In Memory of Double BillsI saw a lot of double bills in the heyday of independent cinemas.They weren’t just two current release films that had been packaged to eke out some extra dollars for the exhibitor. They were carefully curated films that shared a theme and formed part of a whole season of similarly matched films.Usually, the season was promoted by a poster that illustrated each film with a fifty word capsule review. For many years, I kept these posters in a folder, at least until I got married and had to start hiding what I hoarded.The double bills themselves were where I learned about the greats of film culture. Hitchcock, Ford, Godard, Truffaut, Woody Allen, etc. They whetted an appetite that continues to this day.The thing about a double bill is that the films could be enjoyed individually, but they also fed meaning to each other.One of my favourite matches was Antonioni’s “The Passenger” and Polanski’s “The Tenant”, both of which involved a character adopting the persona of another character and then embarking on a journey or travelling under the guise of the other character.Both films benefited from the juxtaposition, and it made for great discussions between friends when you emerged from the cinema.Almost 20 years later, I was sitting next to a very appealing, strong, independent, older woman at a film industry lunch, and I told her this story.She smiled and said, “That was me. I curated those seasons.”She was then a co-owner of one of the most successful chains of independent cinemas. Unfortunately, her chain didn’t survive the multiplex, nor did double bills, as far as I know.Film culture is the poorer for it. It can’t just be learned from books, it must be learned in front of a screen, preferably a big one.Why Don’t You Show Me?I’ve started with this diversion, because, even though this is my second reading of “Cloud Atlas” and the first was well before I learned there was to be a film, the novel always struck me as filmic.If it wasn’t made to be filmed (however challenging the prospect), it seemed to be influenced by film, particularly genre film, and possibly the sort of double bills that I had consumed.I love the fact that David Mitchell’s works ooze film and cultural literacy, not to mention cross-cultural diversity.It’s one of the things I hope doesn’t disappear as audiences become less genre and art form diverse.Just as James Joyce alluded to the Classics in “Ulysses”, many modern novelists allude to diverse art forms.If we restrict our interest to only one or a few, we might not “get” the allusions. And not getting them, we might not pay sufficient attention.To this extent, I'd argue that “Cloud Atlas” isn't so much a difficult novel, as it just requires an attentive reader.I’ve Tried and I’ve Tried and I’m Still MystifiedI originally rated the novel three stars on the basis of a reading several years ago, before I joined Good Reads.Having re-read it with a view to a review, I’ve upgraded my review to five stars. So what happened?When I finished my re-read, I had decided to rate it four stars.There were things I still didn’t get, even though they were there on the page in front of me.As I collated my notes, things started to drop into place and I started to get things, at least I think I did.My initial reservation was that there were six stories juxtaposed in one book, and I wasn’t convinced that they related to each other adequately.If together they were supposed to constitute a patchwork quilt, some patches jarred, others weren’t stitched together adequately. I couldn’t see the relationship. It wasn’t manifesting itself to me.I didn’t think Mitchell had done enough to sew the parts together. I couldn’t understand why the six films on the same bill had been collected together. I didn’t know what the glue was. There was no bond. They were all just there.If they were supposed to be connected, I couldn’t see the connection.Who was to blame: Mitchell or me? Was anyone to blame, or did I just need to exert myself a bit harder? In a way, this review is the story of how I exerted myself a bit harder, got back on top and managed to give the author his due.SpoilersI'll try to discuss the novel with minimal plot spoilers. However, many of the themes revolve around aspects of the plot in the six stories.In an effort to reduce spoilers, I’ve limited the mention of specific stories and characters.I apologize if this detracts from your enjoyment of the review or your desire to read the novel.”Where is the Fundamental Mystery?”There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a mystery or the fact that a mystery might retain its status after some investigation.Not all mysteries are intended to be worked out or revealed to all. Some things are intended to remain secret. Some things need a password or a code to unlock them. Some things just require a bit of effort or charm or both.The thing about “Cloud Atlas” is that it consists of six quite disparate stories (a “Cloud Atlas Sextet” in its own