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


From Publishers Weekly
In the early hours of April 17, 1912, two nights after the sinking of the Titanic, a man named Pilgrim, author of a renowned book on Leonardo da Vinci, steps into the garden of his London home and hangs himself. Amazingly, five hours later his heart starts beating again, and he revives. Findley (Headhunter; The Telling of Lies) is at his peak in this story of a man who cannot die, but has grown so weary and despairing of life that he longs only to escape it. Pilgrim, under the care of his wealthy friend Lady Sybil Quartermaine, is removed to the B?rgholzli Psychiatric Clinic in Z?rich, where Carl Jung, a principal doctor, is persuaded to take on his case. Is Pilgrim mad, or is Jung, struggling to find himself as a theorist and to sustain his uneasy marriage, the one who is deluded? Did Pilgrim dream of the fate of the Titanic victims, and is he dreaming now of the carnage of the coming world war? Did he, as his journals attest, know da Vinci, know St. Teresa of Avila, help build the great cathedral at Chartres? The story moves back and forth from Pilgrim's mind to Jung's, to Pilgrim's journals as they're being read by Emma JungAwho seems to understand Pilgrim's dilemma far better than her husband does. Ambitious doesn't half describe a novel that includes an eyewitness account of the death of Hector in the Trojan War, appearances by Henry James and Oscar Wilde, and both the woman who posed for the Mona Lisa and her reincarnated self as the man who's just stolen it from the Louvre. Aimed at the general reader, not James scholars, Jungians or fans of Virginia Woolf's similarly premised Orlando, this is a polished and exhilarating entertainment that's challenging, mystifying and expertly crafted, even if its kaleidoscopic perspective is no longer entirely fresh. 4-city author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Pilgrim shows up at a famous psychiatric clinic in Zurich in April 1912 after failing to hang himself in the garden of his London home. His entourage includes lovely personal friend Lady Quartermaine and some servants, but the details of his circumstances are mysterious and slow to trickle out. This inventive novel mixes many historical figures, from the not-yet-famous Carl Jung--who treats Pilgrim--to Gertrude Stein, as well as some more ancient personalities. Pilgrim, it turns out, is immortal, and he (or sometimes she) has witnessed and perhaps been had a hand in many important events in history, which his diary captures. This colorful novel by a noted Canadian novelist probably won't appeal to everyone, but it is still very entertaining and decidedly offbeat.-Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, James Polk
...Pilgrim is an intense, bewitching mix of mystery, religion, history, psychology and philosophy that challenges and provokes while still managing to entertain.


The Wall Street Journal
"Findley spins a fine tale...[his] powers of description are truly extraordinary. Pilgrim is an impressive creation."


From Booklist
Best-selling Canadian author Findley, whose last novel, The Piano Man's Daughter (1996), was extremely well received, has worked on too immense a canvas in his newest work. Mental illness is his signature theme, and the early years of the century are his preferred time-frame, and Findley once again makes superb use of both, but he also ventures just far enough into the realm of formulaic fantasy to end up sounding as belabored as Anne Rice at her worst. Things begin dramatically when a man named Pilgrim hangs himself in the garden of his London home on an April morning in 1912. He appears to be dead, but, as has happened so many times before, he revives, reawakening to the living hell of immortality. What is he? The question hangs in the air like mist as he is hustled off to a psychiatric clinic in Zurich to be treated by Dr. Carl Jung. Refined, elegantly attired, tall, and handsome, Pilgrim will not speak. His friend, Lady Quartermaine, a beautiful and wealthy woman who wears dark glasses even inside, presents Jung with Pilgrim's diaries, and Jung, not yet famous, is astonished to read vivid, first-person accounts of the lives of Teresa of Avila and the woman who posed for Leonardo's Mona Lisa. It seems that his enigmatic patient has lived many lives, just like Tiresias, a figure out of Greek mythology who was doomed to live forever. Findley's research is prodigious, his history of psychology intriguing, and many individual scenes are truly compelling. But Pilgrim is a bore, Jung is cartoonishly boorish, and the saga as a whole is lugubrious. Donna Seaman

FROM OUR EDITORS

Pilgrim's Progress

It is April 17, 1912, and an art historian named Pilgrim is pronounced dead after he hangs himself in his London garden. Five hours later, his heart begins to beat again. But as miraculous as it seems, it's not the first time this has happened. Pilgrim has lived forever, and it appears he cannot die. Acclaimed Canadian author Timothy Findley himself has worked nothing short of a miracle in Pilgrim, a provocative and intelligently crafted novel that succeeds in being every bit as entertaining as it is ambitious. And it is very, very ambitious. Told through many voices, real and imagined, in many times and places, Pilgrim is a powerful exploration of the nature of reality, our unconscious knowledge, the meaning of history, and our own humanity.

Revivified, but refusing to speak, Pilgrim is brought to the B￯﾿ﾽrgholzli Psychiatric Clinic in Z￯﾿ﾽrich, where Carl Gustav Jung, now in his late 30s (and in spite of his disagreement with Freud on the sexual nature of the unconscious, a slave to his own libidinous passions), has already achieved some fame for his studies in schizophrenia. In Pilgrim, Jung sees a future prize patient: a man who has made multiple suicide attempts (each of which have failed under extraordinary circumstances) and who claims to be eternal—ageless, sexless, having lived many lives. Pilgrim believes he remembers the sum of humanity's experience, an unbearable and seemingly endless psychic burden of witness, and a fate he cannot escape, even in death. He believes himself "a voyager...denied my destination." Having seen the past, Pilgrim now claims to suffer phantasmagoric visions of the future, and he desperately believes, "[K]nowing what I know of the past, my discomfort with the future is a burden I think I cannot bear." His vision of the world is that of "[a]n abattoir, I fear, and we the sheep." But in a Europe on the verge of war, is this the outlook of a suicidal disenchanted with humanity, or the prescient dark knowledge of a visionary? Or, as his orderly (and former B￯﾿ﾽrgholzli patient), Kessler, believes, is Pilgrim an angel?

