Boy and beast on a boat? Oldest idea in the world Sarah Schmidt ~ National Post Saturday, November 09, 2002

"It appears the plot of a boy on a boat with a beast is nearly a century old."

Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs are shaking their heads at Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar's accusation this week that Montreal's Yann Martel stole the premise from him.

Burroughs, the famed creator of Tarzan, told a similar story in his The Lad and the Lion in 1914.

Inspired by archetypal religious imagery of people cast adrift with animals, most notably in the tale of Noah's Ark, and the literary tradition of the special bond between child and beast, as in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Burroughs devoted a long chapter of his book to the boy and the lion drifting for years aboard a derelict boat.

Mr. Scliar's novel Max and the Cats, the story of a Jewish boy and a panther on a lifeboat, was published in 1981.

Mr. Martel's Life of Pi, the story of an Indian boy and a tiger on a lifeboat, has won this year's Booker Prize.

Mr. Scliar this week accused Mr. Martel of abusing his "intellectual property." He mused about taking legal action but then decided against it.

Besides The Lad and the Lion, Burroughs also wrote of a man-animal maritime adventure in his 1914 novel The Beasts of Tarzan. In this story, Tarzan, stranded on an island, survives with the help of a panther and an ape before the group escapes on a boat.

"It's ridiculous to say you can copyright ideas in literature. What hasn't been said? What hasn't been recycled?" said Bill Hillman, a professor of education at the University of Brandon and a Burroughs expert."Certainly Burroughs came up with just about any combination you could think of with man and beast."

Burroughs, author of more than 20 Tarzan novels, always maintained that the concept of an original literary idea defied logic.

"Burroughs himself said that there's nothing new under the sun and the best we can to is put new clothes on old ideas," said George McWhorter, curator of the Burroughs Memorial Collection at the University of Louisville.

His own blunt admission did not stop the accusations of  plagiarism levelled against Burroughs, whose Tarzan books have been translated into more than 50 languages,  have sold more than 20 million copies and have served as the basis for many movies.

Some of his contemporaries accused him of  "stealing from Romulus and Kipling,'' Dr. McWhorter said.

"I guess we should also accuse Kipling of copying Romulus,"  Dr. McWhorter added mockingly.

Mowgli, Kipling's central character in The Jungle Book,  written in 1894, was raised in the wild by wolves, just like the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, who myth says were abandoned as infants and saved by a female wolf.

Marcus Boon, a professor of contemporary literature at  York University in Toronto, said the spiral of accusations illustrates the absurdity of laying claim to an original idea in literature.

"These are sort of fundamental images and narratives  within human culture," Dr. Boon said of the image of a person cast adrift with animals.

Dr. Boon said examples of the "ubiquity of the man-animals-raft image" in literature and film include French author Alfred Jarry's Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll,  Pataphysician (1898). The story ends with the main character sailing away in a boat with a chattering ape.

Werner Herzog's 1972 classic movie Aguirre:  Wrath of God, which tells the story of a 16th-century expedition in Latin America, ends with the main character on a boat with monkeys.

As is common in the literary world, Mr. Martel disclosed long ago that he was inspired by Mr. Scliar's plot in Max and the Cats, translated into English in 1990.  "Books are constantly referencing other books," Dr. Boon said. "I'm sure Scliar's book has resonance with other books."

Carys Craig, a copyright specialist at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, said the law accepts this long-standing practice.

"It's essential that people be free to develop upon  and free to share ideas -- and that's a goal of copyright law....
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George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The Chinaman!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.
George: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you or will you not tell me the name of the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Arafat is in China? I thought he was in the Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look, Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China.
            Get me the  Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China.
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars. Now get on the phone.
Condi (On the phone): Rice, here.
George: Rice? Good idea. And a couple of egg rolls, too.
            Maybe we should send some to the guy in China.
            And the Middle East. Can you get Chinese food in the Middle East?

