thelsdj
-
Content count
16 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by thelsdj
-
-
No, it was at least twice.
I would give Chris the benefit of the doubt on this one. I am very aware of the Lana's transition, but when I refer to them, half of the time I start by calling them the Wachowski Brothers and have to correct myself, so I can understand why Chris might say it a few times, though I would agree that it should be corrected when you catch yourself.
-
Yeah, I'll take that. As Sean said, wish we would have talked more about the role of fiction in the structure of the novel.
Any chance of, in the future, doing some sort of short, supplementary, follow-up podcast to discuss things like this? I'm not just talking about Cloud Atlas specifically, but any book in general, that could use more discussion. Or is the plan for the book podcast to always be strictly one pod, casted once per month? Or I guess there could be a short errata style section of the next book-cast, to discuss topics related to the last book.
-
If the reincarnation theory is literal, it seems to have a pretty big flaw. How can Cavendish be a reincarnated Luisa Rey? Rey is 20something in the 1970's, while Cavendish is in his 60's less than 40 years later. Even if Luisa Rey is fictional, and the author is the real birthmark-bearer, aren't we told that Hilary V Hush is also alive and sending manuscripts to Cavendish?
It seems weird to go to all the effort of spelling out this reincarnation theory and then not following through with it fully. Unless it's a sign that all the talk of reincarnation in the past/future stories is hocus pocus, and nudgingly letting the reader know not to take it so literally.
I don't have any issue with this. I always thought the idea of reincarnation was outside of time itself. Take a look at this: http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg.html for a real mind trip.
-
Didn't David Mitchell say 'all except one' anyway?
I assumed that meant Zachry wasn't but Meronym was.
-
Well... that seems rather out of character. Again, I don't really think of it as a piece of the puzzle, as it were, so much as just taking the opportunity to make a couple of apparently disparate parts of the story resonate with each other.
I wouldn't claim that Mitchell meant for this to be a valid reading, but when you say "out of character", how much do we actually know about Sixsmith's character? He is a very minor character, 40-50 years after the events of Frobisher's story. Who knows what kind of jealousy/rage he might have experienced as a young man.
-
The synchronicity of Frobisher's and Sixsmith's deaths didn't occur to me until last night. Both of a gunshot to the head in a hotel room, both apparent suicides-- the sort of thing that's not a huge plot point but is obviously intentional, one of those little things that differentiates a story from a mere series of events.
I dig shit like that.
This just blew my mind. Sixsmith had some skill with forgery right? What if he killed Frobisher and faked the suicide note? He was in the same city at the time....
-
Going against my previous comment saying that all the stories take place in their own fictional universe. I like to imagine that Luisa Rey's writer (Hilary V. Hush) actually has the comet birthmark, is related to Sixsmith, and is obsessed with Frobisher's music. She wrote the Luisa Rey story and stuck herself in as the protagonist for a story that is very fictional but has a bunch of connections to her real life.
-
I apologise in advance for my continued inability to comment on the contents of the podcast, or the book, as I have not yet had time to read any of the novels.
Is it really necessary to have separate threads for pre- and post-podcast discussions for the same book? The discussion related to the first book was actually divided between three threads, which is simply ridiculous. I'm sure a better solution can be arrived at.
Also, did you decide on whether to announce the titles two months in advance or will you stick to one month warning?
They announced the next book on Twitter and in the episode 1 thread I believe (Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon), so I assume they will be soon announcing the book for December as well.
-
I'm not yet done listening to the episode, but had to write this before I lost the train of thought.
The Luisa Rey section being fictional is critical to the entire story for one reason. Because Sixsmith is in both Frobisher and Luisa Rey, without Luisa Rey being fictional, it would draw too much of an actual connection between the 3 stories of Frobisher, Luisa Rey and Cavendish.
I think you guys maybe missed out on the fact that even though Mitchell says that all the characters are a reincarnated soul, he was very careful to make sure that there was no direct connection between any of the stories that would allow you to prove that any of them happened in the same "universe". By that, I mean to say that in each story it is possible to say that the one below it is fictional.
Frobisher points out that he thinks the Journal of Adam Ewing may be fictional.
Luisa Rey is written by Mitchell in a style that makes it clear it is a work of fiction by a maybe-not-so-great author.
Cavendish's story is written like a memoir, but Sonmi~451 experiences it as a movie. Is the line where Cavendish talks about how his story should be made into a movie part of the movie? Or are we reading a different version of the story than Sonmi~451 saw?
