Recently I participated in a Usual Suspects interview project. I was asked five good questions, but I gave only one a good answer.
You talk about Blake with such enthusiasm and affection that I can't help but anthropomorphise him. Help me out. If the feathered gentleman were a person, what sort of person would he be? How would he look? What would be his career and interests? Would he be a person you'd like to know, or the neighbour from hell?
This is my favorite question, so I left it to last. Perhaps it will cheer me enough that I can flesh out the two scary last questions that I skimped on. All they needed was a little prestidigitation. Blake is so much a parrot and I have adopted so many of his mannerisms it's easier to think of me as one of them, instead of him as one of us.
RDC recently remarked, “We shouldn't anthropomorphize animals so much. They hate that.”
What would he look like? He would have muttonchop whiskers like a Dickensian villain (because when he preens, he angles the feathers that usually lie sleek under his beak out away from his face, exposing his lower mandible). He would wear breeches--we call the thick fluff (for egg-incubating) around and behind his thighs his bloomers, but bloomers are for females and breeches for males. In 1850, would an old-fashioned Dickensian villain still wear breeches? I'll say yes. Also a swallow-tail coat, no matter the time of day, with epaulets. He might have eczema or another condition that would have him constant attending to his skin (instead of feathers). Scrofulous. Less ickily, he would be a fop, obsessed with his eccentric wardrobe. He would have dandruff. He would have a Tintin-esque quiff. He would walk around with his hands clasped behind his back, except I can picture him using a walking stick (the kind with a sword in it). Possibly because I'm overdoing the Dickensian villain thing, I see a monocle too. Prominent eyes, certainly. Unlike Bill Sykes or Mr. Gradgrind, though, he would have excellent teeth, straight and white and strong, and he would smell good.
He would be an explorer, particularly a spelunker. I'm not sure he'd be successful, because (like any pigeon you see on the sidewalk) he finds purposefully moving in a straight line quite a challenge. But he would explore the great dangerous unknown, and most especially honeycombed caves. He would need a faithful assistant, like a Sancho Ponzo or Pinky, to wait to rescue him, because he might have narcolepsy. He would never go anywhere very cold, because he would be deeply afraid of snow. And perhaps honeycombed caves wouldn't be a good idea, because he would be afraid both of total darkness and of flashlights and candles. But cliff-dwellings, canyons, and overhangs, he would know all about. He certainly would be in charge of all expeditions, because he likes to manage things, and he has very particular ideas about who is allowed to touch what. Oven mitts might not part of the paraphernalia, but knives would be, and those are his to wield.
If caving didn't pay the bills, he would also sing. I can't picture him singing in subways--cavelike though they are--but I can't imagine that he would have a good enough voice, or write good enough songs, to make a regular living. He would sing, though, somehow. Especially in his caves. Perhaps he could be an acoustical engineer for a cave chorale. That he would form and be the soloist for. Perhaps also he could consult for the Ministry of Silly Walks. Or he might be an interior designer, again unsuccessfully, because the clientele who believe everything should be lemon yellow or sea green or artistically draped with dishtowels or socks would be few. Or a book critic, a very literal deconstructionist.
If he were old enough, he would have served in the war as a spotter.
What kind of person would he be? Self-important. Annoying but irresistible, so enjoying company that even though he would be pesky and demanding, people would be drawn to him. Like Sir John Middleton in Sense and Sensibility, except he wouldn't shoot birds for sport. He'd be an optimstic curmudgeon, verging on the neighbor from hell--not wanting kids to play on his grass or dogs to pee in his garden and playing loud music (but only during decent daylight hours)--but you'd want to know him because he would have frequent parties full of chattering company and tasty food and goofy games and musical entertainment. He would be able to play most musical instruments at least rudimentarily, though his specialty would be brass and his favorite the French horn.
He might look villainous, but he actually wouldn't be. He would solicit your admiration ("Do admire my freesias!") but he would be generous with his in turn. Also, he would call everyone "chap."
You'd even want his company when you were sick, because he would know the value of a companionable silence and a quiet shared nap. Plus his sneezes would always be louder and wetter than yours, proportionally, so you wouldn't feel as sick.
Denis Guedj has no idea about parrots. The parrot eats two pounds of brie a) at once and then b) doesn't die. The author writes that there were "macaws and cockatoos but no parrots." People carry the fully flighted Sidney through Paris en plein air on their shoulders. In a church, Sidney happily flies around to the delight of everyone but the caretaker, who insists the bird stay on a human's shoulder, whereupon it does (snort). It is a fictional parrot. I've got that. Sidney discusses, or at least recites, mathematical ideas, so maybe it understands when it may fly and when it should not. But bingeing on and surviving two pounds of brie is ridiculous.
The novel is about mathematics, and so its plot is secondary, but Sophie's World's framing device actually worked, even when it seemed like it couldn't.
It was fun to try to remember math. Logarithms don't make me huff, despite how pre-calc kicked my ass in twelfth grade and sophomore year. (Blake huffs when he's scared, if you haven't been paying attention. What did recently make me huff was Intern #3, or however I have designated The One Who Stayed and Is Now Paid, beginning to speak to me in Russian, which he's learning for fun. "Dobre ootro" ("good morning") was enough to drain the blood from my face.)
Logarithms don't make me huff, but that doesn't mean I understand them. I loved all the stuff about π and the volume of a column compared to a sphere and similar geometrical stuff.
But.
I never had to rate a book on its parrot mortality before.