right), five of which have been broken into two.The result is 11 sections, ten of which surround the unbroken sixth story in the middle.Without disclosing the titles of the stories, they follow the following timeline:•t1850;•t1931;•t1976;•tThe present (?);•tA highly corporatized future; and•tA post apocalyptic future (the middle story).Once you’ve got half-way, the book works back towards 1850 in reverse order.Getting your head around this structure is the first task. The second is to work out the relationship between the stories. The third is to work out how to pull the whole thing together into one integrated whole.Choosing a Structural MetaphorThe structure has given rise to metaphors like Russian or Matryoshka dolls or Chinese boxes.Each successive story is nested or nestled within the next. [One character’s letters survive the burglary of a hotel room, because they are nestled in a copy of Gideon’s Bible.]Another way to think of it is to pretend that you have opened up six separate books to the middle pages, then sat them on top of each other, starting with the oldest on the bottom, and then bound them together, so now hopefully you’ve got one idea of the structure.A third way to look at the structure metaphorically is to see the past as embracing the present, and the present embracing the future.Thus, the past has within it the potential of the present, and the present has within it the potential of the future.This metaphor raises the second question of the relationship between the layers.Does one determine the next? Does the past determine the future? What is the relationship or connection?Where does Mitchell and his novel stand on the continuum between Determinism and Free Will?InterconnectednessApart from the question of how all 11 sections contribute to an integrated whole, there is a narrative connectedness between the 11 sections.Characters or objects from one section reappear in others as important narrative elements. In a way, they are like screws or pegs that lock one part of a piece of modular furniture into another, so that the whole doesn’t dissemble.Various characters (in five out of the six stories) have a comet-shaped birthmark between their shoulder-blade and collarbone. They also share other personal characteristics, despite not necessarily sharing genders, and there is a suggestion that the five characters with birthmarks might be reincarnations of the same soul.From a narrative point of view:•tthe Journals in Story 1 are found in Story 2.•tThe Letters in Story 2 are written to a character in Story 3.•tThe music in Story 2 is heard in Story 3. (When Luisa Rey hears the music, she feels that she might have been present when it was composed, hence the implication that she might be a reincarnation of the composer, Robert Frobisher.)•tStory 3 is submitted to a character in Story 4 for publication.•tThe character in Story 4 writes a memoir that is filmed, and watched by the character in Story 5.•tAn interview with the character in Story 5 is recorded and becomes the “holy book” or “scripture” for a post-apocalyptic religion in Story 6 (even though it is an audio-visual work, not a written work, embodied on an “orison”). Eternal Recurrence in and of TimeTime is a silent partner in the narrative of the novel.We start in the past and move forward into the future, before reversing or heading backwards (or forwards into the past?), so that eventually we come full circle:"Time’s Arrow became Time’s Boomerang."In this sense, the narrative is revolutionary, if not necessarily gimmicky.We must assume that the cycle continues to roll or revolve in this fashion ad infinitum. In Nietzsche’s words, it is an "Eternal Recurrence":"Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (and barbarism!!)": NietzscheCulture and Civilization, whether good or evil, positive or negative, sophisticated or barbaric, are conveyed through time by people.Human beings are vessels through which human nature passes into the future, from the past via the present (and vice versa, it seems).Each of us carries aspects of human nature, ideas, beliefs, biases, prejudices, goals, ambitions, aspirations, appetites, hunger, thirst, desire, the need for more, the inability to be satisfied, the inability to be appeased.Human nature is concrete, permanent, eternal, continuous, recurring.Individuals are separate, discrete, temporary, dispensable, ephemeral.Like an oak tree, we are born, we grow, we die.A body is just a vehicle for human nature (within a family, its DNA).You can see that, if each of us is a vehicle, then when we pass the baton onto the next runner, we (or the human nature that we carried) is reincarnated in our successor.If our characteristics continue, they succeed, instead of succumbing.In this sense, a comet birthmark is just the mark or marque or ink or stain that we pass onto our successor as evidence of the eternal chain of which each of us is but a link.You Can’t Stop Me, Because I am DeterminedIt’s arguable that there is a determinism or fatalism going on here.However, I think Mitchell acknowledges Free Will as well, again, both in a positive and a negative sense.Much of the novel is concerned with the Nietzschean will to power, the ascent to power, the acquisition and abuse of power, the use of power to victimize and oppress.The character, Alberto Grimaldi, the CEO of the Corporation Seaboard Power (surely the name is well chosen) argues:"Power. What do we mean? ‘The ability to determine another man’s luck.’