David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
May. 29th, 2011 10:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaThis is a random addition, but it seemed to fit. So here goes. Last year I read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, an artful, flawed, and ultimately disappointing book, but nevertheless one that had great impact on me. I still haven't summed up everything I want to say: for something to leave me inarticulate is a kind of compliment in and of itself. The narrative is constructed of several nested or concentric tales:
* The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - a 19C explorer travels to the South Seas and witnesses both colonialism and the extinction of an indigenous culture.
* Letters from Zedelghem - in 1931 a penniless composer insinuates himself into the life of a greater musician and writes letters about his sexual exploits to his best friend and lover
* Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery - A journalist in 1975 San Francisco roots out nuclear secrets. (This part, btw, contained information leading to the recognition that Island of the Blue Dolphins was based on a true story of a woman living on Buenas Yerba.)
* The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - a vanity publisher is committed to a nursing home from which he cannot escape
* An Orison of Sonmi~451 - a futuristic narrative of a Korean clone who goes from being a fast-food worker to a female messiah figure
* Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After - post-apocalyptic narrative from a tribal person as he is observed by Meronym, one of the last remnants of a technologically advanced civilization
Since the stories are nested concentrically, they first work there way down the list, and then back out until we're left with Adam Ewing, again. The story is built around the impermanence of human culture. Themes of colonial imperialism are reversed when we see, first, the destruction of native cultures, then the eventual demise of the imperial powers (including capitalism: Sonmi 45 begins as a clone working at Uncle Song's diner, which is clearly based on a McDonalds-like franchise) that replace them until we are left back by the campfire in a hunter-gatherer society, again.
One of the reasons I didn't like the book was the form of concentric circles became very obvious early on and the novel seemed built around the form, as though the author had picked the form then written the book, rather than having a sense of the form emerging from the narrative, or even, (the way Victorian novels work) a melody emerging, fugue-like from the vining narratives. (I read this rather close to Middle March so I was thinking a lot about form at the time.) The stories Mitchell sets up are engrossing and when they break off halfway through the narrative there is a sense of yearning for completion... so I raced through the first half of the novel becoming enmeshed in 'Songmi's Orison,' which is really the heart of the novel... only to find on my way out the 'completing' halves of each narrative were mostly the ugly endings of stories: death, destruction, and violence, until what we're left with is like Island of the Blue Dolphins: our only company is our solitude and the eternal pounding of the surf.
The woman upon which Island of the Blue Dolphins is based lived alone on that island for 18 years. By the time she was rescued she was the sole remaining member of her tribe and could not communicate with anyone on the mainland. She died after seven weeks of living with one of her rescuers. To survive so long on her own, only to be brought low by rescue... Scott O'dell's book does not contain this sad ending, but it is undoubtedly a melancholy tale, and the book (which was frequently assigned in grade school) always depressed me.
Anyway... back to Songmi's Orison...
Songmi is a clone (almost an automaton) built exclusively to staff a fast-food franchise. But there is something 'wrong' with her. Instead of being happy with this clone's life it becomes clear that she is 'defective.' Not even the 'soap' that is fed to clones can tamp down her extraordinary intelligence. She is eventually adopted by a university that studies her as though she were a feral-child. There are definite allusions here to Tarzan or Frankenstein. But she is, in fact, not just a clone anomaly, she is a human anomaly, with a kind of intelligence and drive that outstrips them all. She is profoundly moved by questions of justice and freedom. Some of the most engaging portions of the book (like Frankenstein) are her meditations on human society as she observes it as an outsider.
One of the passages that got to me most was her response to the question of whether or not it was okay to have 'clones' since they weren't really people and were provided for. (This question is not unlike the 19C 'slave' question, which the book highlights and about which I will have more to say at another time.) The interviewer asks, "Were you happy in those days?" She answers:
Is happiness the absence of deprivation? If so, servers are, as purebloods like to believe, the happiest stratum of the corpocracy. But if happiness is the conquest of adversity, or the sensation of being valued and fulfilled, then of all Nea So Copros' slaves we are surely the most miserable.
Songmi's story and her answer have stayed with me over the past year. Not just as I have struggled with my own dead-end job, but as I have started tinkering again with ideas of human justice and freedom. What it means to be a grown up. And what I require for happiness.*
I will have more on this theme in the coming days. Watch this space.
* To the extent that there can be answers at all --- and I believe there is no good answer, it's a moving target as our needs and life-situations change --- one of the themes I have come up with lately is that I actually enjoy a degree of struggle and conflict. I am tempered to 'contend.' And this word has come up in my exploration of the 'concerto' as a musical format. I used to hate the form because I always felt it was show-offy and took the focus away from the orchestra. Then I saw a pianist a few years ago who utterly changed my mind, not just in his mastery of the material, but the kind of back-and-forth with the orchestra.
I remember telling my mother about the experience and how they had seemed to play together, play off one another, rather than this pounding on the piano and the orchestra sawing away. And she said, "But Z, the concerto means to contend. There is supposed to be that tension, but it is also supposed to be musical."
Further to this has been my affection for Beethoven who exploits the form emotionally, almost as though you can hear him working through life's problems in the format... And I think this is, for me, what's required for a certain degree of happiness. To be allowed to contend with great problems, questions, and emotions. But to be able to 'make music' doing it. Not just self-destruct or find I am locked into an intractable stalemates. But to be allowed to engage, to contend, and to be appreciated the considerable thought and will I can apply to things. There has to be music. There has to be give and take.
