Pilgrim [Paperback]

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 realise 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, Amazon.com

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 at 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 realise that Pilgrim is a character much like Virginia Woolf's Orlando, a witness traversing gender and time. 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Pilgrim, is the story of a man who cannot die. Ageless, sexless, deathless and timeless, Pilgrim has inhabited endless lives and times. On April 15, 1912 - ironically, the date of the sinking of the Titanic - Pilgrim fails, once again, to commit suicide, his heart miraculously beginning again, 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 appetites. Poring over Pilgrim's journals in his quest to penetrate his patient's armour of silence, Jung is both confounded and shaken by the extraordinary revelations of other existences. Pilgrim is a richly-layered story of a man's search for his own destiny - superbly crafted, breathtaking in scope and brilliantly imagined.

Timothy Findley was born in Toronto in 1930. His first career was in the theatre; he was a charter company member of Ontario's Stratford Shakespearean Festival in 1953, and toured several European capitals.$$$In 1963, Findley turned to writing full-time and in 1977 his third novel, The Wars, won a Governor General's Award. It is now considered a Canadian classic. Following his bestsellers such as Famous Last Words, he won an Edgar Award for The Telling of Lies, while his collection of short stories, Stones, won Ontario's Trillium Award.$$$Findley's first work of non-fiction, Inside Memory: Pages from a Writer's Workbook, made him the first two-time winner of a Canadian Authors Association Award; he had earlier won its fiction counterpart for his novel, Not Wanted on the Voyage. He has also written plays, and his third, The Stillborn Lover (1993), won the CAA Drama Award, as well as winning an Arthur Ellis Award and Chalmers Award. His later novels include Headhunter (1993) and The Piano Man's Daughter (1995). His most recent play, Elizabeth Rex, was produced at the 2000 Stratford Festival in Canada.$$$Along with the likes of Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley has become one of Canada's most acclaimed and best-selling authors. In 2000, Faber published Pilgrim and reissued The Wars and Famous Last Words. His last novel, Spadework, was published in 2002, the year in which Timothy Findley died.