Here’s what I learned about trees when I was on retreat up in Santa Cruz earlier this month:

Trees are very, very hard to photograph.

First, there’s the difficulty of fitting the whole thing in the frame. Impossible. Oh, maybe if you have the right really-wide-angle lens you can do it. But on the whole? You just can’t do it.

This problem is especially acute when you are trying to photograph redwood trees, which are impossibly tall – even the not-giant sequoias that they have in Santa Cruz. How can you reasonably be expected to capture one in a single frame?

At best, you can only hope to capture portions of them with your lens, and hope that your framing and composition suggest what is not actually shown. (This technique is remarkably similar to advice I offer to fellow writers in critique. You don’t have to show me everything in detail. Give me a hint of what’s going on, and let me fill in the rest of the picture on my own.)

(In retrospect, this would have been the perfect opportunity to try out the panorama feature on the iPhone. Well, that’s one excuse for going back next year, right?)

The other complication about photographing trees is that they are, for the most part, located in forests. The lighting in forests, while beautiful and dreamy, makes getting the right exposure tricky.

4 out of 5 photos I took in Santa Cruz were underexposed and/or blurry because the exposure was so long movement was inevitable. (Note to self: next time you go photographing trees in the forest, take your tripod – it will be worth it!)

Even if you’re properly prepared for the necessity of long-exposures in the shadowy woods, you have to decide what part of the scene you are going to target. Set the white balance on the tree, and the sky peeking through the trees is likely to be blown out. Meter for the sky, or on the beam of sunlight striking a limb, and you will lose the beautiful texture of the tree’s bark in the shadows.

Tricky business.

Fortunately, Photoshop allows me to make up for any number of sins in the original photograph.

While photography purists might not like these “rescued” images, to me they are a more intimate expression of my experience in the woods that weekend. Because I didn’t just “capture” these images. I made them.

I.
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was born in March 1499, a citizen of Portugal who made his way to Havana as a young man, and then joined Cortes in Mexico in 1519. Eventually, he made his fortune mining gold in Guatemala.

In 1542, he was asked by the Viceroy of New Spain to lead the first European expedition to the west coast of what is now the United States. His fleet of three ships sailed up the coast. Like all Spanish conquistadors, he hoped to discover the legendary Cibola (the Seven Cities of Gold – or, failing that, the hoped-for Northwest Passage, dubbed the Strait of Anian by Spanish explorers.

There were over 200 men on the three vessels – sailors, soldiers, slaves and priests. They made many ports of call along the California coast – places that would eventually be named San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, the islands of Santa Cruz, Catalina and San Clemente. Though the northern limit of their expedition was (probably) Point Reyes and the Russian River, north of San Francisco, they actually missed the entry into San Francisco Bay entirely (it wasn’t discovered by Europeans until 1769).

Over the course of the journey, the expedition met and recorded the names of many native tribes along the coast, with the goal of establishing future trade on their minds. They were instructed to avoid conflict whenever possible, but to make notes about the people, language, religion and quality of living.

Turned south again by winter storms, the expedition decided to spend the season in the Channel Islands. There, during a skirmish with natives, Cabrillo splintered his leg against a jagged rock while springing from a boat. He died soon after from complications and infection.

The only report made of the expedition has been lost; what remains is a summary of the original report made by a later investigator. Little attention was paid to Cabrillo’s discoveries, and none of the place names he and his crew made were ever entered onto official maps – if they had, San Diego would be San Miguel today, and Catalina would be San Salvador.

Cabrillo was buried on one of the Channel islands – but no one is sure which one.

A few more facts about Cabrillo:

• He fought as a captain of crossbowmen against the Aztecs.
• In 1532, he returned to Spain, where he married Beatriz Sanchez de Ortega, who came with him to the New World. They had two children.
• In 1540, an earthquake destroyed the city of Santiago in Guatemala. Cabrillo’s report on the destruction is considered the first piece of secular journalism in the Americas.
• Cabrillo earned fame as a shipbuilder, and built the flagship he sailed in on his journey to California, the San Salvador.
• When Cabrillo’s crew returned to Mexico, they claimed they had come “very close” to China on their journey.
• The Cabrillo national monument in San Diego is the most southwesterly spot in the contiguous United States.

