Jake

The Idle Book Club 2: Cloud Atlas

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I love this book I got it on audio and listening to Slooshas crossin was absolutely magical. I love the imagery that keeps repeating and how the last few pages give you hope without being exceptionally cheesy.

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Putting aside the structure and motifs of the work, I'm largely left struggling with myself about how each narrative reconciles itself with the duality of human nature. At one end of the spectrum, the "hunger" of humanity seeks to dominate its environment at its base elements (power, knowledge, survival, etc..), whilst at the other end the 'soul' of humanity (or whatever you might call it...) yearns for some higher purpose that makes our lives worth living in the end (freedom, truth, legacy fulfillment, love, etc...). In my mind so far, the highs and lows of the human experience is a mixture of these dual, but not mutually exclusive forces.

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This is all old stuff, but going back to the "Death of the Author" discussion, I'm somewhat intrigued by how broadly this affects art culture. Books, in general, are expected to be quite completely finished when they're released, and shan't be tampered with. By extension, we expect that serial publications are final, and even if the author came up with a clever way to foreshadow later characters and events or tie up plot holes, that can't be done because that would be soiling the already published work (or for that matter, if Dickens ever had wanted to go and make A Tale of Two Cities maybe a little bit concise, I guess that's just too bad). And Allah knows what kind of a fuss people throw when a director tries to go back and revise his work (sorry George, Star Wars is sacred).

The only exceptions I can think of to this rule are Portal, which repeatedly added Easter eggs and cinematic revisions in anticipation for the sequel, and The Princess Bride by William Goldman (the novel, mind you, not the film written by the same man), which through its multiple reprints added additional forewords, afterwords, and bonus chapters (this isn't your Leonard Maltin style foreword full of vapid praise either; these are full on extra chapters in the fiction composed by the author himself). Personally, I like the idea that the author can go back and revise or add upon his previous work, but I guess it demands a lot of trust from the readers in the author himself, not just his work.

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Just finished the book (just in time?) and still don't know where I'm at. I liked it a lot, but I liked it best around the middle, where it all felt like it was building up to something, which it didn't really do. The birthmark thread seemed to imply some sort of causal relationship, and then nothing ever followed up on that- I would have liked to see him either embrace that idea and tie everything tightly together or abandon it. In the end, to me, that aspect felt half-realized. However, the series of stories with their variations on the theme of the book, and each one being so close to trite and then exceeding the archetype in some way... it all added up to something pretty powerful.

Anyway.

Regarding 'death of the author':

We make stories because there are ideas that are too complex to simply tell. We must wrap them in narratives and encode them into the experiences of fake people and hope that some of what we wanted to communicate comes through. Trying to reduce a story to merely what the author can articulate about the story reduces it's scope and devalues it. The error is in treating this as some sort of dilemma, as though alternate interpretations devalue an author's intent. The glory of fiction is that nothing has to be just one thing, and it can all be one extended analogy, and whatever you get from it is excellent.

"Valid interpretation?"

What an utterly absurd thing to say. The interpretation has been interpreted, it is in the brain of the interpreter now. Whether you think it's valid or not is immaterial, and like it or not your own brain is processing the story in ways neither you nor the author ever intended. We can't control what stories are about, we can only string words and hope to communicate some part of what normally defies words. If we fail to communicate that then that's sad and frustrating, and I can see why many authors feel the need to clarify their intent on this basis, but alternate interpretations do not demean their intent, nor can their intent supersede the reader's imagination.

If the author wants to go back and edit their work afterwards, they should feel free. I don't mind George Lucas mucking about with his classics, I just think it's a tiny tragedy that unedited versions are so difficult to acquire. The author can do whatever they want with their work, but we are free to prefer earlier editions.

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Very well put. It's funny when you think how art, particularly narrative in form, is this one area of human activity where intent is still king.

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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.

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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.

Yes, this is a very good point, and one I meant to bring up and then totally forgot to!

