The Idiot at the End of Things

"Tartarus was not just another realm within the classical world - it was a land beyond Hades, beyond the Underworld, lying as far below hell as the Earth lay below Heaven; is was said that an anvil would fall for nine days before reaching it."

I received the most unexpected of e-mails from a Thomas B. Friedman of the Department of English and Modern Languages at the University of the Cariboo(!), yesterday:

Despite your categorizing of it as "bad and old," your essay on Lampman's "The City of the End of Things" would prove useful as a model for student literary analysis for my 2nd year Canadian Literature class. Could I get permission from you to reproduce this essay--with proper attribution--for my 24 ENGL 217 students?

I'm going to give the permission, of course (I understand all too well the value in teaching of resources cribbed from the internet), but I can't help but wonder how the essay is going to be used. As a negative example, I assume--I hope! Reading the essay again, I can't deny that it's really, really bad. The essay totally deserved the 'C' it received (though I still think the prof of that summer Can Lit class blew chunks).

Yann Martel

"Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of peripatetic Canadian parents. He grew up in Alaska, British Columbia, Costa Rica, France, Ontario and Mexico, and has continued travelling as an adult, spending time in Iran, Turkey and India. After studying philosophy at Trent University and while doing various odd jobs -- tree planting, dishwashing, working as a security guard -- he began to write. He is the prize-winning author of The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, a collection of short stories, and of Self, a novel, both of them published internationally."

From this webpage.

I've got mixed feeling about Yann Martel. On the one hand, working at Chapters I flogged his book off on everybody. It was an easy sell, not only because it actually is a good book and teh cover art is well designed, but because I genuinely thought it was an excellent choice. The book's got a very generic cross-appeal to it, while maintaining a certain literary depth to it. I eventually stopped trying to push Life of Pi on people, once I eventually realized that Yann didn't need my help. The guy's already worth tens of millions, largely thanks to this one book.

It's an amazing accomplishment. His earlier book, Self, is crap--though saying that I've decided I haven't given it a fair shake and plan to trying again--and to have gone from that (a failed, virtually unsellable novel--they tried at Chapters to capitalize on the success of Life of Pi but Self still barely moved) to one of the most successful international sellers ever, is impressive. So yay for Canadian authors and publishing. Can lit rules.

On the other hand... part of me is kind of annoyed by the whole thing. Life of Pi's good, but it certainly isn't great, and Yann Martel hasn't demonstrated (in my opinion) a level of talent to equal Alice Munro or some of the other pillars of Canadian Literature. Of course, sales figures rarely reflect the literary value of something--however that can be judged--but while I enjoyed Life of Pi it still amazes me that it could sell that well. It somehow seems a little unfair, though I'm not quite sure why.

What it really comes down to, though, is probably just that I'm jealous. I mean, look at the bio up top. Living off his writing by the age of 27. Traveled... worked crap jobs during university. Hell, I did the security thing as well... oops, gotta go!