by Yann Martel
ALSO BY YANN MARTEL
Beatrice & Virgil
Life of Pi
Self
The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2012
Copyright © 2012 Yann Martel
Translation of letter for Book 83 by Josette Bélanger.
Translation of letter for Book 84 by Émile Martel.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. NO part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a
reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2012. Portions of this book originally appeared
in What Is Stephen Harper Reading?, published by Vintage Canada in 2009.
Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited.
Vintage Canada with colophon is a registered trademark.
www.randomhouse.ca
this page constitutes a continuation of the copyright page.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Martel, Yann
101 letters to a prime minister : the complete letters
to Stephen Harper / Yann Martel.
eISBN: 978-0-307-40208-0
1. Best books. 2. Martel, Yann—Books and reading.
3. Martel, Yann—Correspondence. 4. Harper, Stephen, 1959—. I. Title.
II. Title: One hundred one letters to a prime minister.
Z1035.9.M36 2012 011′.73 C2012-900998-9
Cover image by Emre Ogan
v3.1
TO ALICE, MY FAVOURITE READER
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
BOOK 1: The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the Russian by Aylmer Maude
BOOK 2: Animal Farm, by George Orwell
BOOK 3: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
BOOK 4: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart
BOOK 5: The Bhagavad Gita, translated from the Sanskrit by Juan Mascaró
BOOK 6: Bonjour Tristesse, by Françoise Sagan, translated from the French by Irene Ash
BOOK 7: Candide, by Voltaire, translated from the French by John Butt
BOOK 8: Short and Sweet: 101 Very Short Poems, edited by Simon Armitage
BOOK 9: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez, translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa
BOOK 10: Miss Julia, by August Strindberg, translated from the Swedish by Peter Watts
BOOK 11: The Watsons, by Jane Austen
BOOK 12: Maus, by Art Spiegelman
BOOK 13: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
BOOK 14: Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
BOOK 15: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson
BOOK 16: Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by M. D. Herter Norton
BOOK 17: The Island Means Minago, by Milton Acorn
BOOK 18: Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
BOOKS 19: The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren, translated from the Swedish by Jill M. Morgan Imagine a Day, by Sarah L. Thomson and Rob Gonsalves The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg
BOOK 20: The Educated Imagination, by Northrop Frye
BOOK 21: The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway
BOOK 22: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, translated from the Greek by Maxwell Staniforth
BOOK 23: Artists and Models, by Anaïs Nin
BOOK 24: Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
BOOK 25: The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, by Larry Tremblay
BOOK 26: Birthday Letters, by Ted Hughes
BOOK 27: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
BOOK 28: Read All About It!, by Laura Bush and Jenna Bush
BOOK 29: Drown, by Junot Díaz
BOOK 30: The Kreutzer Sonata, by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the Russian by Aylmer Maude
BOOK 31: Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
BOOK 32: The Rez Sisters, by Tomson Highway
BOOK 33: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, translated from the French by Mattias Ripa
BOOK 34: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
BOOK 35: Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas
BOOK 36: Everything That Rises Must Converge, by Flannery O’Connor
BOOK 37: A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift
BOOK 38: Anthem, by Ayn Rand
BOOK 39: Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones
BOOK 40: A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
BOOK 41: Gilgamesh, in an English version by Stephen Mitchell
BOOK 42: Gilgamesh, in an English version by Derrek Hines
BOOK 43: The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett
BOOK 44: The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
BOOK 45: Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated from the Spanish by Andrew Hurley
BOOK 46: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics 1965–1999, by Paul McCartney
BOOK 47: The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, by Michael Ignatieff
BOOK 48: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
BOOK 49: The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
BOOK 50: Jane Austen: A Life, by Carol Shields
BOOK 51: Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare
BOOK 52: Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change, a collaboration organized by David Buckland and the Cape Farewell Foundation
BOOKS 53 Louis Riel, by Chester Brown AND 54: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, by Yukio Mishima, translated from the Japanese by John Nathan
BOOK 55: The Gift, by Lewis Hyde
BOOK 56: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
BOOK 57: Hiroshima Mon Amour, a screenplay by Marguerite Duras, translated from the French by Richard Seaver, and a movie by Alain Resnais