..."Yet how is it some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority live and die as minions, as livestock? The answer is a holy trinity. "First: God-given gifts of charisma. "Second: the discipline to nurture these gifts to maturity, for though humanity’s topsoil id fertile with talent, only one seed in ten thousand will ever flower – for want of discipline…"Third: the will to power. "This is the enigma at the core of the various destinies of men. What drives some to accrue power where the majority of their compatriots lose, mishandle, or eschew power? Is it addiction? Wealth? Survival? Natural selection? I propose these are all pretexts and results, not the root cause. "The only answer can be ‘There is no ‘Why’. This is our nature. ‘Who’ and ‘What’ run deeper than ‘Why?’ "While human nature shapes us, I don’t think Mitchell is positing a completely Determinist cosmos.What people do impacts on their Fate.Some rise to the top as Supermen or Ubermenschen, some fall to the bottom as Downstrata or Untermenschen.Some Men are predators, others victims. Some rise, some fall. In between, some are “half-fallen”, Mitchell calls them the “Diagonal People”.tLike the character Isaac Sachs, their tragic flaw is that they are “too cowardly to be a warrior, but not enough of a coward to lie down and roll over like a good doggy.”Virtue Incarnate (or Reincarnate?)Mitchell’s six stories feature heroes (of sorts), five of whom are or might be reincarnations of the same soul.Each of them has the courage to fight against evil or power or oppression or cruelty.They are idealists, liberals, [affirmative] activists, boat rockers, shit-stirrers, young hacks, non-conformists, dissidents, rebels, revolutionaries, rogues, rascals, “picaros” (the Spanish word from which the word “picaresque” derives), messiahs and naughty boys.They eschew duplicity, dishonesty and falseness, they seek authenticity, honesty and truth:"Truth is the gold.""Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths.""The true true is presher’n’rarer’n diamonds."They oppose power, corruption, and lies, tyranny and mutation. [They must be fans of New Order and Blue Oyster Cult.]Talkin’ About a RevolutionOur heroes create messages and symbols to overcome tyranny: journals, epistles, memoirs, novels, music, films, video confessions, “orisons” (a word that actually means “prayers”), scripts, catechisms, declarations, even new post-apocalyptic languages.Like hippies ("the love and peace generation"), they oppose mainstream culture with their own counter-cultural artifacts, as if the reincarnated souls, the Grateful Living, are perpetuating the Grateful Dead.The eponymous artwork, the "Cloud Atlas Sextet", is composed by Robert Frobisher, a bisexual wunderkind:"Cloud Atlas holds my life, is my life, now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework."Just like Guy Fawkes, it’s explosive and revolutionary.Frobisher composes the work while engaged as an amenuensis for the older composer Vyvyan Ayrs, who believes that the role of the musician or artist is to “make civilization ever more resplendent”.Perhaps ingenuously, for one of the reincarnates, Frobisher counters: “How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are mere scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.”His own composition resounds throughout the entire novel. It also describes the central metafictional device that Mitchell uses to construct his fiction:"A sextet for overlapping soloists: piano, clarinet, ‘cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale and colour. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan’t know until it’s finished, and by then it’ll be too late, but it’s the first thing I think of when I wake, and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep, even if J is in my bed. She should understand, the artist lives in two worlds."Artists might live in a private world and a public world, but there is a sense in which they also live both in the present and in the future. An Atlas of CloudsAt a more metaphorical level, the Atlas contains maps of the human nature that Mitchell describes.The Clouds carry the vagaries of human nature across time, encircling the world on their journey, obscuring and frustrating our aspirations and desires:"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds." Revolutionary or Gimmicky?Mitchell directly asks us to consider whether his own work is gimmicky.Superficially, it is, but what finally convinced