LitPicks - May '07 

 Water occupies a special niche in our collective psyche: it connects us, it binds us in common humanity. We spring from water, we are made of water. Water is pure, it cleanses, it nourishes, it heals, it renews. Water is mysterious, it is eternal, it merges past with present. To be adrift on water is to be adrift in life, it is to be in life, it is life.      

A Lighter Touch | Wonderfully Written | Great Works      




A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Norman Maclean, 1976
217 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
On its surface, this beautiful memoir is about the intricacies of fly fishing and the two Montana brothers who fish the big western rivers. Fishing devotees will revel in descriptions of the rhythm, angles, whip and whistle of the perfect cast. We even get a bit of fish psychology: a trout knows it's being tricked if the fly isn't set perfectly on the water.

But good stories, like big fish, run deep.  The brothers' teacher is their Presbyterian minister father, to whom "all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy." Fly-casting here is the art, and younger brother Paul (Brad Pitt in the film version) is at the heart of the story: he becomes a sublime artist, achieving grace and perfection in fly casting—but tragically not in life.

We follow the brothers from childhood into adulthood under the affectionate gaze of older brother Norman. The two are as different in personality as they are alike in their passion for fishing and love for each other. In the story's elegiac last words, a now much older Maclean tells us he is "haunted by waters." And so, by the end, are we. The flow of the river has become the flux of life, uniting author and readers with primordial earth and time, past and present. As Maclean says, "all existence fades to a being with my soul."

A River Runs Through It is combined with two other stories to make up one slender volume. The other stories are delightful accounts of Maclean's youthful experiences in the U.S. Forest Service.

See our Reading Guide for A River Runs Through It.

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Life of Pi
Yann Martel, 2001
348 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
What do you do with a 450-pound Bengal tiger?  Sounds like the old 800-pound gorilla joke, and the answer is pretty much the same:  give it whatever it wants, especially if the two of you are sharing a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Young Piscene Patel is the son of a zookeeper in Pondicherry, India.  When Pi turns 16, his father decides to move family and zoo to Canada, but four days out to sea the boat inexplicably sinks.  The only survivors are Pi, a wounded zebra, a hyena, and the Bengal tiger—all of whom find themselves together in a lifeboat. 

Eventually, Pi realizes his own survival depends on keeping the tiger alive. Should it die, he thinks, “I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger.”  From that point on, Pi makes the care and training of the tiger his sole preoccupation. Along the way, we get fascinating explanations of zoos, animal behavior, distilling salt water, fishing, and gutting turtles.

Lead-footed realists have faulted the plot's improbability, but they miss the point.  Yann Martel is a superb storyteller, and he has fashioned a fable: a metaphysical exploration into our relationship with the cosmos and the divine.

Pi is a quester, and early on in some delightfully whimsical passages, he seeks to meld several religious traditions into one. His name suggests a circle's unity and the numerical pi's infinity. Later, adrift in his lifeboat, Pi contemplates the vastness of the night sky and tells us he feels like the sage who fell out of the Hindu god Vishnu’s mouth and “so beheld the entire universe, everything that is there.” 

No matter what level you read this story on, it’s a beautifully written, thrilling page-turner.  At the end, Pi proffers a second version of his tale, a story of “dry, yeastless factuality.”  Why not choose “the better story,” Pi asks?  And so, we are free to believe in the version we wish.

Be sure to download our Readers' Guide for Life of Pi.

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Moby Dick
Herman Melville, 1851
592 pp.

By Molly Lundquist
10 Reasons to Read Moby Dick
 1. It's The Great American Classic.
 2. It's a terrific story.
 3. It's like eating spinach—it's good for you.
 4. References always pop up—in literature, religion, politics, & psychology.
 5. It'll be a question when you go on Jeopardy—for sure.
 6. It's easy to spell.
 7. You'll be special—the only person you know to ever read it.
 8. It's hefty—builds bone mass & prevents osteoporosis.
 9. Read it once, hollow it out. Now you've got a safe for your valuables.
10. You'll never, ever have to go on a whaler—been there, done that.

Truly, I hesitated to recommend Moby Dick, but it's the grandest epic of the modern era—the real deal. It won't be easy, though, so take a look at the recommendations below for tackling Moby as a book club read:

      1. Split it up into two months—no one with a life can read the entire book in a month.
      2. Invite a literature professor to lead your discussions.
      3. Don't get hung up over the parts on cetology—everything you ever wanted to know about           whales, and then some. Although it's fascinating (and thematic), it can drag down your           reading pace. (Hear that? The sound of my grad diploma going down the drain.)


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