When Pilgrim refuses to speak (except in dreams, crying out in voices which are not his own), his lifelong friend Lady Quartermaine gives Pilgrim's journals to Jung, in the hope that he will begin to understand the nature of Pilgrim's "dread necessity of self—an identity whose burden he can no longer bear." More importantly, she encourages Jung to believe Pilgrim, as impossible as his tale appears. But nothing could have prepared him for Pilgrim's journals, which seem to contain the voices of people throughout the history of mankind—extraordinary eyewitness accounts of the lives of everyone, it seems, but the mysterious and silent middle-aged man in Jung's care. The voices are male and female, of all ages and stations in life—who have been friends with Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and St. Teresa of Avila, and witnessed the death of Hector in the Trojan War. Most remarkably, his journals include the account of a transvestite woman who, having disguised herself as her brother, is then brutally raped by her brother's lover (Leonardo da Vinci), only to sit before the artist years later, when she is immortalized as the subject of his "Mona Lisa."

All these events are recorded as "Dreams," and although he is puzzled by the vividness of the journal's entries, Jung is unsure of their nature—whether they are dreams, fictions, the rants of a schizophrenic, or the voices of channeled spirits. Jung wonders, "Had it all been a dream? All of it? Or was it that Pilgrim—if truly a medium—sometimes recovered his voices in what he called dreams? Calling them dreams, but meaning something else. Meaning conjurings—gleanings—messages. Disturbances. Other voices, not his own, intruding on his reality.... Like a house invaded by marauders, while the owner—helpless, watches, and listens."

In Pilgrim, Jung is faced with a patient who tries his own theories of the collective unconscious, challenges Jung's understanding of the nature of self, and ultimately, forces the doctor to confront his own "madness"—for Jung, too, is haunted by other voices, dreams, and visions, and a taunting conscience. But while Jung's theorizing provides a philosophical backbone for the tale, Pilgrim is aimed at the general reader. It is told through multiple points of view, alternately in Jung's thoughts; in the mind of his estranged wife and academic collaborator, Emma, as she reads and attempts to interpret Pilgrim's journals; and in glimpses through the eyes of countless others, each of whom is at odds with his or her own identity.

For Jung, in his approach to Pilgrim's disturbance, and for all the characters in Pilgrim, the goal is the individual's ultimate realization of self. But Findley poses the question of whether the essential "self" is the "owner," as Jung describes it—or is it the house, where many lives come to rest? Ironically, of all the characters in Findley's novel, it would appear that those who truly know themselves (or claim to) are deemed mad: a woman who believes she is a resident of the moon, a man who thinks he is a dog, and Pilgrim himself, who wishes only to escape his endless identity. Mad or not, like the woman who would become Leonardo's "Mona Lisa," each of Findley's characters struggles to reconcile the "I" by which they know themselves, in a world which knows them only by the masks they wear.

Pilgrim brings to mind the adage, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But Findley points to a truth this statement overlooks: Sometimes, even those who can remember the past are condemned, for the fate of humanity is a shared responsibility. He knows that ultimately, "We none of us can be cured. Not of our lives." But as much as we bear the weight of the darkness of history and suffer from the inevitable blindnesses that lead us into the future, humanity also offers light. Findley reminds us that if the self—if life itself—is an incurable condition, it also offers—through art and imagination—the power to heal, to lift the spirit, to learn, and to one day find rescue.

—Elise Vogel

Elise Vogel is a freelance writer living in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

On April 15, 1912—ironically, the date of the sinking of the Titanic—Pilgrim fails, once again, to commit suicide. His heart miraculously begins to beat five hours after he is found hanging from a tree. Admitted to the Burgholzi Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich by his dear friend Lady Sybil Quartermaine, Pilgrim—at first, stubbornly mute—begins a battle of psyche and soul with Carl Jung, self-professed mystical scientist of the unconscious and slave to his own sexual appetite.

Populated with a fascinating parade of historical characters, including Jung, Oscar Wilde, Leonardo da Vinci, Henry James, and Gertrude Stein, Pilgrim is a richly layered story of a man's sesarch for his own destiny and an absorbing, fascinating novel that explores ageless questions about humanity and consciousness.

About the Author:

A former actor, Timothy Findley is the author of seven novels, including The Piano Man's Daughter and Headhunter, and has won every prestigious Canadian literary prize. He lives in Canada.

SYNOPSIS

The story of a man who cannotdie—ageless, sexless, deathless, and timeless, whose many lives span across 4,000 years—from Canada's leading award-winning author.

FROM THE CRITICS

Anne Stephenson - USA Today

Timothy Findley's Pilgrim is a spellbinding novel abouth truth and the intricacies of human consciousness.

Newsday

A dazzling, heartbreaking piece of literary alchemy.

New York Times Book Review

It's rare to find an author in which the moralist and entertainer cohabit so naturally.

Chicago Tribune

What is most appealing about this meganovel is that despite its daunting display of the intellectual evolution of the world through literature, art, politics and history, it remains endlessly enjoyable and never fails to engage the reader. Pilgrim endlessly rewards the reader with luxuriant prose, complex characters and challenging ideas. It is an adventuresome ride well worth taking.

Houston Chronicle