101 Letters to a Prime Minister (21 page)

All things are met and understood through one mind, the one we have. Timelessness, transcendence, the evanescence of the ego—these are true, but they are not what we experience. They were neither felt by Gilgamesh, nor are they felt by us. We are not all one. We are just one, each on our own. You, me, him, her, six billion times over. Each one of us has a blip note of mortality. It’s only when the blips are put together that we seem to hear a symphony throbbing down through time. Mitchell’s version of
Gilgamesh
plays on that symphony. He makes the epic new, but it works because we know it’s old. Hines wants none of this hand-me-down worth. He’s a modern; this blip here and now will speak freshly for that old, fifty-century-old blip. With Hines you get the singularity of the living poet expressing himself in his own right, drawing attention to himself, saying “This is me, this is our language, this is our condition—whaddya think?”

I think it’s very good. A harder read than the Mitchell, for sure. At times, the poetic pithiness requires work to unpack. Then in the next stanza, a startling image makes perfect sense. Which is why I would recommend that you read the Hines more than once. It’s only sixty pages, and well spaced at that. The more familiar you are with it, the more it will make sense, and soon
enough you will have furnished a beautiful room in your mind. It’s a rich, exciting text, with some stabbingly brilliant lines. Take this, part of Gilgamesh’s lament upon Enkidu’s death:

A last example. Gilgamesh, after getting “snake-drunk” and losing the herb of eternal life, returns to Uruk to die. He has this to say:

That is a truth very old and, here, totally modern.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

D
ERREK
H
INES
is an award-winning Canadian poet best known for his reinterpretation of the epic
Gilgamesh
. By injecting modern images into his free verse retelling, Hines shrinks the gap of time between Sumerian origins and a contemporary audience, and recharges the tale’s powerful effect. Hines has published two books of poetry. Raised in Southern Ontario, he now lives on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall.

Dear Mr. Harper,

I can’t think of a more delightful introduction to the republic of letters than Alan Bennett’s short novel
The Uncommon Reader
. One day at the bottom of the Palace garden, parked next to the kitchen garbage bins, alerted by her corgis, the Queen discovers the City of Westminster’s travelling library. She pops in to apologize for the barking dogs and, once there, impelled by a sense of duty rather than any real interest, she takes out a book. This simple act marks the beginning of Her Majesty’s downfall, in a way. The irony in the story is as light as whipped cream, the humour as appealing as candy, the characterization as crisp as potato chips, but at the heart of it there’s something highly nutritious to be digested: the effect that books can have on a life.

Upon finishing the book, you will think you know HM better, you will feel closer to her, you will like her. This is in part because of Bennett’s skill in bringing his royal character to life. But it also has to do with the nature of books. In the republic
of letters, all readers are equal. Unlike other retail outlets, bookstores don’t really come in categories, be it luxury or low-end. A bookstore is a bookstore. Some specialize, but the restriction there has only to do with kinds of books—say modern languages or art—and not with classes of readers. Everyone is welcome in bookstores and all types rub shoulders in them, the wealthy and the poor, the highly educated and the self-taught, the old and the young, the adventurous and the conventional, and others still. You might even bump into the Queen.

Before I forget, one of our very own great Canadian writers, Alice Munro, makes a cameo appearance in
The Uncommon Reader
, on page 67.

Since I’m on the topic of bookstores, I thought I’d include a few snapshots of some that I’ve visited recently.

The Bookseller Crow on the Hill is in Crystal Palace, a neighbourhood in the south of London where I’ve been staying recently. I’m standing next to John, the genial owner, and I’m holding in my hand the very book you now own, which I bought from John. The Crow is not a very big place in terms of square footage, but stand in front on any shelf—New Titles, Fiction, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Travel—and the mental space represented is as vast as the universe.

The next photo is of a small, venerable used bookstore on Milton Street in Montreal called The Word. It has served generations
of students. I popped in to buy a novel by the English writer Ivy Compton-Burnett, whom Bennett mentions in his book and whom I’d never read. I found
A Family and a Fortune
, published in 1939. It cost me $3.95.

The last photo is of La Librairie du Square, a French bookstore also in Montreal. It was my father who taped the red poster you see on the glass door. It announces an event organized by PEN, Amnesty International and l’UNEQ to do with freedom of expression and imprisoned writers.

Independent bookstores are a vanishing breed, especially in North America. The ones who suffer the most from this disappearance are not necessarily readers, but neighbourhoods. After all, a large Chapters or Indigo or Barnes & Noble will hold more books than any reader could possibly read in a lifetime. But large chain stores tend to be fewer in number and are often accessible only by car. The Bookseller Crow, on the other hand, is in a row of small stores that includes a clothes store, a café, a pet store that specializes in fish, a shoe store, a real estate agent, a hairdresser, a newsagent, a bakery, a betting agency, a number of restaurants, and so on. The Word and La Librairie du Square are on streets along which thousands of people walk every day. Whenever an independent bookstore disappears, shareholders somewhere may be richer, but a neighbourhood is for sure poorer.

