This book left me a visceral revulsion that is similar to a memory of a scene in the movie, “The Spy Who Shagged Me.” In that scene, a fat Austin Powers was made to drink a cup of fecal matter. To this day, thinking about that propels me to vomit, literally. I almost did that while reading this book. Somehow, the lasting impressions I get in reading this novel is not the beautiful allusions to God and creation and the relationships we have with nature and the grandeur of the cosmos. Even the more uplifting passages of Chapters 21 and 22 do not erase my disgust in the descriptions of Pi’s and other castaways’ effort to survive by eating and killing reptiles, fish, fowl, zoo animal or other men.
Overall, the book leaves a queasy and disturbed feeling in the mouth, as I profess to have an overactive imagination and one that remembers details, specially with those that relate to hunger, eating and digestion. Martel seems preoccupied with a lot of disgusting details relating to how if man was driven to desperation and hunger, survival to eat is reduced to the banal, the raw and obscene.
A case in point is the description of Pi’s trying to collect and eat the Tiger’s (Richard Parker) feces. “I popped the ball into my mouth, I couldn’t eat it. The taste was acrid, but it wasn’t that. It was rather my mouth’s conclusion, immediate and obvious: there’s nothing to be had here. It was truly waste matter, with no nutrients in it. I spat it out and was bitter at the loss of precious water. (p. 214)” Another stomach churning account that is left in my mind is Pi’s evisceration of a turtle, and eventually drinking its blood and eating turtle morsels. Cutting of limbs of animals and humans seems to be a mainstay feature description in the book. The cannibalism in the light of vegetarianism was more than I could take.
Never mind Richard Parker’s beastly behavior and Pi’s success in taming him, never mind the meerkats and the way they lived in the forest of carnivorous algae, never mind his surviving a 200+ day ordeal. The whole story was defeated by the detailed mouth and tongue disgusted impressions that it left. The struggle to survive and willfully invoke God’s presence and be thankful for his presence or lack of it is overshadowed by my vicious imaginings of stomach turning scenarios.
The insights about French occupied Pondicherry, India circa 1977 were historical tidbits that gave some vibrant local color. The descriptions of zoos and animal upkeep in the third world were informative. Even Indian politics with Mrs. Gandhi was commendable. Descriptions of Indian food was like a field trip to the bowels of India. The culinary aromas and gustatory visions of idli, chutney, rice and sambar, spicy tamarind, and vegetable samala were all sensuous contrasts to the tragedy of a castaway were Pi’s life was reduced to raw, flavorless and gummy dorados, turtles, birds and distilled sea water. But all of those dwarf the tragi-comic struggle for life in the wild, and the vexation of life as the struggle to preserve it is testament to its preciousness, its fragility and expendability.
After all that was said and done in Pi’s ordeal, the last section of the book tells us about the Japanese officers from the ill fated ship. Pi then tells his story and provides an alternative interpretation of the real truth. Now what’s with that? Is the story he just narrated a figment of his imagination? That my dear friends is up to you to tell.
I would give this book a 3 instead of a 3.14.
