The Life of Pie Graphs and Spurious Projects

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The latest Whore Derv is awarded to one of the shining stars of Canada’s literary firmament. While I must give him a priori and de facto respect for contributing to the re-invigoration of reading and writing in our nation, strong and free, I must admit that the concept of his latest book smells like poo. Writer’s Block is a pain in the ass, isn’t it my friend?

After selling over 1.2 million copies of the novel that won our winner a Man Booker prize, which is the most prestigious book award in the Commonwealth, our hero was the first Canadian appointed to represent the Washington Arts Commission. He has also been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for fiction, and won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction. The book that won him a Man Booker prize impressed me simply for the fact that many people who don’t read a lot asked me if I’d read it, expecting that since I was a rabid reader that I would have. Granted, my taste tends towards the obscure sometimes, and I still have not read this book. But I cannot pooh-pooh anyone who gets people who don’t usually read excited about reading.

What I can pooh-pooh is a bad book idea, and a total waste of time. Our winner’s latest project is mailing the prime minister a book every two weeks on the general theme of stillness. He has then compiled in a book all these mailings: the book plus a page or two written by our great author on the book he mailed. His reading list, I must say, is excellent. Having read around 50% of the titles, I can flatter myself that I am very well-read, flattery which embodies the real purpose of any of these reading list books. Useless. . .

What he hopes to gain, or what his very purpose is, is beyond me. Perhaps he thinks reading makes you a better person. Perhaps it does, but I doubt it. The Prime Minister responds to our great writer only twice, and for that, I suppose we should be outraged. What?! Our Prime Minister isn’t secluding himself to read all of these books a famous Canadian writer is suggesting to him! FOR SHAME! Absolutely outrageous! Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fan of the current Prime Minister, and I’m sure a little extra reading wouldn’t hurt him.

But really the whole premise of this project is ridiculous. First of all, the Prime Minister is a busy fellow, even though he prorogued parliament when there was a lot of business to finish. Maybe he suddenly thought that the great writer was right! He hadn’t read all these masterpieces, and perhaps he started to feel a little insecure. Perhaps the prorogation of government was actually so Stephen Harper could catch up on his reading, about which our great writer has steadily been harassing him. Yes indeed, if anyone else had embarked upon this, besides one of the most famous living writers, I think we would have to regard this project as harassment. That would make the prorogation that pissed off the whole nation at least partially the great writer’s fault!!!

Secondly, the Prime Minister was indeed busy. He was busy undermining the foundations of our democracy through his iron fist control over his media image. The notion of the press as the fourth estate, the watchdog of government, protecting citizens against the tyrannies, large and small, of the political apparatus, has given way to pervasive suspicion of the media, a suspicion which the Prime Minister shares. This suspicion is part of his pseudo-populist appeal. Fourth Estate be damned: Stephen Harper is subjecting all media coverage of his government to approval through the Privy Council*. Doesn’t our great writer think that more appropriate readings should be drawn from, say, the creative commons movement who valorize the free circulation of information and knowledge? I guess we should be grateful, though, our great writer didn’t recommend The Art of War by Sun Tzu, or Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’ Leviathan, or any books that may have been written by Goebbels.

If you haven’t figured out who our winner is today, it is Yann Martel, author of the legendary novel The Life of Pi. His most recent book, the reading list I have been discussion, is called What is Stephen Harper Reading? I must say, I don’t particularly care what he’s reading. I do, however, care very deeply about what he is doing as our prime minister. Congratulations Yann! I hope that writer’s block goes away soon, for everyone’s sake!

*information in this paragraph was revealed to me by Mary Higgins, who is about to embark upon a research project on political communication in Canada.