twenty-three

The last couple of weeks have been a revelation in reading for me. It may sound small, but it’s been amazing I rediscovered a little thing called FICTION! It’s incredible!!

Now that may sound odd, but I really haven’t read a fiction book in a long time. I read a few short stories and a CS Lewis book last summer, but even in those I was looking for some "deeper meaning" and not just able to just be wrapped up in a completely other story than my own. Life of Pi allowed me to do this.

I will really try not to spoil the ending with this post, but you might not want to keep reading if you haven’t read this book. If you haven’t, why are you reading my blog? Go read that book.

Life of Pi took me back to the world of fiction, where I was able to get involved in a story that was fantastic and a little out of touch with "reality" but completely captivating. I was skeptical because of the book’s popularity (I have trouble with jumping on too many bandwagons), but I was overcome with the ability of this story to transcend that popular success and actually mean something.

I don’t really care to provide a synopsis of the story, but basically it’s about a boy who floats across the ocean in a lifeboat, following a shipwreck on his journey to Canada from India. A number of amazing things happen on the voyage, many slightly unbelievable pieces fitting together into quiet a fantastic story. Pi’s account goes so far as to possibly blur the line between what is true and what he says he experienced. The story, in the end, becomes an exercise in determining fact from fiction, questioning whether or not it matters whether his story was true or if it’s OK for the line between personal recollection or retelling and the "truth" is really worth defining.

Does the way I tell a story, with all my emotional baggage, my own perspective, end up aligned with what "actually" happened? When I look back on an event in my past, do my hindsight or my feelings color the way I tell a story? It’s pretty clear that they do. So, does that matter when you listen to my story? Do I have to tell you the exact factual truth about what happened? It seems that the person listening to the story is giving consent to the teller to give them the best story. We consent to hearing an authoritative rendition of an event. That doesn’t always mean it will be the exact facts-only version, but we trust the teller to give us the story through the lens of experience. We release the right to question the reality of their words by allowing them to speak through with their own words, their own colored, emotionally tainted experience. How often have you heard someone say "there are two sides to every story"? This perspective on story makes me think that two might be too few.

I think it was the way Life of Pi was told that has reawakened this interest in fiction for me. I am excited to read books where I can be swept away in the perspective of the story teller. I am asked to question the "truth" behind the story and then follow that up by questioning whether or not the "truth" really matters. Does it matter if the story is tinted by perspective? What is the better story: the facts or a memory?

I’d love get any recommendations on books that others have read that have made them excited lately. Life of Pi was a recommendation to me by a few different people, so please keep those coming.

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