear is] life’s only true opponent.” “. . . so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. If your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly attacked the opponent who defeated you.” (p. 161) A better description of the method and meaning of depth psychology was never written (at least never so succinctly!) Facing fears is the daily practice that keeps my faith alive!
Writing such as Martel’s in Life of Pi is a “light of words” shining in the darkness that can so powerfully attack us. For all I know, his story may have very well contributed to my having enough imagination to receive faith. I should add that making the story of a tiger and a young boy crossing the ocean believable, Martel has also contributed to my hope that my own two boys will sail safely over the deep. In sum, Martel has written not just an unexpected story, and a believable one, but one that can lead one to “the better story,” the one that not only enlightens, but saves. It is not just good fiction, but, to me, more like a miracle.
No comments:
Post a Comment