Catching up with Yann Martel, Part 2

Imagine how delighted I was to find that the Sept. 3 Martel pick for our P.M. is Jane Austen's The Watsons. Finally, a book I've already read! And very recently as well; see my earlier review.

I've been working away at his list and am reading classics I should have read eons ago! I've just finished Voltaire's Candide. (translated from the French) This is something I've always been meaning to read and it is so short I wonder why I've been procrastinating. I really enjoyed it -- I didn't expect it to be so funny. Candide travels the world as a 'candid' observer, one who does not have set ideas through which to filter his experiences. He travels with others who try to explain everything through their thought systems , especially by the eternal optimism of the tutor Pangloss. I don't know enough philosophy to be able to identify all the references made to various ideas, but even without a philosophical background the story is an amusing spoof of chivalric romances. Candide and his companions travel the world, having terrible things happen everywhere. Even when they finally reach El Dorado they are not satisfied and end up leaving to return to Europe where their riches and sweethearts await. The King of El Dorado tells them, "when one is reasonably content in a place, one ought to stay there", but they leave anyhow. That quote and the most famous last line, "we must cultivate our garden" are ones I've copied out to think about.

I've also finished Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold (translated from Spanish) and I read it in the same edition with the odd purple cover that Martel mentions in his letter to Stephen Harper. This is a journalistic novel; it's a look at a murder which happened years before, and the narrator is going back to try to unravel its causes. The narrator is implicated in the events, as it occurred in his own small town and the main players were all friends of his. Memories are suspect, recollections vague, and nobody is taking any responsibility for how it happened or how they might have stepped in to stop it but didn't. According to what I've read, the 'chronicle' (fictional reportage) is an established genre in Latin American fiction, and this is an example of that questioning of the veracity of eyewitness accounts. There is some uncertainty as to whether the murdered man was actually guilty of the crime he was accused of; I felt that the narrator could have been equally guilty himself. I liked the possibilities that implied. I was impressed at the beginning but felt that the story slowed down and finally just trailed to a conclusion. I can't help but admire the style; his writing is so masterful. However, this was (for me) a slight story, of some interest but not an immediate reread.

Now just two more reads before I'm caught up to the voracious book suggester Yann Martel...

Wanted : Ivan Ilych, dead or alive

I've finally read the first book Yann Martel sent to our PM, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych. It was quite a chore finding a copy. As I mentioned previously, the library and my favourite local bookstore were both out. In the vast personal collection of books in my household there was no Ivan Ilych. At the other stores I searched, no Ivan. I was actually reduced to, yes, reading it online. I actually found a full text version, but don't like reading off a screen, or sitting in my computer chair reading extensively, so I printed it off and read it, pen in hand, in my comfy reading chair. Much better.
And it is a good read. It is short, and to the point, plotwise; but Tolstoy is a master of characterization, and the elements of discomfort the people who know Ivan Ilych feel about his imminent death are brilliantly exposed. On hearing of his death, his coworkers' first thoughts are about how this will affect their various promotions and new positions. While he is suffering greatly, his daughter complains to her mother, "Is it our fault?...It's as if we were to blame! I feel sorry for papa, but why should we be tortured?" Everyone participates in a lie to make things easier, by pretending that Ivan is only ill, rather than clearly dying. They require Ivan to also participate in this lie in order to keep the peace. But Ivan sees through it, even as he acquieses.

The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position.

Death leads to a reexamination of his life. As Ivan suffers he realizes that death comes to us all; while recognizing this fact before, he now fully grasps its reality. What makes his dying more difficult is that he has time to reflect on his life, and he begins to wonder, "What if my whole life has been wrong?"

It occured to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.

When looking back on my life, I do not want to be similarly struck with the idea that my priorities were all wrong. I hope that in reading this book, we may all be startled into making that sort of evaluation while we still have time to change our habits and live to our uttermost ability. I also like to think I would not be as transparently self-interested in such a situation as Ivan's friends and family, but while reading there are certain mannerisms in many of the characters that you can see yourself in, rather unpleasantly at times. As Yann Martel himself put it in his letter to PM Stephen Harper:

"That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, as in the case of this book, it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are existentially thicker."

And is that the purpose of reading for all of us bibliophiles, is our quest really to become existentially thicker? I like that explanation, it values all the interior work we quiet readers do. I'm quite sure that I won't look back on my life on my deathbed wishing I'd worked more, or been more popular, or even made more money, but I am equally certain that I'll be wishing I had just a little more time to read all the books still waiting for me. Despite Tolstoy's emphasis on Ivan's dying alone, with no one but his servant Gerasim to truly recognize it and care, he did have me teary at one point, proving that great art can bridge that gap between self interest and empathy. A wonderful book, one I'm glad won't be on my eternal TBR list.

A Whisper of an Invisible read

I've just read The Invisible by Swedish author Mats Wahl. He's written many books & screenplays in Swedish, but this is the first to be translated. It's being packaged as a YA novel; I would think this is because the characters are primarily high school students in Northern Sweden.
The premise : Hilmer Eriksson discovers one morning at school that he has become invisible. Shortly after his realization, a police officer enters and addresses the class, asking for any help in finding a missing classmate...Hilmer Eriksson. The police officer tries to unravel Hilmer's actions on the day he went missing, and Hilmer, not recalling anything, tries to stick as close as possible to the police so he can find out what happened to him. The missing persons case slowly and inexorably becomes a murder investigation.
This novel is in the vein of the very popular Swedish crime novel. There seems to be yet another Scandinavian crime writer appearing every month recently. I've read a couple and they are usually bleak and spare and quite dark. This novel follows that structure, but with not quite as much psychopathic behaviour or sexual detail. I would assume that has to do with its YA audience. It is an intriguing premise, and the narrative switches back and forth between Hilmer's and the police detective's point of view. I liked the plotting; it was utterly and sadly believable. However, I think that Mats Wahl's screenplay writing has come to the fore here; this novel reads like a screen treatment. As I was reading, I could see it as a tv special. The descriptive and sparse nature of his prose, along with little tics like trying to humanize the detective by having him on a diet (sigh), makes me think of many other police dramas that I've watched. Still, it doesn't take away from the idea of the book, and the shadowy, invisible Hilmer is the special touch that makes this a recommended read for teens. It has been made into a Swedish film, and now remade into an American one, complete with American name changes and plot overhauls.

This novel presents an intriguing take on the social issues being dealt with in small town Sweden, although both the movies appear to have completely erased the social implications of Hilmer's death. If you like sparely written crime novels, this is a good pick. If you are looking for a more in-depth read, try any of the plethora of Scandinavian crime writers out there (Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason...).