* The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing - a 19C explorer travels to the South Seas and witnesses both colonialism and the extinction of an indigenous culture.
* Letters from Zedelghem - in 1931 a penniless composer insinuates himself into the life of a greater musician and writes letters about his sexual exploits to his best friend and lover
* Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery - A journalist in 1975 San Francisco roots out nuclear secrets. (This part, btw, contained information leading to the recognition that Island of the Blue Dolphins was based on a true story of a woman living on Buenas Yerba.)
* The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish - a vanity publisher is committed to a nursing home from which he cannot escape
* An Orison of Sonmi~451 - a futuristic narrative of a Korean clone who goes from being a fast-food worker to a female messiah figure
* Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After - post-apocalyptic narrative from a tribal person as he is observed by Meronym, one of the last remnants of a technologically advanced civilization
Since the stories are nested concentrically, they first work there way down the list, and then back out until we're left with Adam Ewing, again. The story is built around the impermanence of human culture. Themes of colonial imperialism are reversed when we see, first, the destruction of native cultures, then the eventual demise of the imperial powers (including capitalism: Sonmi 45 begins as a clone working at Uncle Song's diner, which is clearly based on a McDonalds-like franchise) that replace them until we are left back by the campfire in a hunter-gatherer society, again.
One of the reasons I didn't like the book was the form of concentric circles became very obvious early on and the novel seemed built around the form, as though the author had picked the form then written the book, rather than having a sense of the form emerging from the narrative, or even, (the way Victorian novels work) a melody emerging, fugue-like from the vining narratives. (I read this rather close to Middle March so I was thinking a lot about form at the time.) The stories Mitchell sets up are engrossing and when they break off halfway through the narrative there is a sense of yearning for completion... so I raced through the first half of the novel becoming enmeshed in 'Songmi's Orison,' which is really the heart of the novel... only to find on my way out the 'completing' halves of each narrative were mostly the ugly endings of stories: death, destruction, and violence, until what we're left with is like Island of the Blue Dolphins: our only company is our solitude and the eternal pounding of the surf.
The woman upon which Island of the Blue Dolphins is based lived alone on that island for 18 years. By the time she was rescued she was the sole remaining member of her tribe and could not communicate with anyone on the mainland. She died after seven weeks of living with one of her rescuers. To survive so long on her own, only to be brought low by rescue... Scott O'dell's book does not contain this sad ending, but it is undoubtedly a melancholy tale, and the book (which was frequently assigned in grade school) always depressed me.
Anyway... back to Songmi's Orison...
Songmi is a clone (almost an automaton) built exclusively to staff a fast-food franchise. But there is something 'wrong' with her. Instead of being happy with this clone's life it becomes clear that she is 'defective.' Not even the 'soap' that is fed to clones can tamp down her extraordinary intelligence. She is eventually adopted by a university that studies her as though she were a feral-child. There are definite allusions here to Tarzan or Frankenstein. But she is, in fact, not just a clone anomaly, she is a human anomaly, with a kind of intelligence and drive that outstrips them all. She is profoundly moved by questions of justice and freedom. Some of the most engaging portions of the book (like Frankenstein) are her meditations on human society as she observes it as an outsider.
One of the passages that got to me most was her response to the question of whether or not it was okay to have 'clones' since they weren't really people and were provided for. (This question is not unlike the 19C 'slave' question, which the book highlights and about which I will have more to say at another time.) The interviewer asks, "Were you happy in those days?" She answers:
Is happiness the absence of deprivation? If so, servers are, as purebloods like to believe, the happiest stratum of the corpocracy. But if happiness is the conquest of adversity, or the sensation of being valued and fulfilled, then of all Nea So Copros' slaves we are surely the most miserable.
Songmi's story and her answer have stayed with me over the past year. Not just as I have struggled with my own dead-end job, but as I have started tinkering again with ideas of human justice and freedom. What it means to be a grown up. And what I require for happiness.*
I will have more on this theme in the coming days. Watch this space.
* To the extent that there can be answers at all --- and I believe there is no good answer, it's a moving target as our needs and life-situations change --- one of the themes I have come up with lately is that I actually enjoy a degree of struggle and conflict. I am tempered to 'contend.' And this word has come up in my exploration of the 'concerto' as a musical format. I used to hate the form because I always felt it was show-offy and took the focus away from the orchestra. Then I saw a pianist a few years ago who utterly changed my mind, not just in his mastery of the material, but the kind of back-and-forth with the orchestra.
I remember telling my mother about the experience and how they had seemed to play together, play off one another, rather than this pounding on the piano and the orchestra sawing away. And she said, "But Z, the concerto means to contend. There is supposed to be that tension, but it is also supposed to be musical."
Further to this has been my affection for Beethoven who exploits the form emotionally, almost as though you can hear him working through life's problems in the format... And I think this is, for me, what's required for a certain degree of happiness. To be allowed to contend with great problems, questions, and emotions. But to be able to 'make music' doing it. Not just self-destruct or find I am locked into an intractable stalemates. But to be allowed to engage, to contend, and to be appreciated the considerable thought and will I can apply to things. There has to be music. There has to be give and take.
