Monday, July 30, 2018

The People in the Trees – A Vividly Unsettling Journey into the Mind and Land Suffused with Horror


"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.

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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