Neil Hrab
National Post
Friday, November 22, 2002

My head hurts today. I think it has something to do with the series of self-help seminars I attended last week. The speakers assaulted my brain with non-stop inanities and bromides -- the kind found in the worst sort of high school commencement speeches ("The future is now," etc.). Each seminar consisted of an army of self-help platitudes that laid siege to my grey matter. Each subsequent speaker reinforced the previous speaker's army with fresh battalions.

In the end, I escaped unscathed -- I don't walk around sounding as if I've swallowed the inexplicably popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series. But unfortunately, several days after the seminars, a Niagara Falls of self-help expressions continues to echo in my skull.

• "You get rich as you use your mind."
• "Whatever you are ready for is ready for you."
• "Clarity is having purpose."
• "How do you get rich? Find a niche."
• "How much you breathe in determines how much you breathe out."
• "Don't think about success. Think about significance."
• "All we really need to know we can learn from our children."

Self-help speakers love to speak in platitudes. But platitudes are just part of their act. Although self-help gurus come in all forms -- white, black, female, male, old, young -- each one relies on the same basic components in building their speeches. The following is a list of elements of self-help happy talk that I identified during the seminars. I call it "Neil's 11 Steps for Self-Help Speaking Success."

1. Tell a joke, any joke. If it's toxically cute, don't worry. Audience members have paid hundreds of dollars to listen to you, so they are going to want to think the joke is funny rather than an insult to their intelligence.

2. Say something trite about how men and women are different. To make it sound less trite, mention how you interviewed 10,000 married couples in order to discover this fact.

3. Do you worry that your lack of a graduate degree from a famous university might be hurting your credibility as a peaker? No problem. Put up a quote from Thomas Edison or Jesus or Socrates on a PowerPoint slide. Next, put up a slide that quotes you. The audience will realize you are just as brilliant as those other guys.

4. Some audience members may be wondering if coming to hear you speak is really worth what they paid. To placate them, talk about how buying a ticket for your speech represents a tremendous moral "choice" and a clear indication that they are ready to make "positive change." You can also flatter them by saying, "What a high-level group we have here today!" That should lay their concerns to rest; they will realize that coming to hear you automatically and painlessly makes them better people.

5. Repeat something your grandmother/prepubescent son/wife said. Tell everyone how wise it is, even if its profundity isn't readily apparent. Again, people have paid a lot to listen, so they'll want to think it's on par with Plato's writings.

6. Relate an anecdote about someone famous, like Nelson Mandela. If you can twist it totally out of context to make your point, even better.

7. In order to introduce the idea that persistence pays off, tell a story about how many publishers rejected your first self-help book manuscript. Don't bother telling the audience an inspiring story about some other person who succeeded in spite of a physical disability or social prejudice; your own lucrative tale of battling with publicists and literary agents to get your best-seller into print is obviously far more interesting than any paraplegic Special Olympian's life experiences.

8. In a soft voice, talk about a tragedy you've experienced. Quickly move on to another topic, but make a big show of shedding a tear while you do this. The tear reminds the audience how brave you were to make a personal revelation in front of people who have paid to hear you speak. Your listeners won't think for a second that you are being unnecessarily melodramatic or trying to create a phony intimacy with them.

9. Ask the audience a platitudinous question, such as "What do you want out of life?" Answer your question with a platitudinous response like "love" or "wealth" or "greatness."

10. Ask the audience members to hug one another or touch each other on the shoulder and say, "You're doing OK." The awkwardness that ensues will make them forget how dumb your last joke was.

11. Plug the next speaker as "my good friend" or "our good friend." It makes you sound gracious. To make yourself sound even more gracious, make sure you compliment the next speaker's books/tapes/CDs or whatever they peddle. Hopefully, she will do the same for you. But just in case she forgets, you should mention that since "time is short today," you can't get to everything you wanted to cover. Then say that what you wanted to cover is available to the audience in the form of a hugely overpriced tape set -- conveniently on sale in the hall outside the auditorium.