First-novelist Eakins (The Hungry Girls & Other Stories - not
reviewed) received the NYU Press Prize for this account of an
18th-century slave who becomes an autodidact, a philosopher, a
castaway, and a mother and father both. Try, if you might, to
imagine Robinson Crusoe's Friday with Tristram Shandy's education -
and without Robinson Crusoe - and you'll get some notion of what to
expect in Eakins's rather audacious tale. It's narrated by one
Pierre Baptiste de Buffon, an African slave who has spent most of
his life in the Caribbean islands during the years leading up to
the French Revolution. Pierre was purchased by an erudite and
forward-thinking landowner who - in defiance of both law and custom
- taught him how to read and write and eventually made him the
manager of one of his estates. About as privileged as a slave could
be, Pierre studied philosophy, science, and literature, and was
able to converse with his master's peers as an intellectual (if not
a social) equal. He learned from them that a Revolution proclaiming
the equality of all was convulsing France and threatening to spread
across Europe. Determined to see at firsthand what was happening,
Pierre ran away and tried to float across the Atlantic in a rum
cask - only to run aground on an uninhabited island. Here the story
turns into a veritable bestiary of the weird and unexpected. The
impractical Pierre is hard-pressed to survive in the wild until he
catches a wounded mermaid and nurses her back to health. She repays
his charity by coming ashore each day and vomiting fish into his
mouth. Eventually, Pierre discovers himself pregnant, and in due
course he delivers four new "creatures" into the world. Presiding
over this odd family, Pierre tames his island wilderness and tries
to complete his "CYCLOPEDISH HISTOIRE OF GUINEE AND BEYOND" (i.e.,
the story of his life), which will probably go on for quite some
time - if it's ever finished at all. Bizarre, marvelous, and
horrifying at once: a refreshing escape from the mundane. (Kirkus
Reviews)
The first-person narrative of a savant slave, Patricia Eakins's The
Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste is one of the most
imaginative novels in many years. From the opening pages, the
reader is swept up by the linguistic fireworks of Eakins's
autodidactic protagonist as he recounts "the tribulations of
bondage in the sugar isles," his escape and how he was marooned,
and his subsequent trials and adventures. Making expert use of
historical convention and with an ear for rhetorical authenticity,
Eakins has given us a compelling novel that bridges not only human
cultures but the chasm between human and animal.
Here then is the account of the life and times of an African man
of letters "whose ambitions were realized in strange and unexpected
ways, yet who made peace with several gods and established a realm
of equality & freedom & bounty in which no creature lives
from another's labor." Pierre Baptiste emerges as an embodiment of
all that is lost in a racist culture.
Author's web site: http: //www.fabulara.com
Author interview with Amazon.com: http:
//www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/show-interview/e-p-akinsatricia/002-5686271-2394036
Frigate: The Transverse Review of Books edited by Patricia
Eakins
Reading Group Study Questions
1. What do you make of the fact that a twentieth-century
European-American female is writing in the person of an
eighteenth-century African-American male? What implications are
there for prose style and character creation?
2. Pierre considers himself a "philosophe," a "savant." He
dreams of communing in France with the eminent natural historian,
Buffon. Despite Pierre's creation of a "cyclopedic histoire" of
New- and Old-World African lore, can an argument be made that
Pierre's adoption of Enlightenment values is a betrayal of his
fellow slaves?
3. What does Pierre Baptiste's narrative seem to be saying about
erotic love and conjugal relationships?
4. The idea of the parasite is central to this novel. In what
ways does the foregrounding of that concept affect your sense of
the relationship between "culture" and "nature"? Between "nature"
and "nurture"?
5. The scientific and spiritual discoveries of Pierre Baptiste
have led him to believe that humans and animals are part of the
same spectrum of being as gods. He also believes that animals are
possessed of spiritual powers. Yet Pierre Baptiste is colonized by
creatures whose birth robs him of powers of speech. Can this
paradox be reconciled with Pierre's escape from slavery, which had
previously relegated him to the status of chattel beast?
6. What is your understanding of Pierre's utopian project? Is it
the same as the author's? How does it relate to any utopian
projects you might have?
7. What does Pierre's treatment of Pamphile when he washes
ashore on Pierre's island say about Pierre? Would you have treated
Pamphile the same way? Why or why not?
8. What is the nature of the spiritual transformation Pierre
sustains? In what ways are his metaphysics like or unlike your
own?
9. Can you imagine a different ending for this book? How would
the story be different if it had been told from the point-of-view
of PA(c)lA(c)rine VA(c)ritA(c)? Of Rose? Of Pamphile?
10. If you had to be marooned on a desert isle with someone,
would you be pleased if it turned out to be Pierre? If so, why? If
not, why not?
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