Last weekend, I was flicking through a copy of the weekend Telegraph Magazine,* and within its pages found an interview with Yann Martel, the Canadian author of Life of Pi and a new book, Beatrice and Virgil. It was a very good interview – Martel comes across as a thoroughly likeable person – and, during the account of his life prior to his enormous literary success, I was very pleased to come across the following comments endorsing the frugal and free lifestyle, demonstrating that Mister Martel is someone who has his priorities right…
In 1993, at the age of 30, Martel published a collection of short stories, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. It was well received by critics, but sold poorly. His first novel, Self, followed in 1996…It did not sell. He lived on next to nothing – small advances and arts grants, a modest sum for a literary prize. Two years before writing Life of Pi, he says, his income was C$6,000 – about £4,000. ‘I lived in Montreal. My rent was C$235. I had roommates. I don’t smoke or drink, I didn’t have a car. I was happy. I liked that lightness, and also I managed to live as a writer precisely because my habits were so light. So it was a self-reinforcing mechanism. Why would I burden myself with a mortgage if that meant I couldn’t write and had to get a job? So forget the mortgage…’
