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I did not enjoy this book at all. I wish I read it with a tiger around. I wish the tiger had eaten me. I think the story was bad. I think the writing was worse. The simple sentences were mind-numbing at times. There were so many of them. I just opened to a random page. I counted. The majority of sentences started with “I.” They were also simple sentences. Subject, verb. Subject, verb. This was not one of those “craft mirrors content” things—the monotony of the ocean and the repetition as representative of the day after day afloat on wave after wave. How do I know? I know because the writing was not good enough to be a “craft mirrors content” thing. You might be asking yourself why I think the writing wasn’t good enough. There are many reasons (including the invasive/disruptive suppositions of what the reader is likely thinking).
First, there are the dazzling clichés. “It seemed the presence of the tiger had saved me from a hyena—surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire” (172). “How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention” (175). “You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it” (115).
Then there is the author’s strange fetish for figurative language involving volcanoes. “The laughter was like a volcano of happiness erupting in me” (153). “It had a two-foot-wide hole in its body, a fistula like a freshly erupted volcano” (161). “I felt I was climbing the side of a volcano and I was about to look over the rim into a boiling cauldron of orange lava” (171). “So while I, who wouldn’t think of pinching a tiger’s paw, let alone of trying to swallow one, received a volcanic roar full in the face and quaked a trembled” (278). “There would emerge a short distance away three or four [whales], a short-lived archipelago of volcanic islands” (290).
In the above examples, look how close some of the page numbers are. That emphasizes not that there were only a few bad pages, but that you can’t turn the damn page without being assaulted by tripe.
Of course I can’t forget the actual story. On page 121, the second section of the book opens with “The ship sank.” Good. Now cut out the preceding 120 pages. They are unnecessary, boring, and infuriating. Why infuriating? First because of the sermonizing. Oh, fifteen-year-old Pi Patel, you are so wise in your acceptance three major faiths that you can open the eyes of the holy men of each faith. Oh, fifteen-year-old Pi Patel, how wise of you to explain that “it is on the inside that God muse be defended, not on the outside…For evil in the open is but evil from within let out” (90) and other profound postulations. (This may sound like the bitter complaints of an atheist criticizing a book just because it mentions God; it’s not, I assure you. I’m an atheist who has no problem reading religious texts or about religious characters. It’s the sermonizing that gets me.) While I can live with illogical arguments espoused in religion, the rhetoric used to defend the existence of zoos is what was really infuriating. I’ve never really given much thought to the morality of zoos. I suppose, had I to decide, I would say that confining animals is more wrong than right, but I’m far from starting a protest outside the monkey cages—I’d rather watch those crazy monkeys swing around in their faux habitat. I won’t rehash all of Pi’s idiotic claims about why animals love zoos (just read the beginning of the book, notably chapter 4), but I will scream “Fallacy! Fallacy!” to each of his points. Again, it’s not the actual issue I care about; rather, it’s the abysmally half-witted logic used to defend the issue.
The plot doesn’t redeem the writing any. I planned to rant and rave over certain absolute absurdities (a man-eating island, a random bought of blindness precisely when another blind castaway should appear), but the end of the book precludes my making that long rant. In fact, the final 25 pages or so were the most enjoyable.
The characterization stinks. I did not care what happened to Pi at all. In fact, I was hoping Richard Parker would eat his dumb-ass just to end this four hundred page stinker sooner. Pi elicits no emotional connection. When he expresses some emotion, it is clunky and mechanical (due, in part, to the simplistic prose and complete lack of transition). For a book like this to work—a book centered entirely on one (human) character—the reader needs to really care about that character. That character needs to come alive. I suppose I can’t even say I wish Pi had died because for me he was never alive to begin with. I cared more about Tom Hanks’s inanimate buddy Wilson than I did about Pi or Richard Parker.
Finally, maybe I’ve been reading too much Perec and have developed high expectations for carefully crafted structure. Because for me, the following is nearly too stupid for words: “Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. For example—I wonder—could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less?” (360). Why is that so bad? Because it’s in chapter 94! This is the first time giving “meaningful shape” is mentioned. The first time! In chapter 94! How f*ing hard is it at this point to bang out another six chapters?! Especially when any given chapter can pretty much be broken into two or combined with others at a whim! It’s like Yann Martel realized “Holy shit, I’m on chapter 94 already. Hmmm…maybe I’ll make this an even 100 chapters and blow people’s minds. I’m a freakin’ genius!”
