Given the movie it might be interesting to group-read Cloud Atlas. I nominate you!
I’m very pleased to announce that the Book Club selection for January and February is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell!
A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.
SPOILERS AHEAD
It’s going to take me awhile to get to this, I’m #13 on the waitlist at the public library…
I loved this book. It was difficult to get into in the first chapter, but I am glad I stuck with it. I’ll write more about it- I need to think about it. It’s a hard book to describe. I have not seen the movie yet, BTW. But I think I would like to, now that I have finished the book.
I’ve finally gotten the library copy, huzzah! Time to read it soon…
I struggled with this book. I had it back in the Spring from the public library and got about 20 pages in before I had to return it (it didn’t grab me). There was a copy on the recommended fiction table at my public library earlier this summer so I thought I’d give it another try. Again, the first few stories didn’t grab me, but gosh darn it I was going to make my way through this book no matter what my in-person book club encouraged me to do (drop it!). I get the nested structure and yes, some of the writing was very shiny and postmodern (but not in a way that made me not notice it). Ewing and Frobisher were uninteresting to me. And then I met Luisa Rey and was fascinated only to be blindsided by Cavendish, who I wasn’t as interested in either. However, Sonmi won me over. There was the science fiction I was looking for! And the mid-section was wonderful even as the writing style gave me a bit of a reading learning curve. I really enjoyed some of the meditations on time, ethics, corporatization, and the direction of humanity especially from the mid-point on. Some favorites:
From the ill-fated Isaac Sachs (Luisa Rey section 2):
[ul]
[li] Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction - in short, belief - grows ever “truer.” The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
[/li]> [li] The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to “landscape” the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
[/li]> [li] Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up - a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self0fulfilling pro0hecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia,the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
[/li]> [li]Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows - the actual past - from another such simulacrum - the actual future?
[/li]> [li]One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each “shell” (the present) encased inside a nest of “shells” (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of “now” likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future. (392-393)[/ul][/li]
Can you change the future or not?
Maybe the answer is not a function of metaphysics but one, simply, of power. (401)
The obnoxious Henderson triplets, upon spouting a bunch of racist and classist claptrap want “a meritocracy of acumen. A culture that is not ashamed to acknowledge that wealth attracts power… and that the wealthmakers - us - are rewarded. When a man aspires to power, I ask one simple question: Does he think like a businessman?” and Luisa’s response “I ask three simple questions. How did he get that power? How is he using it? And how can it be taken off the sonofabitch?” (403)
I like the conceit with music and the structure. The end (well really most of the philosophical meat of the project) is perhaps a bit preachy but as I agree with it it was OK. Quoted because I can, and because some days we all need to be reminded of hope:
One fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
Is this the doom written within our nature?
If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Tortuous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president’s pen or a vainglorious general’s sword.
A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living…
I hear my father-in-law’s response… “you’ll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naive, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!”
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops? (508-509)
Ah and another thought - I realize that a large part of what I appreciate about the novel is its exploration of ideas around the meaning of history and humanity and… well that has a lot to do with my work. So that’s cool.
Though I do find it telling that the best parts for me were the mystery/thriller (Luisa Rey); the future dystopia (Sonmi); and the post-apocalypse (Zachry). My interests are so predictable!