Life of Pi review

So I was going to not write about spring break because everyone will be, and I’m not basic like all y’all.  I was instead going to write about space, but I had a better idea for me.  It’s not very relevant to. . . anyone, but I want to write it.  I might post the space one soon, who knows.  Also spoilers, so if you want to read Life of Pi (you shouldn’t), this isn’t for you.

Righty-Oh let’s go, you read the title, you read the introduction, you’re reading this, you know what's up.  Life of Pi is just a terrible book that takes itself so goddamn seriously and is just unreadably pretentious.  The author makes it out to be this grand, life-changing book, but the writing and story just aren’t there.  I haven’t even finished the book (I was supposed to by last monday) and I still know how bad it is.  I really, really, really don’t like it, and because I’m me, I organized my argument into nicely organized sections below for your reading pleasure.

1.The author himself.  So Yann Martel is a Weird guy, what he isn’t is a strong writer.  He says a lot that he went into this book, intending to write more than a story about a boy and a tiger on a boat.  He wanted to write a book with deep meaning, that would change your life.  He certainly didn’t just write a book about a boy and a tiger in a lifeboat, he wrote a really bad book about a boy and a tiger in a lifeboat.  He clearly wrote Pi to mirror himself, not in like a deep, autobiographical way.  It’s more of a self insert fanfiction kind of way.  And the entire book i just written so pretentious, it’s an unintentional comedy

2. The pretentiousness of it.  I already kind of said this, but it really needs to be addressed.  Why?  Because holy sh*t, it’s practically unreadable and it still get’s all this praise it doesn’t deserve.

3.It’s boring.  The first 100ish pages are just about his family’s zoo and religion.  My english teacher said this was a set up for the grand things the book was about, but if you need 100 pages of boring crap to understand a book, it’s not a good book.

4.The writing freaking sucks.  Pi doesn’t DO things, things HAPPEN to him.  Things happen to forward the plot instead of things happen and the plot moves forward as a result.  There are problems that are written in that are unsolvable and things just HAPPEN that solve those problems (deus ex machina).  It makes for a boring predictable read.  The only surprises are the crazy sh*t that Yann Martel seemingly pulls out of his ass.

I could write more about this dumb, dumb book, but I’m going to have a paper on it soon so I won’t bother.

Todays art tip is to sketch LIGHTLY before adding in details.  Draw rough shapes before adding in details.