Yann Martel is a fabulous author. I have been reading his book Life of Pi for some time now, I am yet to finish, but I still feel so connected to it. I am fascinated by his need for accuracy in word-usage, in order to clearly portray meaning. Read what he says in an interview:
AVC: Life Of Pi begins with a fictional account of how somebody in India told you this story, claiming it would make you believe in God. Did the decision to begin the book that way come out of this desire to raise the question of truth vs. fiction?
YM: Well, only part of it is fiction. It's mostly, factually true. I was in India, I was working on a novel set in Portugal, I did meet a man named Mr. Adirubasamy, I am thankful to the Canada Council for the Arts. You're asking me the question everybody asks me, under the guise of asking about the introduction: You're asking me whether the book is true. You know, truth is a nebulous thing. There are certain, definite truths, but the truth of our lives goes far beyond facts. Life is an interpretation of a series of facts, and that interpretation is really what life is about. So the division between non-fiction and fiction has a certain logic, but it's a very limited one. And by and large, it isn't helpful.
I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making. You know, the history of the United States is not just a series of flat facts: "George Washington was the first president. John Adams was the second." That's not it. The history of the United States fleshes those out in ways that are necessarily ways of storytelling. And any good novel is true in the sense that it's emotionally true, psychologically true, aesthetically true, and factually true, and when they aren't, it's because they are spiritually true. Take George Orwell's Animal Farm. It was totally true to Soviet Russia under Stalin, it captures the essence of what happened there. But it's not only not true as it relates to Russian history, it isn't even true to the way farms operate in England. But it's absolutely true to that human event called Stalinism in Russia. So this thing of "Is it true? Is it not?", I think people are basically asking if it's factually true, which has its validity if you are some scientist, if you're a logician, if you're a technician. But existentially, it is quite limited. And I'm not saying that just to obfuscate. I can tell you right now what was factually true or not throughout the book. But I think once you have those answers, it tends to reduce the story instead of making it something greater. And that attitude, expressed constantly, reduces life. And we get a whole series of people, the alienated people of the West, who having reduced and scoured anything marvelous about it, are finally left with nothing.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/yann-martel,14166/
He later goes on to say that Christians are one of the main groups of faith that have not been as accepting of the book because, he writes, they don't read fiction. He says the Bible is enough for them. Let us not be close-minded. Let us not be intolerant. Let us not be ignorant. Those are not pleasing characteristics. There are amazing things authors have to share with the world. They may not come from our way of thinking or even the same faith, but they have something beautiful to share with the world. G-d is not exclusive in His love.