me that the novel deserves five stars is a conviction that his subject matter and his metafictional devices are genuinely and effectively stitched together.It wasn’t easy to come by this realization. I had to work on it, but it was worth it.Men and Women and EroticismWomen play a significant role as both characters and subject matter in the novel.To a certain extent, they represent an alternative to the corrupt corporate culture symbolized by Seaboard Power (even though its Head of Publicity is a woman):"Men invented money. Women invented mutual aid."There is a sense in which men [males] are driven by the hunger, the acquisitiveness, at the heart of the novel’s concerns, far more so than women:”Yay, Old Un’s Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more…Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay.”Still, men and women still get into bed with each other, and the sexual encounters in the novel are usually either entertaining or slyly erotic, no matter how economically they are described:”Accepted this proxy fig leaf cum olive branch and our lovemaking that night was almost affectionate.””Our sex was joyless, graceless, and necessarily improvised, but it was an act of the living. Stars of sweat on Hae-Joo’s back were his gift to me, and I harvested them on my tongue.”[For all the talk of comet-shaped birthmarks, this view of sex as an act of the living will stay with me for the rest of my life, even when I can no longer lift myself up on my elbows.]"Eva, Because her name is a synonym for temptation...all my life, sophisticated idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly...Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning...here she is, in these soundproofed chambers of my heart."And isn’t this exactly what life is all about? To be understood, to be cured, to be explored (unhurriedly), to be laughed at, to be sprayed all over, to be in love, in the soundproofed chambers of your heart.David Mitchell, this image alone deserves five stars.SOUNDTRACK: Jordi Savall - "Por Que Llorax Blanca Nina"(Sephardic Jewish music from Sarajevo)"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP_6Y7...This music is playing in the Lost Chord record store in the novel.Tracey Chapman – "Talkin’ About a Revolution"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKYWOw..."Don’t you knowThey're talkin' about a revolution. It sounds like a whisper. Poor people gonna rise up And get their share."Bob Dylan - "Shelter From the Storm"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8TayM...'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and bloodWhen blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mudI came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form."Come in," she said,"I'll give you shelter from the storm."Joni Mitchell - "Both Sides Now"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqI...I've looked at clouds from both sides now...+Post 125
This is definitely a book that is richer with rereading, but I still prefer his "Ghostwritten" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), which has significant echoes of this. STRUCTUREIt’s often described as a matryoshka doll or a turducken, but that’s not the best analogy, imo. Imagine six very different short books, each open at roughly the middle, then pile them up - and that is the structure of Cloud Atlas (story 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, 6, 5b, 4b, 3b, 2b, 1b). The structure is echoed in this clever and very brief review:http://www.fromnought2sixty.com/final.... This is a close lifting of what Calvino describes in If on a Winter's Night a Traveler: "the Oriental tradition" where one story stops "at the moment of greatest suspense" and then narrative switches to another story, perhaps by the protagonist picking up a book and reading it. (The structure of the film is entirely different: it cuts between all six stories repeatedly, which emphasises the parallels in the different stories. In the medium of film, I think it works quite well - if you already know the stories.)Each story is a separate and self-contained tale, told in a different format, voice and even dialect, but with similarities in theme and some overlapping characters. THEMESThere are many themes. Connectedness (and possibly reincarnation) are perhaps the most obvious - and the themes themselves are often connected with other themes. In addition to connectedness, themes include: victim/predator/leech, journeys, escape, transformation, falling/ascending (both literal and metaphorical or spiritual).I think the overriding theme is the many, varied, but perhaps inevitable ways that humans exploit each other through power, money, knowledge, brute force, religion or whatever: “The world IS wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. ‘The weak are meat, the strong do eat.’