BOOKS 58 Runaway, by Alice Munro, AND 59: and The Door, by Margaret Atwood, with Camino, music by Oliver Schroer
BOOK 60: The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy, translated from the French by Hannah Josephson
BOOKS 61: Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, stories and pictures by Maurice Sendak
BOOK 62: Everyman, by Philip Roth
BOOK 63: Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes
BOOK 64: The Virgin Secretary’s Impossible Boss, by Carole Mortimer
BOOK 65: The Tartar Steppe, by Dino Buzzati, translated from the Italian by Stuart Hood
BOOK 66: What Is Stephen Harper Reading?, brought to you by dozens of great writers
BOOK 67: Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee
BOOK 68: Generation A, by Douglas Coupland
BOOK 69: Property, by Valerie Martin
BOOK 70: Tropic of Hockey, by Dave Bidini
BOOK 71: The Financial Expert, by R. K. Narayan
BOOK 72: Books: A Memoir, by Larry McMurtry
BOOK 73: Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
BOOK 74: Eunoia, by Christian Bök
BOOK 75: Nadirs, by Herta Müller, translated from the German by Sieglinde Lug
BOOK 76: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, translated from the Russian by Bela Von Block
BOOK 77: King Leary, by Paul Quarring
ton
BOOK 78: Century, by Ray Smith
BOOK 79: Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White
BOOK 80: For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down, by David Adams Richards
BOOK 81: Diary of a Madman, by Lu Xun, translated from the Chinese by William A. Lyell
BOOK 82: The Grey Islands, by John Steffler
BOOK 83: Caligula, by Albert Camus, translated from the French by Justin O’Brien
BOOK 84: Nikolski, by Nicolas Dickner, translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler
BOOK 85: How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff
BOOK 86: Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments, by Sappho, translated from the Greek by Aaron Poochigian
BOOK 87: Sweet Home Chicago, by Ashton Grey
BOOK 88: Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson
BOOKS 89: Mr. Palomar, by Italo Calvino, translated from the Italian by William Weaver (and Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein)
BOOK 90: Selected Poems, by Al Purdy
BOOK 91: The Nibelungenlied, translated from the medieval German by Cyril Edwards
BOOK 92: Chess, by Stefan Zweig, translated from the German by Anthea Bell
BOOK 93: Selected Poems, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, translated from the Russian by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi
BOOK 94: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
BOOK 95: Cakes and Ale, by W. Somerset Maugham
BOOK 96: Six Characters in Search of an Author, by Luigi Pirandello, translated from the Italian by John Linstrum
BOOKS 97: Le Géant de la gaffe, by André Franquin Le Lotus bleu, by Hergé Paul à Québec, by Michel Rabagliati
BOOK 98: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited and translated by James Winny
BOOK 99: A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel
BOOK 100: Scorched, by Wajdi Mouawad, translated from the French by Linda Gaboriau
P.S. BOOK 101: In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D. J. Enright
Permission Credits
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
This is a book about books. It takes the form of a series of letters. The letters were written by a Canadian writer—me—and sent to a Canadian politician, Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In each letter I discuss a literary work. A novel, a play, a poetry collection, a religious text, a graphic novel, a children’s book—the range is wide. I mailed a copy of each work, dated, numbered and inscribed, with the accompanying letter neatly folded inside its front cover, to the Prime Minister’s office in Ottawa.
Politely and unfailingly, I did this every two weeks from April 16, 2007 to February 28, 2011; a total of 101 letters accompanying the gift of slightly more than 101 books. Many books, many letters, one essential question hovering throughout: what sort of mind, nourished by what, do we want our leaders to have? My argument is that literature—as opposed to factual non-fiction—is an essential element to a deeply thinking, fully feeling mind in our complex twenty-first-century world. A mind not informed by the thoughtful product that is the novel, the play, the poem, will be capable perhaps of administering the affairs of a people, maintaining the status quo, but not of truly leading that people. To lead effectively requires the capacity both to understand how things are and to dream how things might be, and nothing so displays that kind of understanding and dreaming as literature does. That is my argument, and it is for Canadians, whether regular readers of literature or not, to decide where they stand on the issue.
Does literature make for character, or is it mere entertainment? That is the question.
I received seven replies in total. The first came promptly:
May 8, 2007
Dear Mr. Martel:
On behalf of the Prime Minister, I would like to thank you for your recent letter and the copy of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych. We appreciated reading your comments and suggestions regarding the novel.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write.
