Sancho
05-22-2010, 12:01 PM
Yann Martel’s new book, Beatrice and Virgil, was released in the U.S. last month. It’s his second novel and comes nine years after his critically acclaimed and popular novel, Life of Pi. It seems to be a gimmicky allegorical book about the holocaust, and so far, the critics seem to pretty-much hate it.
The story starts out like this: Henry, an author of a critically acclaimed and popular novel, is trying to sell his second book following a few years of living comfortably on the royalties of his first book. His second book is a gimmicky allegorical novel and essay about the holocaust, a flip book. His editor and the publisher pretty-much hate it.
Are you starting to get the picture? There are lots of parallels in this book.
So anyway, Henry decides to abandon his new book and abandon writing all together. He and his wife move to a new city where they basically get on with their lives. Things are going well for the couple: they find jobs, new friends, new hobbies, and Henry’s wife becomes pregnant. Then a package comes in the mail for Henry. It’s an unusual piece of fan mail which includes a nasty little story by Gustave Flaubert, a scene from a play written by the package sender, and a plea for help.
Henry is somewhat intrigued by the package’s contents and since it was sent from a nearby address, he sets out to find the sender. What he finds is a taxidermy shop and a strange old man within who is the taxidermist. Oddly, the old man is also named Henry. (Hmmm…) The taxidermist tells Henry that he’s been working on the play his whole life. And so Henry decides to help him and the two begin an unusual collaboration. They do this mostly in the back office of the taxidermy shop, where they are kept company by a stuffed (or more precisely, mounted) donkey named Beatrice upon whose back sits a mounted red howler monkey named Virgil.
The play is modeled on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Gadot, but rather than a conversation between two humans, Vladimir and Estragon, the taxidermist’s play features a conversation between a donkey and a howler monkey, Beatrice and Virgil. Their conversation hints at, and then comes right out and discusses, something horrible that has happened to the both of them. In one scene of the play, Beatrice and Virgil try to decide what to call this past experience of theirs. They settle on naming it – The Horrors.
As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, this book is full of literary references. Yann Martel has been a voracious reader his entire life. There was, of course, another Beatrice who led Dante through paradise and it was the poet Virgil who guided him through the inferno in the Divine Comedy.
The book makes no qualms about being an allegorical representation of the holocaust. The book also questions the appropriateness of representing the holocaust in such a manner. Was the holocaust so horrific that it defies fictional representation? The criticism I’ve read so far seems to think so. But I, for one, think Mr. Martel is much too clever a writer for such a blunt-force gimmick. I believe Beatrice and Virgil can be read as an allegory within an allegory. That is, the animals (the donkey and the monkey) may be an awkward and even offensive representation of the victims of the holocaust, but perhaps it’s a meditation on human-nature and the holocaust is being used to symbolize humankind’s treatment of every other species on the planet. That would make all of us Nazis of a sort. Given this reading, intended or not, there is a subtle irony: wasn’t it Yahweh, the Hebrew god, who gave humankind dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth? It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been to bible-school, but I think I’m recalling this correctly from the Genesis story. At any rate, the author leaves the interpretation up to the reader, just as he did in his earlier book, Life of Pi, which can be read as a metaphor for the meaning of life or as a children’s story about a boy and tiger on a boat.
Whatever the case, I need to reread it because it is a deceptively complex novel and I’m sure I missed much on the first run. There are no throw-away sentences between the covers of this book.
The story starts out like this: Henry, an author of a critically acclaimed and popular novel, is trying to sell his second book following a few years of living comfortably on the royalties of his first book. His second book is a gimmicky allegorical novel and essay about the holocaust, a flip book. His editor and the publisher pretty-much hate it.
Are you starting to get the picture? There are lots of parallels in this book.
So anyway, Henry decides to abandon his new book and abandon writing all together. He and his wife move to a new city where they basically get on with their lives. Things are going well for the couple: they find jobs, new friends, new hobbies, and Henry’s wife becomes pregnant. Then a package comes in the mail for Henry. It’s an unusual piece of fan mail which includes a nasty little story by Gustave Flaubert, a scene from a play written by the package sender, and a plea for help.
Henry is somewhat intrigued by the package’s contents and since it was sent from a nearby address, he sets out to find the sender. What he finds is a taxidermy shop and a strange old man within who is the taxidermist. Oddly, the old man is also named Henry. (Hmmm…) The taxidermist tells Henry that he’s been working on the play his whole life. And so Henry decides to help him and the two begin an unusual collaboration. They do this mostly in the back office of the taxidermy shop, where they are kept company by a stuffed (or more precisely, mounted) donkey named Beatrice upon whose back sits a mounted red howler monkey named Virgil.
The play is modeled on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Gadot, but rather than a conversation between two humans, Vladimir and Estragon, the taxidermist’s play features a conversation between a donkey and a howler monkey, Beatrice and Virgil. Their conversation hints at, and then comes right out and discusses, something horrible that has happened to the both of them. In one scene of the play, Beatrice and Virgil try to decide what to call this past experience of theirs. They settle on naming it – The Horrors.
As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, this book is full of literary references. Yann Martel has been a voracious reader his entire life. There was, of course, another Beatrice who led Dante through paradise and it was the poet Virgil who guided him through the inferno in the Divine Comedy.
The book makes no qualms about being an allegorical representation of the holocaust. The book also questions the appropriateness of representing the holocaust in such a manner. Was the holocaust so horrific that it defies fictional representation? The criticism I’ve read so far seems to think so. But I, for one, think Mr. Martel is much too clever a writer for such a blunt-force gimmick. I believe Beatrice and Virgil can be read as an allegory within an allegory. That is, the animals (the donkey and the monkey) may be an awkward and even offensive representation of the victims of the holocaust, but perhaps it’s a meditation on human-nature and the holocaust is being used to symbolize humankind’s treatment of every other species on the planet. That would make all of us Nazis of a sort. Given this reading, intended or not, there is a subtle irony: wasn’t it Yahweh, the Hebrew god, who gave humankind dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth? It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been to bible-school, but I think I’m recalling this correctly from the Genesis story. At any rate, the author leaves the interpretation up to the reader, just as he did in his earlier book, Life of Pi, which can be read as a metaphor for the meaning of life or as a children’s story about a boy and tiger on a boat.
Whatever the case, I need to reread it because it is a deceptively complex novel and I’m sure I missed much on the first run. There are no throw-away sentences between the covers of this book.