II.
It’s fair to say that there are few roads in the United States more famous than the Cabrillo Highway. It’s almost certainly one of the most beautiful, stretching for 140 miles along the Central California Coast between San Luis Obisbo and Monterey. Part of California Hwy 1, this particular stretch of passes through some of the most memorable seaside landscapes you can imagine, including Pismo Beach, Morro Bay (with the eponymous Rock looming just offshore), Cambria Pines by the Sea, San Simeon (home of William Randolph Hearst’s famous castle estate), and – most notably – Big Sur.

What is called the Cabrillo Highway today is the oldest length of Highway 1. In 1919, the state government approved funds to build what was originally called Highway 56, and allocated prison labor from San Quentin for the project. 18 years later, when the two-lane paved road was finally opened, it was called both the Carmel-San Simeon Highway (for its endpoints), and also the Roosevelt Highway, because of the New Deal money that was used to finish the project. Later projects lengthened the highway southward through the town of Cambria and into San Luis Obisbo, and northward to Monterey.

Today, the stretch of coast called Big Sur, where the Pacific Ocean crashes into the knees of the Santa Lucia mountains, is one of the most undeveloped stretches of coastline in the country. The name “Big Sur” comes from the Spanish “el sur grande”, or “the big south”, meaning the big land south of Monterey (the old capital of Spanish California). There are small communities here, catering mostly to tourists, and much of the land is conserved in state and national parks.

It is the seascapes that capture the visitor’s attention here, the spume of sea spray shooting up as waves crash violently into the rocky shores. Balanced between sea and sky, on a narrow road that hugs the cliffs, the traveler is treated to a spectacular view at every twist and turn.

Some facts:

• The first road into Big Sur was a wagon track established about 1872.
• Prior to the building of the highway, Bug Sur remained one of the most remote areas in the country, and it wasn’t connected to the state electric grid until the 1950s.
• The original highway cost about $10 million dollars
• Most of the locals refer to the highway as the Coast Highway.

III.
When I found out I was going to be participating in a retreat in Santa Cruz, I knew an essential part of th exp3erience for me would be the actual journey there. There are multiple routes to take from Los Angeles to northern California, and depending what route you take (and how many stops you take along the way) it can take between 6 and 8 hours to make the trip.

The only question was whether I was going to take Highway 1 the whole way. I have only taken the coast road through Big Sur once, that I remember, and what I remember mostly about that trip was sitting white knuckled in the passenger seat. See, I have a bit of paranoia when it comes to twisty, mountain roads. I can’t help imagining how easy it would be to misjudge a curve and to shooting off the side. Not to mention the issue of oncoming cars..even the most adept driver has no control over the mistakes of others on the road.

Ultimately, though, I knew I had to face my fears if the trip was going to mean anything at all.

I left early, 6:45 am. The early part of the trip went smoothly enough, but it always takes so much longer to get through Los Angeles than you think it will. By 11, I had passed through Santa Barbara and was travelling through the part of California that I love the most. There is something that feels very true about the oak-dappled green-gold hills of that landscape, and some day I’m going to have to try and explain just what I mean by that.

I’m also going to have to try and capture it in photos. But, due to my time constraints on this journey (I was supposed to be at the retreat by 4 pm) I didn’t have time to stop and take photos as often as I wanted.

While the hills I passed through were already turning summer-gold, as the road turned back to the coast, the landscape turned vivid green. I stopped in Cambria for lunch, and dallied on the beach for shot of surf and sky. As I watched, a finger of fog slipped in, hiding everything in a dense, impentrable blanket. I felt a knot of anxiety, looking northward – was I going to have to drive Big Sur without even getting the benefit of the view?

Fortunately, the fog departed as quickly as it had come. I headed off on the last (most perilous!) part of my journey with clear skies overhead.