… One fine day, a purely predatory world SHALL consume itself.” This is echoed in The Thousand Autumns, "In the animal kingdom... the vanquished are eaten."There are also connections between characters and events, and, less subtly (completely unnecessarily, imo), someone in each has a birth mark that looks like a comet. (Connectedness is much the strongest theme in the film, partly through rapid switching between stories to emphasize the parallels, and also because the same actors are used in multiple stories.)1a THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWINGThe opening tale concerns a voyage, and immediately draws the reader in with echoes of Crusoe, “Beyond the Indian hamlet, on a forlorn strand, I happened upon a trail of recent footprints”. Adam is a wide-eyed and honourable young American lawyer in 1850 (somewhat reminiscent of Jacob de Zoet in Mitchell’s latest novel: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), on his way to the Chatham Isles to trace the beneficiaries of a will. He struggles with the politics of the ship’s crew and issues of colonialism, slavery, genocide (Maori of Moriori) and then… it breaks off mid sentence!This story has particular parallels with Matthew Kneale's English Passengers (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... a voyage between colonies, with a theme of exploitation.2a LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEMThis is a series of letters from Robert Frobisher, a penniless young English composer, to his friend Rufus Sixsmith, written in 1931 (quite a lot of sixes in this book). He has a wealthy and educated background, but has been cut off from his family, so is in Belgium (Edinburgh, in the film!), searching for the aging composer Vyvyan Ayrs, where he hopes to gain a position as amanuensis and collaborator: the journey involves literal travel, but also the seeking of fame and fortune. This section opens with a visceral passion for music, which infuses this whole section; Frobisher hears music in every event: dreaming of breaking china, “an august chord rang out, half-cello, half-celeste, D major (?), held for four beats”. Frobisher is an unscrupulous opportunist (very unlike Adam Ewing), but not without talent. The latter enables him to wheedle his way into the complex lives of the Ayrs/Crommelynck household (the latter cropping up in other Mitchell books).3a HALF LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERYIt’s 1975 and Dr Rufus Sixsmith is now 66. He is broke and either in trouble with mysterious forces or paranoid. This one’s a thriller, involving a would-be-investigative-journalist, Luisa Rey. Mitchell inserts a caveat via Sixsmith, “all thrillers would wither without contrivance”, though actually much of this story is obscure until the second half.4a THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISHThis is contemporary comedy: Cavendish is a vanity publisher with an unexpected best-seller on his hands (memoirs of a murderer). Like Sixsmith, he ends up broke and fleeing enemies, though this one is more of a farce, with echoes of Jonathan Coe’s “What a Carve Up” (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). 5a AN ORISON OF SOMNI-251This is set in 22nd century Korea, which is an extreme corpocracy (corporate capitalism taken to its logical conclusion – which even affects the language (see below)). Purebloods are “a sponge of demand that sucked goods and services from every vendor” and it is a crime to fail to meet one’s monthly spending target. (In the film, this section looks stunning, but the underlying philosophy is largely ignored.)The format is an interrogation of Somni-251, a fabricant (humanoid clone), who is a monastic server of fast food at Papa Song’s – which just happens to have golden arches as its logo (the film plays safe and is not so obviously McDonald's). She is knowledgeable and opinionated, though it’s not immediately clear what, if anything, else she’s done wrong. There are plenty of nods to Orwell, Huxley and others – even to the extent that Somni mentions reading them. The ideas of ascension, heaven, an afterlife and so on that are suggested in many sections are explicit in this one; it’s where the themes of the book really begin to come together. What it means to be human, exemplified by the relative positions of purebloods and fabricants, are reminiscent of the slavery that Adam Ewing considers: the idea that fabricants lack a personality is a “fallacy propagated for the comfort of purebloods”. She has a distinctively poetic voice, which lends beauty to the section of the book, but causes problems for her: a fabricant that is as eloquent as a pureblood creates unease.6 SLOOSHA’S CROSSIN’ AN’ EV’RYTHIN’ AFTERThe only section told, unbroken, from start to finish, which is ironic given that it’s set in a very broken future world. Even the language has disintegrated to some extent, much as in Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker”, to which Mitchell acknowledges a debt in this article:http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005...See below for specific linguistic