Any Excuse For A Story (Or Six)
Oct. 8th, 2005 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel28 Sep 2005
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - Sceptre, 2004
* * * *
I thought that this was by far the most potentially interesting of the Booker nominees for 2004, so needless to say it didn't win. Which is a shame, for this book's unusual and daring construction is worth a prize in itself - it's nice to see someone daring to play original games with a novel's structure, and if the overall effect isn't entirely successful, it's not for want of trying.
The first section is the journal of an American notary called Adam Ewing, who encounters on Chatham Island, in the Pacific, in 1849, an eccentric doctor called Henry Goose who treats him for a mysterious (and possibly non-existent) Ailment. After meeting the European inhabitants and hearing about the enslavement of the native Moriori by the invading Maori, he and Goose take ship where he saves the hide of a Moriori stowaway. Halfway through, however, the journal abruptly ends and a second story begins, set in the 1930s and consisting of letters from Robert Frobisher, a young man who has become the amanuensis to a disabled composer living in France, to his erstwhile lover. This is my favourite story despite the obvious basis on the life of Frederick Delius - the description of the process of joint composition is enthralling (at least to those of us with an interest in it). But just as Frobisher becomes the lover of the composer's wife and an emotional explosion seems imminent, the section ends and a third story starts, this time a 1970s-era political thriller. And so it continues, each story broken in the middle and each set a few decades later than the previous one. There are six in all - the fourth, set in the present day, is a humorous tale of a publisher who is trapped in an old folks home, the fifth a near-future dystopia about a C.J. Cherryh-style cloned slave and the sixth, the only story told without interruption, a post-catastrophe picaresque evidently inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and bearing a strong structural resemblance to the first story but told from the native's point of view. When this tale is complete, the dystopian tale resumes, then the present day story and so on back to the journal of Adam Ewing.
The stories are loosely linked, with the text of the previous section appearing in some guise in the next. Adam Ewing's journal, for example, turns up in the composer's library where it is spotted by Frobisher. In the 70s political thriller, one of the characters turns out to be Frobisher's lover and still has his letters. At first it is not clear that anything else links the stories, but gradually a common theme emerges, which is the desire of some people to dominate and control others that is usually called the will to power. The variety of the stories allows Mitchell to demonstrate the myriad ways in which this unpleasant predatory aspect of human nature manifests itself in the economic and social spheres, and the vast canvas of past, present and future history that the novel covers shows the catastrophic consequences if it is not checked in some way (global warming, and the unholy alliance of politics, big business and western lifestyle choices that is conspiring to prevent any corrective action from being taken, come forcibly to mind).
Mention should also be made of the brilliant writing . Each story is told in a different style, from the Victorianisms of Adam Ewing's journal to the terse present tense rendition of the thriller to the folksy contractions of the post-catastrophe tale. Some stories are easier to read than others, with the first and last being particularly hard work, and of course they are Joycean literary pastiches; but they all work and are infinitely more entertaining than Ulysses (possibly the most over-rated novel ever written).
That said, there are problems with the clever book-shaped structure. The chief of these is that unless you read the whole thing in more or less one go, by the time you reach part two of some of the earlier tales you have completely forgotten the characters and the plot, necessitating much irritating flicking back to remind yourself. This is a particular problem with the 1970s thriller. Also, the thematic development is effectively finished by the end of the final story, which occurs just over half way through the book. Of course you want to know how the individual tales finish and Mitchell does his best to keep the rest of the novel interesting, but he doesn't quite succeed in banishing the impression that he is just tying up the loose ends. It must also be said that his analysis of the problem of the will to power is somewhat trite and superficial. My feeling is that the theme was just an excuse to write some entertaining stories that showed off his stylistic skills. So the Booker judges were probably right and it didn't deserve to win, but I doubt that the book which did (The Line of Beauty) is a more enjoyable read.
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - Sceptre, 2004
* * * *
I thought that this was by far the most potentially interesting of the Booker nominees for 2004, so needless to say it didn't win. Which is a shame, for this book's unusual and daring construction is worth a prize in itself - it's nice to see someone daring to play original games with a novel's structure, and if the overall effect isn't entirely successful, it's not for want of trying.
The first section is the journal of an American notary called Adam Ewing, who encounters on Chatham Island, in the Pacific, in 1849, an eccentric doctor called Henry Goose who treats him for a mysterious (and possibly non-existent) Ailment. After meeting the European inhabitants and hearing about the enslavement of the native Moriori by the invading Maori, he and Goose take ship where he saves the hide of a Moriori stowaway. Halfway through, however, the journal abruptly ends and a second story begins, set in the 1930s and consisting of letters from Robert Frobisher, a young man who has become the amanuensis to a disabled composer living in France, to his erstwhile lover. This is my favourite story despite the obvious basis on the life of Frederick Delius - the description of the process of joint composition is enthralling (at least to those of us with an interest in it). But just as Frobisher becomes the lover of the composer's wife and an emotional explosion seems imminent, the section ends and a third story starts, this time a 1970s-era political thriller. And so it continues, each story broken in the middle and each set a few decades later than the previous one. There are six in all - the fourth, set in the present day, is a humorous tale of a publisher who is trapped in an old folks home, the fifth a near-future dystopia about a C.J. Cherryh-style cloned slave and the sixth, the only story told without interruption, a post-catastrophe picaresque evidently inspired by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and bearing a strong structural resemblance to the first story but told from the native's point of view. When this tale is complete, the dystopian tale resumes, then the present day story and so on back to the journal of Adam Ewing.
The stories are loosely linked, with the text of the previous section appearing in some guise in the next. Adam Ewing's journal, for example, turns up in the composer's library where it is spotted by Frobisher. In the 70s political thriller, one of the characters turns out to be Frobisher's lover and still has his letters. At first it is not clear that anything else links the stories, but gradually a common theme emerges, which is the desire of some people to dominate and control others that is usually called the will to power. The variety of the stories allows Mitchell to demonstrate the myriad ways in which this unpleasant predatory aspect of human nature manifests itself in the economic and social spheres, and the vast canvas of past, present and future history that the novel covers shows the catastrophic consequences if it is not checked in some way (global warming, and the unholy alliance of politics, big business and western lifestyle choices that is conspiring to prevent any corrective action from being taken, come forcibly to mind).
Mention should also be made of the brilliant writing . Each story is told in a different style, from the Victorianisms of Adam Ewing's journal to the terse present tense rendition of the thriller to the folksy contractions of the post-catastrophe tale. Some stories are easier to read than others, with the first and last being particularly hard work, and of course they are Joycean literary pastiches; but they all work and are infinitely more entertaining than Ulysses (possibly the most over-rated novel ever written).
That said, there are problems with the clever book-shaped structure. The chief of these is that unless you read the whole thing in more or less one go, by the time you reach part two of some of the earlier tales you have completely forgotten the characters and the plot, necessitating much irritating flicking back to remind yourself. This is a particular problem with the 1970s thriller. Also, the thematic development is effectively finished by the end of the final story, which occurs just over half way through the book. Of course you want to know how the individual tales finish and Mitchell does his best to keep the rest of the novel interesting, but he doesn't quite succeed in banishing the impression that he is just tying up the loose ends. It must also be said that his analysis of the problem of the will to power is somewhat trite and superficial. My feeling is that the theme was just an excuse to write some entertaining stories that showed off his stylistic skills. So the Booker judges were probably right and it didn't deserve to win, but I doubt that the book which did (The Line of Beauty) is a more enjoyable read.