I would like to say the experience was revelatory. Mostly it was just tiring. Gorgeous views, yes, and I’m satisfied with some of the photos I was able to take. But by the end of it (knowing I was on a schedule) I was really just ready for Big Sur to be over. Another bend, another cove… well, I suppose there is a metaphor in life for that. At least the tiredness tempered my white-knuckle tendencies – I don’t recall feeling anxious at all, once I was actually there.

Next time I travel the Cabrillo Highway, I want it to be the destination, not a place I have to pass through. I want to be able to stop and enjoy the views, and take more photos than I was able on this trip. I want to drive it both ways, north and south, to discover the vistas that were all behind me this time. I want to park somewhere, maybe, climb down closer to the sea, or discover the redwoods that hide within the mountain slopes. There is so much to see along those 90 miles…

…I can’t wait to discover it.

In order to cleanse my palate for the upcoming release of Guy Gavriel Kay’s River of Stars (Tuesday!), I bring you yet another edition of The Books I’ve Read Lately. Not real reviews, mind you, just a few scattered impressions.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
WOW! Yes, WOW! I loved this book so much. When I first heard of it, I assumed something along the lines of Something Wicked This Way Comes – dark and haunted and potentially creepy – but nothing could be further from the truth. The Night Circus is beautiful and magical, a place of pure enchantment – with a dark side, yes, but also with a love story at its heart that (if you’re at all like me) will sweep you away in a surfeit of literary happiness. I cannot recommend this book enough! Great story, great characters, great writing, all the way around.

Troubled Bones, by Jeri Westerson
I don’t typically read in the mystery genre – figuring out who-done-it just isn’t something that appeals to me on a regular basis. But this was lent to me by a friend who knows my interest in all-things-Medieval, and since this particular book is set in 14th Century Canterbury, she thought I might enjoy it. Which I did. Oh, it was no masterwork of literature, but it was entertaining enough, especially with Chaucer and the Wife of Bath making notable appearances, along with other characters from the famous Canterbury Tales.

Osama, by Lavie Tidhar
One of the things I like best about digital books is previews – I like being able to read a sizable chunk of a book in the comfort of my own home, without being self-conscious about mucking up a shelf copy at the bookstore. I can get a good sense of whether I’ll really like a book or not before investing any cash in it. So I save myself from books like this one, which I haven’t heard anything about, really, except that it was a World Fantasy Award winner, so I thought I’d give it a try. I can’t give it a fair review, because I only read part of it, but from the part I read, I’d have trouble defending any either the “fantasy” part of the “award winner” part. All I came away with was an impression of literary pretentiousness of the most yawn-worthy sort.

Redemption in Indigo, by Karen Lord
This book was another digital preview that I went ahead and paid for, and it was well worth the price. I haven’t crushed on a book character for a loooong time, but the Indigo Lord from this book sure caught my fancy! Not that he’s the only reason I thoroughly recommend this book. It’s a totally unique story and voice, with an African-inspired setting that sets it apart from most fantasy literature. I liked this one well enough that I quickly snapped up the next book by the author (which is Sci Fi) when I saw it on the shelf at the library.

The Human Division, by John Scalzi
There are only a couple episodes left of this online serial, and I’m still enjoying it. The most recent one I’ve read was a bit slow, I have to say – it was an interesting character piece that highlighted the backstory of one a secondary character, and entertaining enough in that sense, but I’m not sure it did enough for the main story to deserve a whole episode to itself. But the one where the dog got eaten by the plants was hilarious.

Wool, by Hugh Howey
This is the free version of a SF story that was published online in installments and has gotten a lot of attention and I think earned the author a book contract. I believe this is the first installment, which was available for free. It is terrifically depressing – survivors in a post-apocalyptic world are surviving in an enclosed underground silo, and criminals are sentenced to go outside and clean the cameras that give them a view of the world outside, only the air is so toxic that it’s a death sentence. While the writing is decent, I can’t say I was inspired to go pay for more.

