Yann Martel

The author of Life of Pi is speaking in Nashville this Saturday, so there's a feature on him by Fernanda Moore at Chapter 16 that was reprinted in Monday's City Paper. I was struck by this exchange on criticism:

Chapter 16: Every artist must find a way to cope with critical opinion, but you have encountered an unusually huge range of reactions--reviews which are absolutely transcendent, as well as reviews that are scathing. How do you account for the extremes of opinion that your work seems to inspire?

Yann Martel: I mostly ignore critical opinion, good and bad. Art is a gift, the making of it, the receiving of it. So, like every artist, I create and then I give. What the world does with my gift--raise it up high or cast it down--is not my affair. For example, Beatrice and Virgil received an awful review from The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani. She positively hated the novel, as did the reviewers for The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle

And also:

Any work of art is a co-creation between the artist and the reader/viewer/spectator. My interpretation of Pi is just one reading among many possible readings, and it should not have any more weight because I'm its author. Having said that, I don't see the point in making less of life. It’s short enough as it is, so why not see more in it? Why not make leaps of faith?

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/41832.html.