quirks, and here for my review of RW: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/.... Zachry is explaining his life, beliefs and practices, though it isn’t clear who he is addressing (or why). He talks of “The Fall” and “flashbangin” which were the end of “Civ’lize Days”, though some “Prescients” survived on a ship which visits and barter at regular interval, but never leave anything “more smart” than what is already there. “Human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too” – even though Malthus was revered as a prophet by that earlier civilisation.Then one of the Prescient, Meronym, comes to stay for six months. She wants to learn and observe, but many of the islanders fear her motives. Zachry is keen to explain himself and to learn from her. His language can make him sound simple, but he’s actually quite prescient: “There ain’t no journey what don’t change you some”, which is perhaps the message of the book. The deeper question in this section is who is exploiting whom (there is also a warfaring tribe, the Kona)?5b AN ORISON OF SOMNI-251Somni’s story starts to make more sense, particularly the meaning and method of ascension and her story’s connections with Sloosha’s Crossin’ (6). 4b THE GHASTLY ORDEAL OF TIMOTHY CAVENDISHImprisoned in a most unlikely place, Timothy hatches an extraordinary and comical bid for freedom. (It’s not quite The Great Escape.)3b HALF LIVES: THE FIRST LUISA REY MYSTERYThere is real excitement in this, though some may find it slightly confusing. When one character writes notes comparing the real and virtual past (p392-393), the levels of stories-within-stories and boundaries of fact and fiction are well and truly blurred, which is part of what this whole book is about. (Is Luisa "real" in the context of the book? She doesn't always feel it, but there is a direct link between her and another character.): “The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming… in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.”“Power seeks + is the right to ‘landscape’ the virtual past.”“One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments” – something this book is often likened to.“The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts. Now the bifurcation of these two pasts will begin.”2b LETTERS FROM ZEDELGHEMWill Frobisher make good – or even be good? “We do not stay dead for long… My birth next time…”1b THE PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ADAM EWINGAdam lands on an island where white Christian missionaries appear to be doing good work. However, the relationship between blacks and whites (and even between man and wife) exemplify the unequal power relationships that are common to all the stories. Adam dreams of a more utopian world, though. LANGUAGE/DIALECTThe two futuristic sections are notable for their language. Some people seem to dislike or struggle with this aspect, but I think it adds depth, interest and plausibility.The corporate world of Somni-451 (5) means that many former brand names have become common nouns (as hoover, kleenex and sellotape already have): ford (car), fordjam, sony (PC), kodak (photo), nikes (any shoes), disney (any film/movie), starbuck (coffee).There are neologisms, too: facescaping (extreme cosmetic surgery), upstrata (posh), dijied (digitised).Perhaps more surprisingly, a few words have simplified spelling: xactly, xpose, fritened, lite (mind you, that is already quite common), thruway.In the post-apocalyptic world of Sloosha’s Crossin’ (6), the dialect is a mix of childish mishearings and misspellings, very similar to that in Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker” (see links in the section about Sloosha, above): I telled him, hurrycane.At times, it’s very poetic: “Watery dark it was inside. Wax’n’ teak-oil’n’time was its smell… An’ then we heard a sort o’ roaring underneath the silence, made o’ mil’yuns o’ whisp’rin’s like the ocean.” More graphically, “We’d get a feverish hornyin’ for each other… I was slurpyin’ her lustsome mangoes an’ moistly fig”!LINKS BETWEEN SECTIONS(view spoiler)[Adam Ewing’s journal (1) is found by Robert Frobisher (2).The recipient of Robert Frobisher’s (2) letters is Rufus Sixsmith (2, 3).The letters from Frobisher (2) to Sixsmith are sent via Sixsmith (2, 3) to Luisa Rey (3). Rey ponders, “Are molecules of Zedelghem Chateau, of Robert Frobisher’s hand, dormant in this paper for forty-four years, now swirling in my lungs, in my blood?”Ayrs/Frobishers’s (2) music is heard by Luisa Rey (3), and she has a sense of deja audio.Luisa Rey’s (3) manuscript is sent to Timothy Cavendish (4).Luisa (3) sees Ewing's (1) ship, The Prophetess, in a marina.A film about Timothy Cavendish (4) is watched by Somni-451 (5).Somni-451 (5) is prayed to by those in Sloosha’s Crossin’ (6) and a recording of her interview is watched by Zachry. She also has a memory of a car crash (perhaps like Luisa 93)?) (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Cloud Atlas (2004)?
