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August 31, 2014

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Writer’s effort to get PM to read

YANN Martel is a Canadian author best known for the 2002 Man Booker Prize-winning novel “Life of Pi.” The book was first translated into Chinese and published by Yilin Press in 2012 when Director Ang Lee made it into a 3D adventure movie, which created quite a buzz on the Chinese mainland.

This year in June, Yilin Press translated and published another Martel book, this one called “What is Stephen Harper Reading?” It is a collection of 101 letters that Martel wrote every two weeks to Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada.

In each letter, Martel introduces one book that portrays “stillness,” with an accompanying explanatory note. Martel started the project in 2007 and ended in February 2011, after sending Harper a total of 101 books.

“He (Harper) is known to be a non-reader. He reads nothing,” Martel said in an e-mail interview with Shanghai Daily, “So I thought, well, I’ll send him good books, good short books, because the usual excuse people give for not reading is that they don’t have time.”

Of the 101 books in a variety of literary forms by writers from all over the world, there is the “Diary of a Madman and Other Stories” by Chinese writer Lu Xun, translated into English by American Sinologist William A. Lyell. In his letter, Martel called Lu Xun China’s Tolstoy or China’s Hugo.

He said the West’s understanding of China has generally remained unchanged for years: a booming economy, an authority political system, an enormous population and lots and lots of Chinese dreams. However, a country is nothing without a vibrant culture.

“Ever since I started to look into China, Lu Xun has always been a culture standard on contemporary Chinese literature,” Martel wrote in his letter to Harper. “Thanks to these translated short stories, he was widely acknowledged by Western society as an outstanding Chinese writer. Many of his works written in the ‘20s of the last century have greatly influenced the modern Chinese literature of today. … I hope you will enjoy reading it.”

Q: What inspired you to write such a book?

A: Disappointment was my inspiration ­­— disappointment at the man who is prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. I was in Ottawa with many other artists for the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, which is the major grant-giving body to artists. But while I was in Ottawa I noticed the complete disconnect between the political class and the artistic class. So I started sending him a book every two weeks, with a letter explaining why he should read the book.

Q: Did you ever get any feedback with each book you had recommended to the PM?

A: Nothing from the prime minister himself. Despite sending him 101 books over the course of four years, he never wrote back to me, not once.

Q: What do you think makes it so important to share the experience of reading?

A: Reading is essential for a leader because otherwise how do you gain experience of life, of the world? A book is an airplane, a teacher, an experience. If you don’ read at all and don’t travel at all, I don't know how anyone would know anything beyond their own narrow experience. And do we want such a person as our leader?

Q: Do you think the older we become, the less we prefer to read fiction?

A: I don’t know. Depends on the person. I find the great absent class in the reading world is the middle-aged male. We read when we are young, we start to read again when we are older (when we’re retired, for example, when we have more time), but it’s those middle years, when we’re working, working, working, that readership goes down, especially in men, I’ve noticed.

Q: What did you gain after reading all these 101 books?

A: I gained everything there is to gain from reading. I discovered new books, I rediscovered old ones that I hadn’t read in years, and as a result I was both entertained and taught, I became that much wiser. Because to read a book is to live an extra life, the life of the characters that you've read about. You become them as you're reading, so you live their life, and so, hopefully, acquire a little more experience of life, a little more wisdom.

Q: What kinds of stories are you drawn to? And how would you describe the kinds of books you steer clear of?

A: I’m drawn to books that are serious. I don’t mean by that that they can’t be funny, but I want them to tell me something about the human experience. In a word, I guess I like “literary” books, which sounds pretentious. By that, I mean I don’t like books that are formulaic or pat. Or boring.




 

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