The Uncertain Places, by Lisa Goldstein
Again, I only read the preview here. It reminded me a lot of Little, Big, but with a self-indulgent late 60s-early 70s afterglow. I may go back and read more of this – I’ve enjoyed other books by Goldstein – but I wasn’t captivated from the start.

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
I’ve managed not to read this book before, though I am a long-time fan of the movie (I haven’t seen the musical, though). I’m glad this book lived up to the movie – in fact they are pretty equal match in their storytelling grace and thematic depth. Though, if I have to be honest, it makes me want to go watch the movie again…

The Magicians, by Lev Grossman
This book is pretty much exactly what it’s billed as – Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia except with college students. It’s pretty much a wish-fulfillment story, for all us grownups who never got over the bitterness of never finding a magical land in the back of the wardrobe or getting a special delivery letter from Hogwarts on our 11th birthdays. It should be a lot of fun, really, but I think Grossman went to far when it came to making the books feel “grown up.” Pretty much, the main character, Quentin, is a dismal and and wretched person, never able to be happy with what he’s got, even when he’s living out all the magical fantasies he once dreamed of. One of the teachers in the book even makes a speech to the point – “You’re good magicians because you’re all unhappy.” It reminds me of the old “artist in the attic” myth, that great art only comes from suffering. Plus, Quentin and his friends are ALWAYS drunk. Apparently, Grossman has a very limited viewpoint on what makes an interesting adult. So while the writing was good and the story inventive (I actually liked the plot quite a bit), I’m hard put to say I enjoyed this book because the characters were pretty unlikeable. There’s a sequel out now, which I’ll probably pick up at some point… at the library.

Next on my reading pile: The Best of All Possible Worlds, by Karen Lord; The Siren Depths, by Margaret Wells; Wonders of the Invisible World, by Patrica McKillip; and of course, River of Stars, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Yes, a bevy of books by all my favorite authors – where to start? I know, I started off waxing anxious for the Kay, but now that it’s actually here I am afraid to start it. You only get that First Read once, you know? And when you’re done? A years’ long wait for the next new book by your favorite author…

1.
In a couple of weeks, I’m heading off to the Santa Cruz mountains to participate in a weekend yoga and writing retreat. In fact, I’m leading a session on photography as meditation, which means what I ought to be doing right now is brushing the dust off my camera and planning what I’m going to say to these folks for an hour as I lead them on a gentle hike through nature. My photography rambles have been few and far between these past two years, so I figure I need to rediscover how the process works for me before I try and teach it share it with anyone else.*

Well, I did try. I got my camera out and snapped some photos around the house – the just starting to bloom poppies in the front flower bed, and the miniature violet shown here. Pretty thing, isn’t it? My mother complained that the shot was too close, that it didn’t capture the true diminutive beauty of the flowers, because there’s nothing to scale them against.

Personally, I’m a fan of small things made big. The flowers are beautiful in their own right, not just because of their size. I especially like these small flowers when they are exploded to full screen size – there’s something transformative about it. Of course, at its heart, every photograph is transformative.

It’s a kind of magic.

2.
Because I shoot digitally, there is nothing that comes out of my camera that isn’t digitally manipulated at least a little bit. Standard post-processing is akin to the developing process of traditional photography – there are a lot of choices you can make along the way when you’re developing film that affect the final product (things like how long you leave the negative in the solution and what sort of paper you print on***) that don’t count as “manipulation” per se, but do affect the final product. For me, standard post-processing steps include: cropping, sharpening, and adjustments to white balance, exposure, curves and contrast. These small adjustments only refine the picture – they don’t fundamentally change it.

I don’t like to stop there, though.

I suppose it’s related to my penchant for writing fantasy, the fact that a good, crisp photo that beautifully captures an object or landscape just isn’t enough for me. Reality just isn’t enough.

I like to change things. Tweak them this way and that. Ask that most important creative question: What if…?

It’s not so much a question of making the flowers look like something they aren’t. Or making them look magical or otherworldly. It’s just a matter of making it look… different.And understanding how those differences change your experience of the photo, and the object that was photographed.

Because even small changes in tone and texture, in focus and composition – they can transform the way we feel about a photo when we see it.