I’m sorry for writing such a busy letter, but there’s one last matter I’d like to mention. A few weeks ago, on October 20 to be exact, I came upon an article in the
New York Times
on a man in Colombia who for the last decade has been travelling around
his war-ravaged corner of the country with two donkeys—named Alfa and Beto—loaded with books. He stops in every remote pueblo to read to children and to lend books out. He started his Biblioburro, as he calls it, after seeing the positive effect that reading had on students growing up in a violent and uncertain environment. Ten years on, Luis Soriano remarks that his enterprise has become an obligation, and it is now considered an institution.

The City of Westminster’s travelling library and the Biblioburro, the Bookseller Crow on the Hill and The Word—the rich life of the mind that these institutions offer makes joyful equals of us all, from monarchs to poor peasant children.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

A
LAN
B
ENNETT
(b. 1934) is an English author, actor, humorist and playwright. His first great success was co-authoring and starring in the comedy revue
Beyond the Fringe
. He then performed in innumerable stage, radio and television productions and wrote several short stories, novellas, non-fiction works and plays. Among his many acclaimed creations are the Academy Award-winning film adaptation
The Madness of King George
, and
The History Boys
, a play that won three Laurence Olivier Awards and was adapted for the screen.

Dear Mr. Harper,

One of the curious aspects of the life and work of Pearl Buck is the speed with which she rose to fame and then sank into comparative obscurity. Her first book was published in 1930. Eight years later, at the remarkably young age of forty-six, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, only the third American so rewarded, and this, principally on the basis of the three novels that form the trilogy
The House of Earth: The Good Earth
(1931), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize,
Sons
(1932) and
A House Divided
(1935). It is
The Good Earth
I am offering you this week.

Yet after this stellar start, despite continuing to produce quantities of books and fighting for many a good cause, Buck faded from the forefront of literature so that when she died in 1973 she was nearly a forgotten figure. The reasons for this are, I think, easy enough to discern. She wrote too many books—over eighty—and while a very able writer, she was no
great experimenter. She didn’t renew the novel or its language the way Faulkner and Hemingway did, fellow Americans who are still widely read and studied. Nor can her books—or at least the ones I’m familiar with—be stamped with the label “universal,” which sometimes helps an author gain literary immortality. No, the books that made her name were remarkably local, even rooted. Pearl Buck was one of the first writers to bring to life for Western readers that country-civilization called China. It’s a country she knew well for having spent a good part of her life there as the daughter of Christian missionaries and then as a missionary and teacher herself. Despite the hardships she endured there at times, China was a country she loved. She saw its people as just that, people, and she observed them with great sympathy and mixed with them and, eventually, wrote about them. She was the writer-as-bridge, and many people chose to cross the bridge she built.

You will see why when you read
The Good Earth
. From the first line—“It was Wang Lung’s marriage day”—you slip into the skin of a Chinese peasant from pre-Communist times and you begin to live his life as he sees it and feels it. It’s a harsh story, blighted by poverty and famine, and harsher still for the women in it, but it’s also entirely engrossing.
The Good Earth
is the sort of novel you’ll be itching to get back to whenever you have to put it down. After reading it, you’ll feel that you know what it might mean to be Chinese at a certain time and in a certain part of China. Therein lies the passing nature of Buck’s work. China has changed radically since
The Good Earth
was published. What was new and revelatory then is now hoary and out of date. The main appeal of Buck’s work today is in the power of her stories rather than their currency.

Still,
The Good Earth
remains an excellent introduction to old China and a vivid parable on the fragility of fortune,
how things gained can be lost, how what is built can easily be destroyed. This lesson will not be lost on you considering the political turmoil you are now going through. The fate of a politician is so terribly uncertain. Pearl Buck is a staple of every used bookstore. She is still widely read. Her name evokes fond memories. Whereas politicians, when they go, when they disappear from the stage, kicking and screaming sometimes, they really go, they vanish into oblivion so that quickly people scratch their heads, trying to remember when exactly they were in power and what they accomplished.

Yours truly,

Yann Martel

P
EARL
S. B
UCK
(1892–1973) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning American author and the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1938. Born in the United States but raised in Zhenjiang, eastern China, Buck was an avid student of Chinese history and society, which contributed immensely to the vivid and detailed descriptions of Chinese life in her many novels. In addition to writing prolifically, Buck established Welcome House, the first international interracial adoption agency.