Editorial

World without End

Amatoritsero Ede

End-time predictions have become an industry. The Mayan example is only the recent variation of a millennial disease. There exists a long demented line of prophets, teachers, gurus, visionaries, clairvoyants and ‘wisemen’ or plain con artists who all equally have the jobless ears of an impassive God. So they invoke and are awarded apocalyptic contracts of floods, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, rivers of liquid fire till the sky implodes and earth caves in. We are then either ‘raptured’ into heaven or we rupture here in a hell-on-earth – if left behind.

Of all the violent agitation for an end-of-the-world, the Pentecostal variation is one of the most frightening. One reason is that it reads the Christian scripture literally, missing the deep metaphysical import of an esoteric-cum-philosophical book, and apportioning celestial origins to a material – even if inspired – object. Another reason is that the sellers of nightmares rate their poisonous wares higher than any competing delusion. I am thinking of rival myopia found amongst another “lunatic fringe,” which equally believes in a physical heaven. But in this case, it is a cosmic realm with alluring virgins waiting to satisfy the suicide bomber’s holy lust as recompense for his having criminally detonated innocent lives here on earth[...]

Art and the Man

Poet, Amatortisero Ede in conversation with award-winning short story writer and novelist, Yann Martel

Amatoritsero Ede: It is a pleasure to have this conversation with you, especially on the heels of the filming of Life of Pi. How does it feel to see these characters you have created take on renewed life on the big screen?

Yann Martel: I don’t know if I think of them as being “renewed.” To the extent that I think about Life of Pi, the characters lived on as I had first imagined them, vague in visual terms but sharply defined by words. Life of Pi remains in my thinking a work in words. So to see the movie adaptation was to see something else. Having said that, it was a pleasure to see this odd echo of my creation. For example, I never describe Pi in the novel, because it was of no importance to the narrative what he looked like. I left it to the reader to imagine Pi as they wanted to. In the movie, of course, we know what Pi looks like because we’re looking at him for two hours. Pi is Suraj Sharma. That was odd. But not unappealing. What the movie did bring to me is how Indian the story is. When you read a book, you don’t, usually, read it putting on an accent. Which means the Indianness of Life of Pi gets lost. But the movie brings it very much to life.

Luck of the Draw

David Tasker

Old Robert Harris walked into the Lucky Dollar convenience store on Main Street to buy his weekly lottery ticket. To be accurate, he didn’t so much walk into the store as hobble. He was 83 years old, and he needed a cane to get around, which slowed him down considerably. Luck had not been with him most of his life, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon Robert Harris felt lucky. He hobbled up to the lottery station, hooked his hickory cane over his forearm, and played the same lottery numbers he had been playing for the last 25 years. He hobbled over to the counter where Curtis Jackson greeted him with a gap filled grin.

“Hey there, Robert. You got the winning numbers this week?” Curtis asked.

“You bet I do,” Old Robert replied as Curtis took his money and handed him his change. “By this time next week I’ll be a millionaire and buy one of them scooters to haul my old bones around”

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