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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?

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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.

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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.

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I've not quite finished the book yet so I only have comments about the cast itself... It was super good! You seemed a lot more sure in it than last month, it felt like you had more distinct points and specific thoughts about it, and I agreed with them all, which is nice. Though I would like Jake back, and for Chris not to add a Scottish accent to his repertoire of repeated voices.

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In case anyone is interested in the theory of the whole "Death of the Author" thing, here's a few foundational links:

http://faculty.smu.edu/nschwart/seminar/Fallacy.htm (Wimsatt and Beardsley's extremely important article that gives us the term "the intentional fallacy")

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/barthes06.htm (Roland Barth's argument for the death of the author as primary generator of meaning and for the ascendancy of the reader)

Also of interest, though I couldn't dig up a not super-illegal seeming link to it, is Foucault's essay, "What is an Author," in which F denies that there is such a thing as an author, but rather a few ground-breaking figures and those who follow in the discourse that they establish. It's complicated and requires more background to really grasp its implications (e.g. it explicitly mentions the "coming into being" of an author, which emphasizes a connection to an aspect of Heidegger's philosophy).

Anyways, as for Cloud Atlas. I thought the major flaw the book narrowly avoids and the movie dives into headfirst is a certain saccharine sentimentality. This gets touched on in the 'cast, but I was wondering if anyone else feel this way.

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Though I would like...Chris not to add a Scottish accent to his repertoire of repeated voices.

DO NOT BE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS

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Also of interest, though I couldn't dig up a not super-illegal seeming link to it, is Foucault's essay, "What is an Author," in which F denies that there is such a thing as an author, but rather a few ground-breaking figures and those who follow in the discourse that they establish. It's complicated and requires more background to really grasp its implications (e.g. it explicitly mentions the "coming into being" of an author, which emphasizes a connection to an aspect of Heidegger's philosophy).

I said this in the old thread, but this is the important one to my mind. Also DotA has more in common with an emotional manifesto than a deep essay.

Also, the correct way to have arguments about Death of the Author is through the medium of wrestling matches. Its what he would have wanted.

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I've not quite finished the book yet so I only have comments about the cast itself... It was super good! You seemed a lot more sure in it than last month, it felt like you had more distinct points and specific thoughts about it, and I agreed with them all, which is nice. Though I would like Jake back, and for Chris not to add a Scottish accent to his repertoire of repeated voices.

I would like to come back but life clobbered me and I wasn't even at the halfway point by the time recording came up so I sat it out. My first ever Idle Thumbs episode as a reader!

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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?

We'll talk about the "necessity" of pre/post threads. You might be right. (Although Chris/Jake are really thoughtful about how they set this stuff up so I'm sure there are some solid reasons.

We've also set up a *gasp* FACEBOOK PAGE (facebook.com/idlebookclub) (which we hate) but it is good at keeping a list of the books we're going to read up to date (and obviously getting the word out about the cast).

December's book is Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins.

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Though I would like Jake back.

Well, with all those impending funding cuts...

It was really strange hearing you guys talk about how great the Cavendish story was. The entire experience of that first half felt really clichéd and clunky as he set up the scene. Everything in that first half goes wrong, every effort Cavendish takes to fix the situation is misunderstood and it all generally boils down to a "one big misunderstanding" situation. His brother dying and leaving no record was annoyingly neat, and infuriating to read through. There's probably a tv trope page for what I specifically dislike.

I guess that this feeling of powerlessness and general bad luck are what Mitchell was trying to convey, it just seemed a bit like a crappy Robin Williams* film at times. Maybe I'll try a re-read and see if I think differently now.

Great cast though, thank you very much!

EDIT: Thinking about it, Robin Williams is not the best choice here. The use of increasingly frustrating plotpoints unfolding because of a fundamental misunderstanding that can't be rectified for trite reasons, is a very British thing I think. Maybe it exists in American media too, but it brings to mind things like some Monthy Python sketches and Mr. Bean.