That’s it. I’m getting too upset just writing about this shipwreck of a novel.
First, there are the dazzling clichés. “It seemed the presence of the tiger had saved me from a hyena—surely a textbook example of jumping from the frying pan into the fire” (172). “How true it is that necessity is the mother of invention” (175). “You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it” (115).
Then there is the author’s strange fetish for figurative language involving volcanoes. “The laughter was like a volcano of happiness erupting in me” (153). “It had a two-foot-wide hole in its body, a fistula like a freshly erupted volcano” (161). “I felt I was climbing the side of a volcano and I was about to look over the rim into a boiling cauldron of orange lava” (171). “So while I, who wouldn’t think of pinching a tiger’s paw, let alone of trying to swallow one, received a volcanic roar full in the face and quaked a trembled” (278). “There would emerge a short distance away three or four [whales], a short-lived archipelago of volcanic islands” (290).
In the above examples, look how close some of the page numbers are. That emphasizes not that there were only a few bad pages, but that you can’t turn the damn page without being assaulted by tripe.
Of course I can’t forget the actual story. On page 121, the second section of the book opens with “The ship sank.” Good. Now cut out the preceding 120 pages. They are unnecessary, boring, and infuriating. Why infuriating? First because of the sermonizing. Oh, fifteen-year-old Pi Patel, you are so wise in your acceptance three major faiths that you can open the eyes of the holy men of each faith. Oh, fifteen-year-old Pi Patel, how wise of you to explain that “it is on the inside that God muse be defended, not on the outside…For evil in the open is but evil from within let out” (90) and other profound postulations. (This may sound like the bitter complaints of an atheist criticizing a book just because it mentions God; it’s not, I assure you. I’m an atheist who has no problem reading religious texts or about religious characters. It’s the sermonizing that gets me.) While I can live with illogical arguments espoused in religion, the rhetoric used to defend the existence of zoos is what was really infuriating. I’ve never really given much thought to the morality of zoos. I suppose, had I to decide, I would say that confining animals is more wrong than right, but I’m far from starting a protest outside the monkey cages—I’d rather watch those crazy monkeys swing around in their faux habitat. I won’t rehash all of Pi’s idiotic claims about why animals love zoos (just read the beginning of the book, notably chapter 4), but I will scream “Fallacy! Fallacy!” to each of his points. Again, it’s not the actual issue I care about; rather, it’s the abysmally half-witted logic used to defend the issue.
The plot doesn’t redeem the writing any. I planned to rant and rave over certain absolute absurdities (a man-eating island, a random bought of blindness precisely when another blind castaway should appear), but the end of the book precludes my making that long rant. In fact, the final 25 pages or so were the most enjoyable.
The characterization stinks. I did not care what happened to Pi at all. In fact, I was hoping Richard Parker would eat his dumb-ass just to end this four hundred page stinker sooner. Pi elicits no emotional connection. When he expresses some emotion, it is clunky and mechanical (due, in part, to the simplistic prose and complete lack of transition). For a book like this to work—a book centered entirely on one (human) character—the reader needs to really care about that character. That character needs to come alive. I suppose I can’t even say I wish Pi had died because for me he was never alive to begin with. I cared more about Tom Hanks’s inanimate buddy Wilson than I did about Pi or Richard Parker.
Finally, maybe I’ve been reading too much Perec and have developed high expectations for carefully crafted structure. Because for me, the following is nearly too stupid for words: “Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. For example—I wonder—could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less?” (360). Why is that so bad? Because it’s in chapter 94! This is the first time giving “meaningful shape” is mentioned. The first time! In chapter 94! How f*ing hard is it at this point to bang out another six chapters?! Especially when any given chapter can pretty much be broken into two or combined with others at a whim! It’s like Yann Martel realized “Holy shit, I’m on chapter 94 already. Hmmm…maybe I’ll make this an even 100 chapters and blow people’s minds. I’m a freakin’ genius!”
That’s it. I’m getting too upset just writing about this shipwreck of a novel.
