Verisimilitude

When I studied Life of Pi in the ninth grade, verisimilitude was the key word: the appearance of truth. I don’t want to say too much—or really anything at all—about the book, especially to those who hadn’t read it yet. But I believed that the book was a true story, as much as everything was telling me it wasn’t, until I closed it and needed to tell myself that I had really only read a story. Why was it so important to me that Pi’s story was real, that Pi even existed? I think in a way we feel that the lessons we learn from novels can only be true if they are based on reality. It doesn’t seem rational to be changed by ink blotches on a collection of ordered papers, that you can sit or even lie down in one spot, relatively motionless for a few hours and look up changed in some way. It doesn’t matter that the themes of novels are based on the human experience and that the stories in them are based in small and sometimes large ways on our life histories—we still want stories to be as real as the people who wrote them.

Are the emotions we feel from books any less real because they weren't caused by a "real" source?

http://g1-wallpapers.com/albums/userpics/10004/misc-love-books.jpg

I think in other ways we can even be hurt that the author has lied to us when they create a world that you believe in for a few days or even weeks that is false. A small part of me, I’m sure, is still convinced that the wizarding world is very angry at J.K. Rowling for revealing its secrets in her Harry Potter books and that the owl who was delivering my acceptance letter to Hogwarts got lost along the way. I read Memoirs of a Geisha literally cover to cover. I do that when I read a book I really like, even glancing over the copyright page (which is a little weird I know.) I guess it’s because the world made alive in the book is entirely contained in the pages, and I just need to know everything! Anyway, I didn’t have time to start up where I had left off again, so I read the copyright page and then the page that said that the characters, events etc. were entirely a product of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to actual people or events are a coincidence...and it went on. I felt totally betrayed in a sense! Who was this, what was his name?, Golden guy to lie to me like that? He had “interviewed” this geisha later in life as she was telling her story. I thought it was all real, and I felt so much for her and her story. I didn’t read the rest of the book in the same way, although I still liked it very much. I felt like this lady had been taken away from me, that suddenly all her problems and experiences and everything I had felt about them no longer existed. But why shouldn’t they? If I could feel sympathy for this woman, why couldn’t I respond to her suffering and problems in an abstract way? Wasn’t that even more useful in a sense, to be able to feel compassion for someone who didn’t even exist? Maybe this “practice” would make it easier in the real world, my emotional push-ups and jumping jacks.

This is another verisimilitudinous work. I thought her story was real and felt greatly detached from the character when I learned it wasn't. But there's no reason I need to do that.

I think Yann Martel is similarly concerned with this issue, of blurring the lines between reality and choosing our “better story.” (Martel, 64) Like when you tell a story about something that happens to you until it becomes better and better than what really happened. And eventually, perhaps, even your memory of the event changes and you remember the incredible happiness, or peace, clarity...whatever that you “felt” at that point and can hold onto it, real or not. Pi creates his own ideal reality through his choice of religions. When the three religious figures collide on the street and Pi has to face the world with his unconventional Hindu-Christian-Islam faith, his reality is challenged. To the world, his combination is not possible: “the wise men seemed annoyed when they realized that all three of them were approaching the same people,” (Martel, 65) and proceeded to argue possessively over Pi and convince him that he could not choose all three faiths. But Pi replies that, “‘Bapu Gandhi said, “All religions are true.” I just want to love God.’” Pi’s religious quest is a noble one. He embraces these faiths for the different things they mean to him, but ultimately because they all bring him to the same purpose—to be closer to God. Whether his “religion” is possible in the real world, whether it can be a true “reality” is inconsequential because Pi has chosen it to be in his reality, to be a part of his story.

So, like Pi, I feel I can make my own reality, my own “faith.” I am Catholic because I was raised that way. Because it's ok that I'm not sure. Because of the sight of little black crosses one Wednesday every year and incense wafting over the altar boy’s head. Because of St. Francis and all the other saints in that picture book I was given after my First Communion. Because people have crossed themselves the same way I do for millennia. And because most of the other people sitting beside me at mass are as preoccupied as I am. But I am also connected to the Earth. Because in nature you should also “treat things as you would wish to be treated.” Because it is beautiful and calm and still dangerous. Because nature is a commonality we cannot explain away. Because you can learn as much as you want about it or nothing at all. And because any day is made better if I’ve spent some time outside. And finally, I am also rational because, well, it doesn’t make sense not to be. I think it’s ok to be whatever mix makes your “better story.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BzqsKLbGpM
Here's Yann Martel talking about his book. He says the story is "unreasonable" and talks about the artist as the "witness!"