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I'm listening to the very end and I'm glad that you two admitted ahead of time that you sound like douchebags talking about the movie, because you absolutely sound like total douchebags talking about the movie. I'm sure I'm going to sound overly disparaging of your critical faculties here, but from Chris' persistent harping about how Cloud Atlas never should be a movie, I think you're severely underestimating the Wachowskis as filmmakers.

Never judge a movie by it's trailer is my rule. Here's a clip from the movie itself, if I understand correctly:

http://www.nytimes.c...loud-atlas.html

Trailers are always different from the movie. That's why I absolutely love the increasingly common "sneak peeks" websites are posting these days; because they bypass the marketing glitz and glam and show the raw heart of the movie and tell you exactly why they're good. The Wachowskis, in particular, are absolute masters of nonlinear narrative. I'm sure someone will disagree with me on this, but the first 10 minutes of Speed Racer were some of the absolute best 10 minutes of film ever cut, because they brilliantly weaved together multiple stories from multiple time periods into one flowing coherent story that filled in every detail as it needed to be revealed for the perfect emotional impact.

Alright I'm going to back off the praise for a minute to admit that the Wachowskis aren't the greatest filmmakers of all time or anything, and they did make the Matrix sequels which were pretty terrible. But what I do think is that if anyone's clever enough to take a story like Cloud Atlas and weave it into something appropriate for film, it would probably be them. The fact that they also threw in a hoverplane is completely trivial. The fact that the trailer--which was the longest goddamned trailer I've ever seen and told me jack shit--showed a magical negro nursing his white master to health, is also probably not reflective of the film. And if it is, you have to own up and accept that the film doesn't have the capacity to tell anything close to the same story as the novel. That'd be like if Peter Jackson tried to keep Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings. It wasn't the film he was making.

Allah almighty I hate when people whine about film adaptations. It really is the absolute douchiest thing.

But thanks again to owning up to it. I'm going to finish listening to you reading the last paragraph. Good show!

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Pretty cool cast: I was surprised to hear 2 writers defends the idea that you can't trust an author when he talks about his intent. That's pretty fascinating.

As for Cloud Atlas, I never managed to read it from cover to cover; but in hindsight, I was probably unfair to the book.

Basically, I fell love with the idea of partial, interrupted narrative that may, sometimes, pick up some of the previous segment's unfinished theme and either continue with a similar view or provide a counterpoint.

So, when the second half revealed that the each story would have a closure, I was really disappointed. Already before that, I was being bothered by the existence of explicit physical links between each story - it felt unnecessary and blunt. The reincarnation angle never came to my mind, but the fact that each people is basically a reader of the previous protagonist story didn't appeal to me at all.

I liked each story individually - mostly the composer's one -, but into the second half, I got the strong sense that the author's engrossment for the smart structure he came up was going to undermine any focus on the thematics.

At that point, to be honest, I hadn't grasp any overarching theme, but I felt the content was going to serve the structure and not the other way around. And I thought the characters deserved better.

In the year after I gave up, I went back every few month to finish one of the segment, separately. After having finished all of them, I can say I really enjoyed each of them immensely as separate corpus.

But I never could build up the motivation to immerse myself in the 'complete' flow of the book again: the prospect of an accumulation of personal's character conclusion appeared daunting to me, as it would give a 'fable-like' quality to the message that I felt would lower the book rather than elevate it.

That's where I was probably unfair to Mitchell: I probably jumped to a conclusion, stuck to it and filter the book unfairly because of that. At least, that's what I get from from what Sean and Chris said on the cast.

And so, the cast allowed me to understand the book from a completely different vantage point; and I'm really happy about that :tup:

On a side note, I'm always weary of adaptations, but when they happen, I only truly value the ones that present a strong interpretation of the original material: I really want to see a unique point of view on the oeuvre rather than a literal reading or a vision close to my own.

