Yann Martel at Sarasota Festival of Reading

As I posted earlier, J and I found out at the last minute that Yann Martel was going to be at the Sarasota Festival of Reading, so we hopped in the car to go check it out.
The following are my notes that I typed up right after we got back. But I should add that I did not take notes *during* the talk, so these are solely my impressions of his talk as a fan. Certainly the phrasing and word choices are my own. Yann Martel was so well-spoken on his points, and this is definitely a lesser rendition of what he had to say, but oh well. If you ever have the chance to see him talk, you should go. With that disclaimer out of the way ...
Yann Martel gave a great talk. First he discussed how Tomas was selected to be the artist for the Life of Pi illustrated edition. Then Tomas talked about his creative process. He said he works with two types of media: he paints in oils, then takes photographs of the paintings and further manipulates them on computer. (You can see some of the paintings here.)
During the course of the talk, Martel said the illustrated edition was the idea one of his professional associates (I think his publisher), and Yann said he immediately like the idea. He said that illustrated books for adults were quite common in the 19th century, and it's sad that in our times illustrated books are confined mostly to children's books. He said he really loved Tomas' paintings because they are all done from Pi's point of view, so we become Pi, and we never see what Pi looks like. Pi is not described in the novel, he said, so that's for us to imagine even in the illustrated edition.
(Beware, SPOILERS AHEAD.)
Then he spoke generally about the book. He said that Life of Pi is essentially two stories. They are both about a boy who is shipwrecked. In one story there are animals, in another there are not. In the end, the reader has to decide which story to believe, which is the better story.
As we read Life of Pi, Yann said he was testing us. You begin with the premise of a boy who is shipwrecked. OK, that's believable. Then we find out the boy is trapped on a life raft with a tiger. The author makes us believe that. Kind of crazy, but we go along. Then we find the boy and the tiger are blind, and they run into a boat with another blind person. Maybe that's not so believable. By the time we get to the island of the carnivorous plants, he's really pushing us to belive the unbelievable. He said the island is the final test for the reader. If we believe the island, then we have suspended our rationality and are proceeding on faith. At the end of the book, we are forced to choose. The story with the animals is less rational, but is it the better story? Are we prepared to suspend our rationality and believe the better story?
He talked about his background as a philosophy student and pondering the big questions. He said that he felt there was a important part of life we needed to perceive that was beyond our rational powers, beyond our concrete senses. He said rationality is a powerful tool, but it is limited, and it doesn't get at that unseen world. The disciplines that help us comprehend the unseen are art and religion, but they have been diminished in contemporary times by science and capitalism.
He also talked about his newest work, which will be about the Holocaust. He said he has no personal connection to the event, except as an artist, and he was gripped by the way the Holocaust resists attempts to deal with it artistically, except for the memoir. There are exceptions (he mentioned Maus and Life is Beautiful), but even those are highly confessional. So he began to write about the Holocaust using metaphor, and the fiction work features a money and a donkey. (He remarked wryly that he would now be typecast as the writer who deals with animals.) As he was working on the fiction, he found that there were issues he couldn't deal with in fiction, so he began writing an essay, and it grew to be the length of the novel. So the essay will be included in the new work. He said it would be packaged as a flip book: On one side of the book, the novel, but if you turn the book over and upside down, that will be the essay. He said the working title is "The 21st Century Shirt," and he hoped it would be done soon.
Then he took questions, and the first woman to ask, asked about the movie. (Argh! I hate that question.) He said a movie was in the works, and he had read the script and was quite pleased. But he also said it was a difficult movie to film -- with a child star, animals and being filmed on the water -- so he wasn't sure when it would be done.
Another woman asked him how he had written Life of Pi, and he talked a little about that, especially about making Richard Parker a tiger. For awhile, he had considered an elephant or a rhinoceros, but ultimately decided he had to go with a carnivore. The idea of Pi drying sea kelp day after day for herbivores just seemed too much.
He answered a few other questions as well, but I don't recall them ...
This is my summary of his talk, but I should add that he spoke very beautifully, in complex nuanced sentences, and he had lovely manners. Some authors I've seen come off as arrogant or annoyed to have to deal with their dumb fans, but he seemed really genial and open. I went to the book signing afterward, and he and Tomas were both lovely.
It was a wonderful day at the Sarasota Festival of Reading. I'm so glad I went!