Yann Martel, Life of Pi (2002)

WEEK 4. YANN MARTEL, LIFE OF PI (2002)

‘It is as the author says, a novel which will make you believe in God – or ask yourself why you don’t’ – Lisa Jardine

‘It is the nugget of a good idea, but it is spread out over 300 pages by an author who seems to have a knack for making the fantastic seem utterly mundane’ – Finlo Rohrer

Yann Martel was born in Spain, lives in Montreal, speaks French as a first language and writes fiction in English. His third book, Life of Pi, won the first Booker Prize to be sponsored by the financial services group Man (known from then on, officially, as the ‘Man Booker Prize’).

Editions:

Yann Martel, Life of Pi, (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2002; Edinburgh: Canongate, 2003).

2002 Shortlist:

Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters
Carol Shields, Unless
William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
Tim Winton, Dirt Music

2002 Judges:

Lisa Jardine (chair), David Baddiel, Russell Celyn Jones, Salley Vickers, Erica Wagner

Topics:

• Children and Animals
• Modes of Veracity: truth, literalism and metaphor
• Narrative and Belief

Reviews:

Justine Jordan, ‘Animal Magnetism’, The Guardian, (25 May 2002)
Tim Adams, ‘A Fishy Tale’, The Observer, (26 May 2002)
Judith Palmer, ‘Life of Pi’, The Independent, (22 June 2002)
Jonathan Kiefer, ‘Fascinating Life of Pi Gives Readers a Reason to Believe’, San Francisco Chronicle, (23 June 2002)
Gary Krist, ‘Taming the Tiger’, New York Times Book Review, (7 July 2002)
Bryan Walsh, ‘Castaway with Karma’, Time, CLX, vi (2 September 2002)

Some Carey Links

[1] In the lecture I make reference to the 'Jerilderie Letter', the most significant surviving example of Kelly's own writing. You can see a facsimile of this letter here, or read the whole thing more easily on wikisource.

[2] Google books has most of this collection of essays on Peter Carey's fiction edited by Andreas Gaile, Fabulating Beauty: Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005), including the following (or most of the text of the following):

'A Contrarian Streak': an interview with Carey.

Carolyn Bliss, '"Lies and Silences": Cultural Masterplots and Existential Authenticity in Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang'

Susan K Martin, 'Dead White Male Heroes: True History of the Kelly Gang and Ned Kelly in Australian Fiction'

[3] If you're interested in the historical Ned Kelly (and who wouldn't be, especially after reading Carey's novel) there's a wealth of material online. Wikipedia is not always to be relied upon, of course, but their page on Kelly is pretty good, and contains links to a deal of other sites.

[4] Also, since this is a course on literary prizes, you may be interested to discover that the Crime Writers Association of Australia run The Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing.

Kell and the Gang

PETER CAREY, TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG (2001)

‘I think they only gave it to me out of sympathy because they know I’ve never won the Booker’ – Beryl Bainbridge on being made a Dame of the British Empire in 2001

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943. True History of the Kelly Gang was his second Booker winner: the first was Oscar and Lucinda in 1988; Illywhacker was shortlisted in 1985.

Editions:

Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang, (London: Faber and Faber, 2001).

2001 Shortlist:

Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Andrew Miller, Oxygen
David Mitchell, number9dream
Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room
Ali Smith, Hotel World

2001 Judges:

Kenneth Baker (chair), Michele Roberts, Kate Summerscale, Philip Hensher, Prof. Rory Watson

Topics:

• The Booker Prize and the ‘Two Horse Race’.
• Australia: Fact and Fiction.
• History and Venriloquy.

Reviews:

Robert Edric, ‘Remaking Ned’, (6 January 2001)The Guardian
Jane Rogers, ‘Remaking the Myth’, The Observer, (7 January 2001)

Ruth Scurr, ‘One Mother’s Son’, The Times, (10 January 2001)

John de Falbe, ‘The Reluctant Outlaw’, The Spectator, (13 January 2001)
Kathy Marks, ‘Hero or Villain?’, Independent, (19 November 2001)
D J Taylor, 'A ventriloquist's tale', New Statesmen (8 January 2001)

Further Reading:

Ian McEwan, Atonement, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001). Though reading any of the shortlisted novels listed in this booklet would be a useful exercise, Atonement is a special case, because it won the first ‘People’s Booker’, voted for by members of the general public, thereby opening up a whole new can of worms: possibly in response, the 2001 judges broke sharply with tradition to give explanations as to why they hadn’t awarded the prize to McEwan.

Atwood

I'm reposting (from last year) a few links that you may find useful if you're thinking about, or writing about, Margaret Atwood.

[1] David Ketterer, '"Another Dimension of Space": Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy and Atwood's Blind Assassin', in Jean-François Leroux and Camille R. La Bossière (eds), Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (University of Ottawa Press, 2004) An essay in a critical collection. This includes a useful interview between Ketterer and Atwood about the novel: I quote from the interview at some length in the lecture.

[2] Eleonora Rao, 'Home and nation in Margaret Atwood's later fiction' in Coral Ann Howells (ed), The Cambridge companion to Margaret Atwood (CUP 2006) Interesting discussion of home and estrangement in Atwood's later writing, including the Blind Assassin.

[3] Nathalie Cooke, Margaret Atwood: a Critical Companion (Greenwood Press 2004) Some useful things here, although (sadly) the chapter on Blind Assassin is not one of the ones available for google-books viewing.

[4] Coral Ann Howells, '"Don't Ever Ask For The True Story": Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin' in Contemporary Canadian Women's Fiction: Refiguring Identities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)

Atwood's latest novel, the SF/dystopian Year of the Flood (2009) has been widely reviewed, not least by your course tutor, here.

Seminar Groups B and C, next Thursday (14th Oct)

If you're in Seminar group B or C then there's a small shake-up next week, for one week only. The lexture is at the usual time and place, but the seminar will take place on Wednesday 13th October at 1pm in Windsor 105. The session is on Atwood's Blind Assassin; so come along if you are interested in that novel. But if you can't make it, for sporting or other reasons, don't worry: you won't be penalised for non-attendance (this week only, I repeat, and stress). The week after, we go back to the regular timetable.

Peter Carey on BBC

Carey has won the prize twice already (we're looking at his Kelly Gang later this term): and if he wins next week it will be for a record breaking third time. Have a listen to what he said to the BBC about the prize.

(He may win, too: although my money's on Tom McCarthy's C ...)

Coetzee's Disgrace

The whole of Coetzee's oeuvre has gotten a lot of attention from critics, but Disgrace has been subject to more readings than any other.

Here, for instance, is the googlebooks version of Encountering Disgrace: reading and teaching Coetzee's novel By Bill McDonald, William E. McDonald (Camden House, 2009), a collection of essays on the novel.

In the lecture I discussed Lucy Valerie Graham's article 'Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace' Journal of Southern African Studies 29:2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 433-444.

I also quote from 'J. M. Coetzee in conversation with Jane Poyner', in Jane Poyner (ed) J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual (Ohio University Press 2006), p. 22.