In that sense, the reincarnation angle of the Cloud Atlas movie doesn't bother that much. What does, is that, if the Wachowskis really are using the same actors across characters, then they seem quite unimaginative about that proposition.

They could have used craftier ways to support the reincarnation theme they chose: they could have either done something similar to what Gilliam did with Ledger's character on Parnassus (actors shadowing another actor basically), or better, make different actors establish the connections between their characters through 'ticks' or subtle recurring body language.

It's not that they are literal to what Mitchell said, it's just that they seem very 'bland' about it.

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I am going to apologize super profusely and give you the chance to skip my comments now by saying that I have not read the book. Sorry!

However, when you were discussing the movie trailer - which I went ahead and watched also - everything about it reminded me pretty much of The Fountain - some elements of a great story kind of obscured by the gimmickry and "movie-ness" of the movie - super-budgeted crazy effects and colors, and even employing the same gimmick of literally using the same actor to portray connected characters across three stories - which, as you mentioned, feels almost cartoonish. The Fountain was not a horrendous movie by any means but if Cloud Atlas (film) falls into the same pitfalls I will be super bummed.

Also, I really should get around to reading it. Sorry again.

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I just finished listening to the episode. I was eager to hear this one, because I had heard a lot of praise for Cloud Atlas going into it, but I was left distinctly underwhelmed by the book and wanted to hear what I had missed out on.

The podcast failed to convince me that I liked it! But it did crystallize some reasons I had for my dislike. Firstly, I had picked up on the reincarnation idea even without hearing Mitchell's thoughts - I guess years of bad fantasy novels have attuned me to mystical glowing comet birthmarks and what they mean. It felt cheap.

And, in fact, the entire framing device of connected lives felt cheap, also. As mentioned in the episode, the basic theme at the heart of the book is pretty trite, and for whatever reason I was unable to give it the pass that Chris and Sean could. This is going to reveal me as some sort of horrible elitist, but forgive me while I paint with a broad brush for a moment: the book felt like "pop-lit", one of those books that gets lots of coverage by book clubs and TV shows. It was too pat and simple of a takehome truth, and neither the writing nor the characters were complex enough to elevate it.

It seemed to me as though every story was riddled with flaws: Frobisher's blatantly-telegraphed but entirely out-of-character love interest, deus-ex-machina in the pub scene Chris liked so much (which I agree was entertaining and cathartic, but was also far too neat and convenient to be believable). Cavendish's entire story seemed more pulpy than Luisa's, and the part set in the nursing home just seemed like a poor parody/imitation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Chris and Sean discussed the poor brand prediction of the corporate future section, but I also felt that was like reading a distillation of dystopian sci-fi rather than anything unique or particularly imaginative. I could go on, but suffice to say I had issues with every perspective. in addition, there were a few passages where the prose sung, but mostly the writing seemed merely competent.

That makes it sound like I hated the book, which I didn't - it was fine, but certainly not great. My expectations were set high, however, and I don't feel as though I got the same sense of genius out of it as the podcasters did.

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Oh shit, it's already out? I am literally on the last thirty pages. I guess one month really is a little too close, and I thought I was doing really well too. Bummer. Will finish up and then listen to the cast, and perhaps hasten to get the next title.

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Well it also ended up being more like 3 weeks because last month's cast was late. I ended up burning through like 80% of the book over the course of a few days, and my brain was maybe not in super condition by the end of that. I posted my thoughts in the pre-discussion thread probably right around the same time the cast was being recorded (if Chris's twitter feed is anything to go by) and now that thread is locked. Gonna have to back Nappi on not being a fan of the discussion system as it stands now.

That said, another great cast. This is a really nice way to punctuate the reading of a good book for me. Hopefully I'll manage to keep up with the next one without massively depriving myself of sleep as I did for Cloud Atlas.

Man. Every time I read a good book it makes me want to write a damn novel.

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Man. Every time I read a good book it makes me want to write a damn novel.

Yep.

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