So I keep trying different manipulations, looking for the feeling I want a photo to convey when I share it.

3.
Writing is the same way.

Whether you think there are two stories, or four, or 36 or an infinite number of stories to be told, we have a metaphorical Photoshop full of tools with which to manipulate what happens to them as we put them down on paper.****

Texture and tone and focus and composition are all things that a writer uses  to try and control the experience the reader will have when they encounter any given story. We don’t adjust levels – but we control pacing. We elide instead of cropping. We texture and tone not with color adjustments and layers, but with word choice.

Right now, I’m struggling with the same thing in both my writing and my photography. I know how to use the tools of manipulation – but I don’t know the experience I’m trying convey. I keep pushing buttons, trying this filter and that, undoing and redoing, again and again and again.

But what I produce feels … not quite right. More often then not I hit QUIT without bothering to save.

I’m reaching for something, I know that.

I’m hoping I’ll discover exactly what at the retreat.

* I am conflicted about the use of this Internet-born convention where you show crossed-out text right next to the “revised” version. I’ve seen it used for great comic effect, of course, but beyond that I wonder what we are trying to reveal. What does it mean that I show you my first thought alongside my edited version? If the first version wasn’t good enough, why I am I showing it to you anyway?**

** Of course, now that I’ve waxed on about it, I just want to delete the edited text and the first footnote. Except that I’ve realized that it’s actually pertinent to the topic at hand.

*** I’m guessing, really. I have no experience with film developing.

**** Or orally or visually, but let’s stick with writing here.

I have not actually done that much with iPhone photography since I got my camera in August (it’s a 4, not 4S or 5). I do have an Instagram account, but the latest kerfluffle has made me a little reluctant to use it. So tonight I downloaded the Flickr app – and scored a 3 month pro account for my trouble!

These photos were all taken and edited with the Snapseed app, which I highly recommend.

I like filters. I like changing what I saw into something new, something that is not-quite-real. It’s a special kind of magic.

Some end up more edited than others. I guess it depends on what I think is most important about the photo. And…the mood I want to create.

The one above has become my current phone wallpaper! Something very soothing about it.

Even ordinary things become eyecatching.

The last one is not from my walk, it’s our tree at home. But I thought I needed a seventh to round out the set.

So, seven new photos and 1.2 miles to start off the new year. Not a bad start!

I climb the granite to its summit, and go away over rust colored sandstones and greenish yellow shales…I climb so high that the men and boats are lost in the black depths below, and the dashing river is a rippling brook; and still the there is more canyon above than below. All about me are interesting geological records. The book is open and I can read as I run.

As promised, here are some printable bookmarks featuring the Grand Canyon. Just click the preview image above to download the PDF file. Print on cardstock or regular paper and cut them out. Laminate or cover with clear contact paper, or not. Add a tassel and beads. Or not. Stick in books as needed.

Click here to download the PDF.

Enjoy, and happy new year!

P.S. The quote is from the journals of John Wesley Powell, one fo the earliest non-native explorers of the Grand Canyon, dated August 18, 1869.

I always enjoy looking over the search engine terms that have landed people on this site. Usually predictable, there are always a few surprises in the batch that leave me scratching my head.

For example, sometime in the past year, someone has visited while searching for information on:

• amusement park ride design ergonomics
• interpersonalmelo (what?)
• grocery tattoos
• rabindranath tagore wallpaper
• cozy myster set in early 20th century england
• 2

That’s right, someone searched for “2″ and ended up on my website. Three someones, to be precise. What’s up with that? And what in the heck is a grocery tattoo?

By far the most common search that landed people here was some variation of “bookmarks to print” or “knight paper doll”, both printables I made available more than a year ago. Creative journaling and lettering tends to generate a fair percentage of traffic. (I can’t say “a lot of traffic” because the tiny bit these days hardly qualifies – alas the languishing numbers of a barely active blog!) I’m happy to see these results here, because I feel like I have good resources to offer the seekers – I hope they enjoyed what they found.

