Read Online 101 Letters to a Prime Minister by Yann Martel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Yann Martel
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It’s more than that. It’s how he tells the story. You will see. The narrative agility and ease of it. And how the frames speak large. Some, small though they are, and in black and white, have an impact that one would think possible only with large paintings or shots from a movie.
And I haven’t even mentioned the main device, which explains the title of the book: all the characters have the heads of one kind of animal or other. So the Jews have the heads of mice, the Germans of cats, the Poles of pigs, the Americans of dogs, and so on.
It’s brilliant. It so takes you in, it so rips you apart. From there you must make your own tricky way back again to what it means to be human.
Yours truly,
Yann Martel
A RT S PIEGELMAN (b. 1948) is a Swedish-born American comic artist who was part of the underground comics movements of the 1960s and ’70s, contributing to several publications and co-founding
Arcade
and
Raw
. He was a co-creator of garbage candy and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Named one of
TIME
magazine’s “Top 100 Most Influential People” in 2005, he has won multiple awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for
Maus
and its sequel,
Maus II
. He continues to publish new work and promote the comic medium, and in 2004 published a large board book,
In the Shadow of No Towers
, about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City.
BOOK 13:
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
BY HARPER LEE
October
1, 2007
To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel
Dear Mr. Harper,
In an interview some years ago Mavis Gallant mentioned an operation she underwent. She awoke from general anaesthesia in a state of mental confusion. For several minutes she couldn’t remember any details of her identity or of her life, not her name or her age or what she did, not where she was nor why she was there. An amnesia that was complete—except for this: she knew she was a woman and that she was thinking in English. Inextricably linked to the faintest glimmer of consciousness were those two identity traits: sex and language.
Which says how deep language goes. It becomes part of our biology. Our lungs need and are made for air, our mouths and stomachs need and are made for nutrition; our ears and noses can hear and smell and, lo, there are things to be heard and smelled. The mind is the same: it needs and is made for language, and, lo, there are things to be said and understood.
I am no champion of any particular language. Every language, from Afrikaans to Zulu, does the job it is required to do: mapthe world with sounds that conveniently identify objects and concepts. Given a little time, every living language spoken by a sufficient number of people will match any new object or concept with a new word. Have you heard the notion of how the Inuit are supposed to have twenty-six words for snow, while we in English have only the one, “snow”? Well, that’s nonsense. Ask avid English-language skiers and they’ll come up with twenty-six words or compounds to describe snow.
Just as there are many cuisines on this earth, many styles of dress and many understandings of the divine, each of which can keep the stomach content, the body smartly covered and the soul attuned to the eternal, so there are many different kinds of sounds with which we can make ourselves understood. Each language has its own sonority, cadence, specialized vocabulary, and so on, but it all evens out. Each of us can be fully human in any language.
But since you are a native English speaker, let me champion English in this letter as an introduction to the latest semi-monthly book I am sending you. The English language has by far the largest vocabulary of any language on earth, well over 600,000 words. French, by comparison, is said to have 350,000 words and Italian, 250,000. Now right away, before I get jumped upon by those from my native province and all my Italian-speaking friends, this
And I haven’t even mentioned the main device, which explains the title of the book: all the characters have the heads of one kind of animal or other. So the Jews have the heads of mice, the Germans of cats, the Poles of pigs, the Americans of dogs, and so on.
It’s brilliant. It so takes you in, it so rips you apart. From there you must make your own tricky way back again to what it means to be human.
Yours truly,
Yann Martel
A RT S PIEGELMAN (b. 1948) is a Swedish-born American comic artist who was part of the underground comics movements of the 1960s and ’70s, contributing to several publications and co-founding
Arcade
and
Raw
. He was a co-creator of garbage candy and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Named one of
TIME
magazine’s “Top 100 Most Influential People” in 2005, he has won multiple awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for
Maus
and its sequel,
Maus II
. He continues to publish new work and promote the comic medium, and in 2004 published a large board book,
In the Shadow of No Towers
, about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City.
BOOK 13:
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
BY HARPER LEE
October
1, 2007
To Stephen Harper,
Prime Minister of Canada,
From a Canadian writer,
With best wishes,
Yann Martel
Dear Mr. Harper,
In an interview some years ago Mavis Gallant mentioned an operation she underwent. She awoke from general anaesthesia in a state of mental confusion. For several minutes she couldn’t remember any details of her identity or of her life, not her name or her age or what she did, not where she was nor why she was there. An amnesia that was complete—except for this: she knew she was a woman and that she was thinking in English. Inextricably linked to the faintest glimmer of consciousness were those two identity traits: sex and language.
Which says how deep language goes. It becomes part of our biology. Our lungs need and are made for air, our mouths and stomachs need and are made for nutrition; our ears and noses can hear and smell and, lo, there are things to be heard and smelled. The mind is the same: it needs and is made for language, and, lo, there are things to be said and understood.
I am no champion of any particular language. Every language, from Afrikaans to Zulu, does the job it is required to do: mapthe world with sounds that conveniently identify objects and concepts. Given a little time, every living language spoken by a sufficient number of people will match any new object or concept with a new word. Have you heard the notion of how the Inuit are supposed to have twenty-six words for snow, while we in English have only the one, “snow”? Well, that’s nonsense. Ask avid English-language skiers and they’ll come up with twenty-six words or compounds to describe snow.
Just as there are many cuisines on this earth, many styles of dress and many understandings of the divine, each of which can keep the stomach content, the body smartly covered and the soul attuned to the eternal, so there are many different kinds of sounds with which we can make ourselves understood. Each language has its own sonority, cadence, specialized vocabulary, and so on, but it all evens out. Each of us can be fully human in any language.
But since you are a native English speaker, let me champion English in this letter as an introduction to the latest semi-monthly book I am sending you. The English language has by far the largest vocabulary of any language on earth, well over 600,000 words. French, by comparison, is said to have 350,000 words and Italian, 250,000. Now right away, before I get jumped upon by those from my native province and all my Italian-speaking friends, this
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