There are readers - indifferent, random. And there are readers for authors – for Dickens, Naipaul or Amitav Ghosh et al. And then there are readers like me disavowed by either – for defecting fronts brazenly. This indiscriminate reading particularly did make me read some of most fascinating writings in my life so far. And that fact more than justified my being and remaining an unpatterned reader forever!
I believe in serendipity. Sometime when I was experiencing the fabled reader’s block, unsure of what to pick and what not to, a well-read friend lent me ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’...something that launched my lifelong association with rebel Seagulls and humans. Until then I neither knew Richard Bach nor his great Gull!
Book Review, being a subjective exercise, liberally allows the prerogative to share one’s stand however weird it may sound. And that’s what made me take a bottom-up view of this timeless classic...and reflect if it were the sheer juvenile urge to revolt against authority or some other lofty idea, that couldn’t be realized having conformed to norms, which made Jonathan an outcast, though a glorious one...and eventually return to the ‘Breakfast Flock’ to forgive…and leave a legacy. He knew how a Rebellion varied from Insubordination.
The business of freedom does not flourish in haste, brooks no compromise. I feel the reader needs some handholding around the storyline. It’s about Jonathan the Seagull who, seized with a passion for flight, defies the limitations of seagull life what eventually leads to his expulsion from their society. Undaunted Jonathan continues his flight to soar higher. He, an outcast, joins a society where every gull enjoys flying as much. Here he tastes the ‘unlimited idea of freedom’. Jonathan then returns to the Breakfast Flock to forgive and share his immense experience. Jonathan leaves his legacy through Fletcher Lynd.
I would have merrily agreed to Roger Ebert’s stamping this novel as ‘banal’ had it ended with Jonathan’s departure and his aspirational joining of the new flying club. But it didn’t. What startled me more than anything was his conscious return to his flock to share his wisdom. Forgiving was an obvious ‘Passing condition’. His conversation with Fletcher, his protégé, starts with ”Do you want to fly so much that you will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help them know?” – a lesson he learns through life and vigilantly passes on cased in a query. Almost everyone is Jonathan – but in parts. Some revel in knowing they can fly, some really fly, some fly beyond and some fly beyond to return to root. And those who return consummated become Jonathan the Seagull. The breakfast flock would always be around!
Read the novel…and if you have already, be Jonathan!