However, I feel like I must extend my apologies to the person looking for “amusement park ride design ergonomics” because I doubt he found anything useful to help his search here!

Anyway, it’s that time of the year when I want to thank everyone who visits the page, regularly readers or random visitors. I have occupied this little space on the web for a long while, sometimes more actively than others, and I appreciate everyone who stops by for whatever reason. I wish you all the best in the coming year and hope to see you again soon!

P.S. The photos are from my recent trip to the Grand Canyon. After looking at the search term results, I have decided a second set of printable bookmarks are in order, featuring some of these shots. Look for them in the next couple of days!

Since C.S. Lewis’ birthday was celebrated this past week, and Ang Lee’s movie based on Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi was just released in theaters, I thought it an appropriate time to dig up this essay, originally posted in 2006. There are potentially some spoilers herein, if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie – but since I haven’t seen the movie yet myself I don’t know if the narrative points I’m discussing here make it to the screen at all. And anyway, the whole thing is more or less about how with a well-told stories “spoilers” don’t matter anyway. 

Originally posted August2006.

A Pirate is a Pirate, or Maybe a Tiger

I’m a great believer in synchronicity, or meaningful cooincidence, so I don’t believe it was mere chance that I laid hands on a volume of essays by C.S. Lewis just a day after completing Yann Martel’s astounding novel, The Life of Pi.

I was just wandering around the library, looking for some papermaking books while the kids busied themselves in the children’s section, and there it was, perched on the end of a stack like it was just waiting for me to find it: C.S. Lewis On Stories and Other Essays on Literature. I slipped it under my arm with the other books I brought home that day because, well, I was hoping to find a topic I might write about here. I never expected that the title essay, “On Stories”, would explain in theory what had been demonstrated in practice in the novel I had just finished.

It will be hard to explain in full without providing spoilers from The Life of Pi, and since I don’t want to ruin anyone’s first read of the book, I’ll start with Lewis’ theory and then talk about the novel behind the split.

The basic premise of the essay is that there are two ways of reading “romances”, or stories read purely for pleasure. With plenty of personal anecdotes as evidence, he proposes that some readers are driven by pure excitement — it doesn’t matter what sort of danger is faced, so long as there is a constant, inscreasing level of fear.

For other readers, atmosphere or the sense of otherness, is a more important factor in their enjoyment of a story. You don’t have to guess which type of reader Lewis is, and I have to admit that, like him, I am of the latter sort. He tries not to denigrate the excitement-loving reader, but there is a subtle disdain for the type, which he associates with cinema and American “scientifiction” (this essay was first published in 1947).

The bulk of the essay goes on to elaborate on his preference for stories that rely on mood, atmosphere and language to provide pleasure instead of merely providing a series of exciting events. I’ll let his words speak more to the point:

Jack the Giant-Killer is not, in essence, simply the story of a clever hero surmounting danger. It is in essence the story of such a hero surmounting danger from giants. It is quite easy to contrive a story in which, though the enemies are of normal size, the odds against Jack are equally great. But it will be quite a different story. The whole quality of the imaginative response is determined by the fact that the enemies are giants. (page 8)

He makes the same point about pirates in the next paragraph, and then later:

I have sometimes wondered whether the ”excitement” may not be an element actually hostile to the deeper imagination. In inferior romances…we often come across a really suggestive idea. But the author has no expedient for keeping the story on the move except that of putting his hero into violent danger. In the hurry and scurry of his escapes the poetry of the basic idea is lost. (page 10)

And later yet again:

Good stories often introduce the marvellous or supernatural, and nothing about Story has been so often misunderstood at this. Thus, for example, Dr Johnson, if I remember rightly, thought that children liked stories of the marvellous because they were too ignorant to know that they were impossible…Belief is at best irrelvant; it may be a positive disadvantage. (page 12)

While he does not explicitely state the point (it’s couched in examples too numerous to quote), the purpose of the marvellous in a story is united with the purpose of Art itself: “to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.” (page 10)

Which is why, I expect, that I have always favored fiction with some element of the fantastic. Real life is narrow and desperate enough as it is, right?

