"Gods are for stories and heavens and other realms; they are not to be seen by men. But when we encroach on their world, when we see what we are not meant to see, how can anything but disaster follow?"
Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is one of the much
talked-about novels of recent times. It’s a heartbreaking tale about abuse,
memory, and male friendship. The intense reading experience naturally pointed
me towards Yanagihara’s debut novel The People in the Trees (published August
2013), which was actually not written in the traditional novel form. The People
in the Trees unfurls as a memoir (marked with footnotes), written by the fictional Nobel
Prize-winning scientist A. Norton Perina from prison after being convicted of
molesting his adopted son. Surprisingly, the novel is cited as medical
science-fiction, but tagging this captivating and disconcerting novel under a
genre would undervalue its profound exploration of power, culture, morality, and
obsession.
‘The People in the Trees’ is primarily an interesting
character study of a self-serving man, embellished with power and superior
intelligence, who nevertheless sees himself as a victim. I didn’t feel there
was much ambiguity in Norton Perina’s ultimate intentions so as to use the word
‘unreliable narrator’. Early in the novel, Ronald Kubodera – Norton’s protege,
friend and editor of the memoir – admits that he has “judiciously cut passages
that I felt did not enrich the narrative or were not otherwise of any particular
relevance”. Therefore, Yanagihara
doesn’t employ the unreliability of her central character to conjure cheap
tricks in the end. Right from the beginning of Norton’s accounts, we find clues
to his character not just through what he clearly states, but through
information or emotions he deliberately chooses to withhold. We also slowly determine the hidden
layers of truth behind things he depicts in an unambiguous manner.
The People in the Trees doesn’t provide thrill of a
discovery as in a sci-fi thriller. Norton Perina’s rise, achievements, and
eventual fall are briefly stated before immersing ourselves into his viewpoint.
In 1950, Norton, shortly after graduating from Harvard Medical School, accompanies
an anthropological expedition into the dense jungles of a remote fictional
Micronesian island known as ‘Ivu’ ivu’. There they encounter some members of a
tribe who may possess the key to attain immortality (or at least extended
life). After consuming a rare species of turtle, the locals live well beyond
100 years. However, only their bodies remain energetic and youthful, whereas
the minds deteriorate gradually. Norton’s thorough research and identification
of this biochemical effects on the natives bestow upon him a Nobel Prize in the early
1970s. Norton’s narrative simply expands this gist mentioned earlier, providing
front-row seats to witness the scientific wonder amidst lush forests and its
slow-destruction due to the same factor.
Ronald Kubodera aka Ron strongly insists on the greatness of
Norton’s contribution to science (although the rare species of turtle are long
declared extinct and scientists failed to convert the discovery into a
marketable, consumerist product). He also calls to
attention about Norton’s ‘humanitarian’ activities at the island: Norton has
adopted 43 island children over the years, plucked them away from life of
penury to provide them a sophisticated lifestyle at United States. One of those
children, now a grown-up, has hurled an accusation of sexual abuse at Norton.
What troubles Ron is how quickly they have ostracized Norton, the same people
who once waited for his fleeting gaze to rest over them. Norton starts his
memoir from his early life spent with farmer-father, taciturn,
mentally-afflicted mother, and impressionable twin brother. His narration is a
lot stand-offish and brashly unapologetic. The story picks up momentum with the
incursion into remote and primitive place and painfully details Norton’s experimentation that inflict dire cultural and ecological consequences on the
native population.
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| Hanya Yanagihara |
Hanya Yanagihara was a publicity assistant in book
publishing, editor at Conde Nast Traveler (a luxury and lifestyle travel
magazine) before becoming a full-time novelist. Her father was a research
doctor at the National Institutes of Health, which naturally would have
provided her knowledge about Carleton Gajdusek, Nobel-Prize winning medical
researcher, who was sent to prison for sexually abusing some of his adopted
children (Gajdusek adopted more than 50 children from Papua New Guinea and
Micronesia). Yanagihara took inspiration from that devastating true story and
added elements of horror and marvel to ask some tough questions about the
notion of ethics in the practice of science, Western cultural arrogance, and
neo-colonialism. The superb quality attached with Yanagihara’s writing is her
ability to juggle between the macro and micro aspects of the story. She
elaborately portrays the phantasmagorical atmosphere and later laments over the
sad fate of the abundantly fertile Ivu’ivu forests
and its inhabitants. But at the same time, she never loses sight of the
personal narrative of the genius with a crooked moral center. The author’s
story-telling technique is so absorbing at times that despite the moral
uncertainties surrounding Norton, we do wonder if he is just a victim of false
accusation and misguided resentment.
The People in the Trees contemplate the utter inability to
affix a one-word description to an individual. Nowadays, we often come across
stories about famous celebrities and indisputably brilliant minds facing
serious charges of sexual abuse and other crimes. So how should we assess them:
by balancing their crimes at one end and their contributions to society at the
other end? Should we shun the genius for his/her devilry or should we champion
them, irrespective of their deliberate mistakes? Then there’s also the larger
question regarding ecological and cultural sacrifices we make for this
so-called, bluntly described word ‘progress’. One’s pleasure of adopting strict
binary moral positions does take a sort of heavy beating after reading the
novel. On the whole, Hanya Yanigahara’s distressing, multi-layered debut novel
digs deep into the question of moral and cultural relativism.
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