Today Marshmallow reviews The Archer, a short book originally written in 2003 by Paulo Coelho, illustrated by Christoph Niemann, and translated into English by Margaret Jull Costa.
Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like simple yet somewhat profound books, then this is the book for you!
Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): At the beginning of this story, a stranger seeks out Tetsuya. Tetsuya is a humble carpenter now, but he used to be famous throughout the land for his prodigious gifts with a bow and arrow. His sudden retirement and disappearance were rather mysterious, but he is content to live in quiet and obscurity. The stranger searching for him is determined to find him though. He asks a boy from the town to take him to the carpenter and the two arrive at his shop. The stranger pleads Tetsuya to watch him shoot, saying he has mastered the way of the bow and merely wants Tetsuya’s approval to know that his training is complete. To show his worth, the stranger shoots a cherry off a cherry tree a certain distance away. Tetsuya calmly agrees and leads both the stranger and the boy up the mountain in silence. They arrive at a fraying bridge traversing a perilous river and Tetsuya walks to the middle. He shoots a peach off a tree only half the previous distance away from him. He asks the stranger to do the same, but the stranger fails. Tetsuya then tells him that he has mastered the bow but not his mind. With that lesson, he sends the stranger off, after having him promise to keep his identity secret.
The boy—who had been unaware of Tetsuya’s archery prowess till then—is awestruck and asks to be taught the way of the bow. As the master and young boy begin their long trek back to his shop, Tetsuya explains some of the founding ideals of the way of the bow and life as whole. After all, “the way of the bow is present in any human activity.”
Marshmallow’s Review: The Archer was an intriguing book. To be entirely honest, some of the advice is a little too vague and seemed slightly generic. I think a lot of what the author said has been said before, just in different ways.
The pictures by Christoph Niemann were very pretty though, and the minimalistic illustrative style was very calming to look at. They were, I thought, often unrelated to the text, but you can find connections between any two things if you look hard enough.
This goes for this entire book. The text is short and simple with only a couple words or a paragraph per page, making it very spread out. There are 130 or 131 pages but it does not take a lot of time to read at all. If one were to put all words into standard book pages, you would probably not need to go beyond 30-40 pages max.
The Archer is very calming to read. However, the advice and wisdom feels very simplistic and slightly obvious. I feel like this experience is very inspiring if you are willing to analyze every word, every page, every picture and infuse it with your own meaning. If you work hard to interpret everything in a new way, in a way besides the true simple meaning, then you might emerge with a new perspective on life. Without that kind of effort on the side of the reader, most of the text felt like a repetition of ideas that most people have already heard. That said, it was still nice to read. I just don’t know how truly novel this book is.
Marshmallow’s Rating: 94%.
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