Pilgrim - Hardcover

FINDLEY, Timothy

3.81

3,703 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002242583 ISBN 13: 9780002242585

Publisher: HarperFlamingo Canada, 1999

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Book, hard bound.

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Review:

Timothy Findley's Pilgrim is the story of a man who can't die even though he tries over and over to kill himself. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, in 1912 he's placed in a Zurich clinic where Carl Gustav Jung is hard as work trying to determine the perimeter of the collective unconscious. For Jung, this man becomes an embodiment of the psyche's mystery. Claiming to have no past history but to have simply arrived one day at consciousness, Pilgrim lives in a limbo outside individuality and subjectivity. He's everyone and no one. Is he a messenger? Or is he a basket case? As the novel gathers momentum, we realize that Pilgrim is a character much like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, traversing gender and time, a witness. But whereas Woolf is a feverish and emotional writer, Findley is philosophical and dry, playful and slightly pretentious. Imagining conversations between Pilgrim and Henry James, Leonardo da Vinci, and Oscar Wilde, this novel is like a party full of beautiful guests. Or a safe train trip through an exotic landscape of consciousness where men use cologne that smells like "moss... lemons... ferns" and schizophrenics are elegant and well dressed, like the old countess who believes she lives on the moon and asks her doctor, "Is this a ballroom? Am I being courted?" --Emily White

About the Author:

Timothy Findley's recent titles include Pilgrim, which was a finalist for the Giller Prize and his first published in the United States; You Went Away; Dust to Dust; and The Piano Man's Daughter. He was also the author of the acclaimed Headhunter, Not Wanted on the Voyage, Famous Last Words, and The Wars. His most recent play, Elizabeth Rex, won the Governor General's Award for Drama. His work has won innumerable honors, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Edgar Award. He was the only three-time recipient of the Canadian Authors Association Award, bestowed for fiction, nonfiction, and drama. He was an Officer of the Order of Canada and, in France, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He split his time between homes in Stratford, Ontario and the south of France. He died in France in June 2002 at the age of 71.

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