How often a person re-reads favorite stories is an indication of whether or not they read for pure excitement or if their imagination is being stimulated by a sort of poetry:

The re-reader is looking not for actual surprises (which can come only once) but for a certain surprisingness…In the only snese that matters the surprise works as well the twentieth time as the first. It is the quality of unexpectedness, not the fact that delights us. It is even better the second time. Knowing that the ”surprise” is coming we can now fully relish the fact that this path through the shrubbery doesn’t look as if it were suddenly going to bring us out on the edge of the cliff. So in literature. We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which mearely wants cold wetness. The children understand this well when they ask for the same story over and over again, and in the same words. They want to have again the ”surprise” of discovering that what seemed Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother is really the wolf. If is better when you know it is coming: free from the shock of actual surprise you can attend better to the intrinsic surprisingness of the peripeteia. (page 17)

(The above passage doesn”t relate directly to Martel — I haven”t re-read it yet — but I wanted to keep it for my own reference. But I do re-read my favorite books, and rewatch my favorite movies for that matter, and the pleasure only deepens over time.)

Thus, Lewis” “On Stories”. How does that apply to Martel?

The Life of Pi, if you are not familiar with it, tells the story of a teenaged boy, Pi (short for Piscine, the French world for swimming pool), who is stranded on a lifeboat with a tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The first third of the book tells of Pi’s life before the shipwreck, as the son of a zookeeper in India who discovers not just one religion but three, which he practices simultaneously. In alternate chapters we also hear about Pi’s life following the shipwreck, from the point-of-view of the person who I’ll call “the narrator” even though Pi’s story is all told in first person. Through the narrator’s eyes, we see Pi settled in Canada, content in the life he has created for himself. In fact, the narrator tells us bluntly at the end of this section of the book, “This story has a happy ending.”

By removing the ultimate threat, eliminating the question of whether or not Pi will survive his ordeal, the book immediately leaves the realm of stories read purely for excitement. Because we know where the story is going to end, we are more able take notice of the journey itself, and to appreciate the scenery along the way (in both the literal and metaphoric sense). I don’t think it’s necessary to elaborate on this, the middle section of the book, other than to say that Martel manages effectively to surround you in his reality. Could someone really accomplish what Pi does during his nearly-300-day exile on the ocean — with or without a tiger? I don’t know. But Martel”s storytelling ability lets you believe it is possible.

It is the third part of the book that truly demonstrates Lewis’ theory, though. What happens to Pi after he is washed ashore in Mexico is told primarily through the “transcription” of an interview by two representatives of a Japanese shipping company, trying to ascertain the cause of the shipwreck. When they disbelieve Pi’s story of his long journey with the tiger, he offers them an alternative version, one where humans take the places of the animals that had filled his story before. While the original story was filled with marvels, the second is filled with horrors. Sadly, it is the second that is more realistic. But is it true? That”s left to the reader to decide.

Hopefully you can see where I’m going with this now. The alternative version of Pi’s story could have been just as exciting as the original, a gripping human drama of fear, greed and murder. But Martel was not trying to create an exciting story. We know that from the start because the threat of danger is removed by the fact of Pi’s survival, by the knowledge of the happy ending. Neither is he trying to convince us that this remarkable journey is a true story. The final chapters as much as say, “Here”s what really happened.”

Like Lewis’ giants and pirates, a tiger is a danger beyond the ordinary, a danger that takes us out of “narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life” where it is easier to contemplate human nature without judgement. When Pi’s antagonist is a tiger, we admire is strength in the face of adversity. When his antagonist is human, we can only feel pity and shame for humanity in general.

At the same time, Martel has made a commentary on every story, every history. What is true? What is True?

“Whch story is the better story?” Pi asks his interrogators, and they have to conclude that Pi’s story, with the tiger, is better. And in their minds, that makes it true.

P.S. The photo is not mine – all my tiger photos are on currently inaccessible hard drives and not very good anyway. This is a stock photo, and it made me laugh.