Just finished a good book:)
LIFE OF PI: A NOVEL
by Yann Martel
"Likewise, there is no one answer to the question, "What is Life of Pi about?" There will be probably be as many answers to that question as there are people who read the book. A perusal of online booksellers reveals that this book can be categorized as a survival story, a tall tale, an action piece, a work about human/animal relationships, and a fiction about (1) India, (2) adolescence, (3) zoos and zoology, and (4) the Pacific Ocean, which indicates to this reviewer that book dealers are grasping at anything they can find to define what essentially defies definition. The book is about all of these things -- and about none of these things, really.
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The "story" of Pi Patel, teenaged son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India, is a simple one. Pi is a person dedicated to finding his connection to the Eternal. To everyone's horror, he systematically samples religions like canapés on a cosmic platter. In addition to his own native Hindu beliefs, Pi adds Christianity and Islam, and happily integrates them into his daily life. He prays to Jesus and Mary, Allah, Krishna and Vishnu. He studies with a priest and a Sufi mystic. He scandalously sets up a conspicuous prayer rug in his parents' garden so he can face Mecca and conduct his morning Muslim devotions, thereby offending both his family's nominal Hinduism and hidebound secular humanism.
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"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
— Soren Kierkegaard
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Life of Pi is full of mystery -- so much so, as aforementioned, that both booksellers and book reviewers are somewhat confounded as how to best describe it. It offers no answers, only questions and suggestions, free for the taking but not compulsory by any means. In the best tradition of Zen, the book isn't trying to be anything, it simply is. And also in the best tradition of Zen, you will get out of it exactly what you need to have right now.
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Pi is a timeless book, not falling into the easy categories of allegory or parable, but paradoxical and gently challenging, ambitious in its scope and utterly unique in the current literary scene. It is destined to be become a cult classic, with appeal to Generation X and Y audiences as well as anyone with a philosophical bent, in much the same way as Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and Robert Pirsag's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance spoke to seekers of a slightly earlier era. "
To read all click on:http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/l/life-of-pi.shtml
posted by Danka @ 7:48 AM
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