**okay - i have actually written a "review" for this book, all you early bird voters! feel free to take back your picture-votes if you hate my words (and by "feel free," i mean "don't you dare!!")**why have i never read this book before??observe:do you see how it is wedged into a teetering, lode-bearing stack of books??removing it was a tricky business, indeed, but i succeeded, and i am finally reading it. so thank you for badgering me about it, internet, because so far, i am really enjoying it!!!*****************************REVIEW***********************************the other day, when i was still a whopping 60 pages from finishing this book, greg shoved me out from in front of my work-computer to revisit his review of the book.he muttered aloud "why does anyone even read my reviews. karen, don't ever let me compare a book to a mobius strip again."and he is both correct and incorrect. because it is a good review, but the book ain't nothing like a mobius strip.finnegan's wake is a true mobius. infinite jest is a motheaten mobius, with key scenes lost along the way. this is more of a parabola, or the first hill in a rolly coaster. if the rolly-coaster ride-as descriptor weren't so trite, i would explore that here: how at first, you didn't quite know what you were getting into, as you made your ascent, but then, once you got to the top and could see what was coming, you just couldn't read through it quickly enough, and there was excitement and screams and probably some of the weaker readers vomited into their laps. but it is indeed trite, so i won't make the comparison at all.i can understand the accusations of gimmickry. although as we are learning here on goodreads, gimmicks pay off, no? even the ones with no substance. and if this was just structure without substance, i would completely agree with mitchell's detractors. if it were just a series of short stories, butterflied and stacked on top of each other to form a book, it would be less appealing than it is in reality. because they do bounce off of each other, the stories. they sneak into each others' worlds both thematically, and more overtly, like foraging little mice on mouse-missions. sometimes they are each others' stories. calvino, borges, arabian nights, david lynch - i can trot out all the expected names if you aren't tired of reading them.but this is something all its own. and i am sure that a second reading would do me a world of good at identifying even more of these echoes. this is a book that pretty much demands a second pass, which i will gladly give.mitchell addresses the accusations of gimmickry before they are even made, in the novel itself:spent the fortnight gone in the music room, reworking my year's fragments into a "sextet for overlapping soloists": piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. in the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor: in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. revolutionary or gimmicky? shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.and i love that - his anticipation of his own critics. yummy.so - yeah - absolutely read this book if you have been dragging your feet over it. but beware - some of the stories are going to be much more captivating than others. i would read an entire book about frobisher, for example.people are obscenities. would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function.agreed.i will definitely read this book again.
—karen
Cloud Atlas is a book which is not particularly easy to read, requires patience and perseverance, but is ultimately very rewarding. It is a story spanning more than one hundred years that combines an entertaining - even humourous - plot with far bigger and more important issues like slavery and exploitation. The novel's language changes and develops with time and every new character introduced is as fresh and interesting as all those who came before. In the end, it is pure genius. It is also not a novel that I can adequately put into any kind of review, so I suggest instead that you watch this beautiful trailer created for the 2012 film adaptation - it convinced me to read it, after all:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgI6Ee...
—Emily May
I didn't really get what was going on until I was halfway through :D Insaaanely clever, yes, and one of the few books I wouldn't recommend to anyone whose first language isn't English. I found it verrry difficult to understand.
—Regan
