Another slice of Pi

>> Yann Martel on the illustrated Life of Pi

by Juliet Waters

Over lunchtime sushi, Yann Martel shows me the painting that won Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac the contract to illustrate Life of Pi. It’s a painting of two uncomfortable looking Japanese investigators holding out a sandwich. In the corner is an I.V. bag, evidence that we are seeing the investigators from the point of view of a hospital bed. This is the bed where Pi Patel is recovering from his journey on a lifeboat with a Royal Bengal tiger.

The idea of holding a competition to find the right artist for an illustrated edition was not Martel’s, but his British publisher’s. Approximately 1,600 artists submitted one illustration each. Then a jury, including Martel, narrowed the field down to a shortlist of six.

“He had one chance and this is what he submitted. No tigers, no Atlantic, no Pacific, no lifeboat, just the two investigators…These illustrations came with no text. We didn’t read anything. There was no artist’s statement. So we just saw this and right away we got it. We got that Pi was not to be seen. That we are Pi.”

The six on the shortlist were then asked to submit two other illustrations. Martel shows me Torjanac’s. The first is a riveting portrait of the tiger, aka Richard Parker, staring up into the eyes of a small mako shark as Pi attempts to fling it towards the stern. Again there is no Pi, just a pair of firmly planted feet near the bow, and hands releasing the shark by its tail. The second is a picture of a priest, a pandit and an imam looming furiously from above, having just discovered the young Pi’s religious promiscuity. We deduce Pi’s age and presence from a red balloon floating high up into the clouds.

About 60 pages later, the only red in a picture is the blood dripping from the mouth of a hyena gorging on the body of a zebra. The illustration is typical of the combination of gorgeous impressionistic colour with hyper-realistic detail. It’s a reminder that Life of Pi is not by any stretch a children’s book, or even a young adult book, dealing as it does in fairly complex religious and philosophical ideas. It’s also a reminder of why it’s been so successful. The book is infused with the kind of magic and fantasy that adults recently have been turning to Harry Potter for.

A competition may sound to some like a gimmick to sell even more copies of a book that has already way surpassed the projected sales when it was released in virtual anonymity in Canada on September 11, 2001. Martel’s British publisher, Canongate, rescued the first edition, repackaging and re-publicizing it well enough to eventually win the Man Booker Prize. The end product of this new edition is clearly also a labour of love intended to entrench Life of Pi’s place as a contemporary classic. Whether it manages this or not is less important than what a beautiful work of art this is.

The next adventure Martel will face will be the film version, although it looks like he’s going to be getting a fairly long break. The project is currently on hold because of the weak U.S. dollar. Affordable locations are still being scouted, though there’s one interesting development. The current script calls for Pi to move to Montreal (in the book, he moves to Toronto.) Right now there’s a good chance that Montreal might be played in the movie by Buenos Aires. “Which is so funny because usually Montreal plays North American cities. Now we would have a South American city playing Montreal.”

The ex-Montrealer, however, has no plans himself to move back. Fours years ago, Martel bought a house in Saskatoon, where he currently lives. “I love Saskatoon. It’s a great city. People rush by Saskatchewan the way that Japanese rush by the Louvre to get to the Mona Lisa, forgetting that there are Rembrandts here, Fra Angelicos there. Saskatchewan is stunning…It’s a good place for writers and painters.”

Life of Pi by Yann Martel, illustrations by
Tomislav Torjanac, Knopf, HC, 316PP, $45