Sincerely,
Susan I. Ross
Assistant to the Prime Minister
A long, official silence of nearly two years followed. Then, unexpectedly and in a jumbled order, I received a quick series of four responses, as follows:
For Books 53 and 54, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, by Yukio Mishima, and Louis Riel, A Comic-Strip Biography, by Chester Brown:
April 29, 2009
Dear Mr. Martel,
On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence, with which you enclosed a copy of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima and a copy of Louis Riel, A Comic-Strip Biography by Chester Brown. The Prime Minister wishes me to convey his thanks for sending him these books. You may be assured that your thoughtful gesture is most appreciated.
Yours truly,
S. Russell
Executive Correspondence Officer
For Book 51, Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare:
May 1, 2009
Dear Mr. Martel,
On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence regarding the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canadian Periodical Fund. I would also like to thank you for the enclosure of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.
Please be assured that your comments have been given careful consideration. I have taken the liberty of forwarding copies of your correspondence to the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, and the Honourable James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, so that they may be made aware of your concerns.
Once again, thank you for writing the Prime Minister.
Yours sincerely,
S. Russell
Executive Correspondence Officer
For Book 55, The Gift, by Lewis Hyde:
May 22, 2009
Dear Mr. Martel,
On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your recent correspondence.
Thank you for writing to share your views with the Prime Minister. You may be assured that your comments have been carefully noted. For more information on the Government’s initiatives, you may wish to visit the Prime Minister’s website, at www.pm.gc.ca.
Yours sincerely,
L. A. Lavell
Executive Correspondence Officer
For Book 52, Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change, a collaboration organized by David Buckland and the Cape Farewell Foundation:
June 24, 2009
Dear Mr. Martel:
On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence of March 30, which provided a copy of the book Burning Ice: Art & Climate Change.
Thank you for providing this material to the Prime Minister.
Your courtesy in bringing this information to his attention is appreciated.
Yours sincerely,
P. Monteith
Executive Correspondence Officer
In addition, two of the writers who stepped in to supply the Prime Minister with books when I was not able to do so myself, namely Charles Foran and Alice Kuipers, each received a reply:
For Book 81, Diary of a Madman, by Lu Xun:
May 20, 2010
Dear Mr. Foran,
On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your recent letters, with which you enclosed a copy of Century by Ray Smith, and one of Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun.
The Prime Minister wishes me to convey his thanks for sending him these publications. You may be assured that your thoughtful gesture is most appreciated.
Yours sincerely,
S. Russell
Executive Correspondence Officer
For Book 85, How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff:
September 3, 2010
Dear Ms. Kuipers,
&nbs
p; On behalf of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, I would like to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence, with which you enclosed a copy of the book entitled How I Live Now.
Thank you for sending this book to the Prime Minister.
Your thoughtful gesture is most appreciated.
Yours sincerely,
T. Lewkowicz
Executive Correspondence Officer
I noted in these responses my correspondents’ consistent use of initials, with the exception of the very first one, from Susan I. Ross, Assistant to the Prime Minister. Of those that followed from the Executive Correspondence Officers, it was never a Sarah, a Lawrence Andrew or a Penny who replied to me, but always an S., an L. A. or a P. I suppose this gender anonymity accommodated the sensibilities of Canadians to whom it might make a difference whether a reply to their letter to the Prime Minister came from a man or a woman. The effect it had on me was to make clear that the stranger who was writing to me wanted to remain a stranger. And of course each letter is quite formulaic, an acknowledgement rather than a response.
Seven form replies from deputies, ninety-four wilful acts of silence—and not a peep from my intended co-reader. It was a lonely book club. I started it in a moment of frustration. In late March 2007 I was invited to Ottawa to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, that towering institution that has done so much to foster the cultural identity of Canadians. The celebrations turned out to be a very pleasant affair, but mostly because of the fellow artists present, fifty in all, of every discipline and tendency, a rainbow of writers, painters, composers, musicians, choreographers and others, each representing one year of the Council’s fifty. I was the representative for 1991, the year I received a Canada Council grant that allowed me to write my first novel, Self. I was twenty-seven years old and the money was manna from heaven. I made those eighteen thousand dollars last a year and a half (and considering the income tax I have paid in the wake of the success of my second novel, Life of Pi, this initial investment by Canadian taxpayers has been well worth it). The eldest artist there, representing 1957, was Jean-Louis Roux, great man of the theatre; the youngest was Tracee Smith, an aboriginal hip-hop dancer and choreographer who had just received her first grant. It was a thrill to be among such a varied gaggle of creators.