You guys pointed out in the podcast the absurdity of the futurism of Sonmi~451, but maybe that was intentional because what if the Sonmi~451 hologram that Zachry and Meronym had was also a futuristic style of fiction/satire?
The point I am making is that Mitchell intentionally designed each story to be presented in a form that does not allow for there to be direct connections between any of the stories that would place them in the same fictional universe. Even in the very middle, Zachry's (grand?)children point out that they don't really believe that his story is 100% true.
-
The structure of the chapters breaks down in the middle. Up until that point each subsequent viewpoint has a character which experiences the previous viewpoint in 2 parts. But when we get to Zachry, he doesn't understand Sonmi's language, and on top of that he doesn't hear her story in 2 parts.
This has repercussions to the Sonmi section as well, because no-one in the higher section experiences her story in 2 parts, the split in her story is artificial instead of based on the next piece of narrative. For example, the split in the Cavendish story is due to Sonmi seeing only part of the movie, and being interrupted, then seeing the rest before she dies. Whereas the split in the Sonmi story is not explained as Zachry or Meronym experiencing her story in 2 parts.
This isn't really a criticism, I'm just trying to work through for myself whether this matters in some way. I guess the way I see it, this hints that splitting each story into 2 parts is just a storytelling device used by Mitchell and isn't meant to actually convey any meaning to the world.
-
I still think you should try to announce a new title two months in advance if possible. Shipping a book to Finland may take more than a week already and I have quite a little spare time at the moment.
It is not a big problem as I can always listen to the casts later. It would be nice to be able to take part in the pre-discussion every know and then, though.
As someone who has no problem getting an eBook and reading 500+ pages in a month, I actually support having 2 months lead time to help get more people involved in the discussion.
-
Just finished. It might be my genre-fiction roots, but I think Sonmi and Zachry together are my favorite parts of the whole book.
-
I'm about three quarters through and am hooked. It took till the 4th perspective for me to get into it. The over-arching narrative hadn't really peeked through until then, and the third perspective read like a bad mystery novel (intentionally I guess). But now I can't wait to get the pay-off for each story. Just finished the closing section of Sonmi and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I guess it doesn't have as much of a philosophical bent as The Sense of an Ending. I am more thinking about the plot and characters than I am about any human experience questions that might be raised by the narrative. Maybe something else will come up as I get closer to the end, but so far it all seems to be about the story and the connections between the stories.
-
Totally unrelated to the book but was related to the podcast, had to relay this experience.
I usually listen to Idle Thumbs podcasts in browser, so when it is over, my headphones go quiet until I start something else.
This time, when the podcast came to an end and the Indiana Jones theme started playing, I thought nothing of it, except to comment to myself "I wonder why they chose to stick this at the end?"
It wasn't until I sat down at my computer to stop it playing that I realized my iTunes had continued on to the Indiana Jones theme randomly in my library.
-
Read and finished the book in one sitting. Spoilers below.
Looking back, the first half appears to be an attempt to describe Tony's memories of his life, up until the events of the second half. He isn't a super-reliable narrator, but I tend to trust that he's not intentionally lying to us in the first half. The difference between the first and second half is that in the second half you appear to be in temporal lock-step with Tony as he experiences the events. Whereas in the first half you only get to look back on the events through his memory.
I really enjoyed the first half. When it wrapped up I really wasn't sure what the second half would bring. My first guess was that the second half would be telling the same events from another characters perspective, that would have been interesting!
Regarding the twist. Obviously most readers probably saw _something_ coming a long ways off. I had a few guesses, one was that Adrian's mother was also Veronica's mother. I also considered that Veronica's mother was the one who had the child before it was revealed, but wasn't certain and hadn't settled on that, so I thought of it, but didn't "guess" it.
Was there any particular reason that Adrian Jr. called Veronica Mary? If there was I missed it.
Overall, for me, the plot doesn't matter. I'd give it a 3 out of 5. But as others have said, it is a beautiful study of memory and I highly enjoyed it.
I'm 30 and I tend not to read for deep philosophizing. I read genre-fiction for story and character, but in this case I liked spending the mental energy thinking about the questions Sense raised in me about myself, both my past and how I live in my present (which was more of an afterthought by the author, but as a young person you likely can't read something like this without wondering what you are doing with your life.)
Looking forward to jumping into Cloud Atlas. I watched the first trailer, but am holding off on the second.
Idle Book Club Episode 5: The Great Gatsby
in Idle Book Club Episodes
Posted
I too would like to know this.