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The Idle Book Club 2: Cloud Atlas

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Also I know I shouldn't judge a film I haven't seen, but it is disconcerting to me when people I know say they like it. These are people who haven't read the book, mind you, but it still bothers me in a, I think, not entirely rational way.

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For those of you who care about such things, the hardcover edition of Cloud Atlas is now available in the US for the first (?) time.

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For those who want to hear the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer talk abou the film, there's a pretty good interview with Chris Hardwick of the Nerdist:

http://www.nerdist.com/2012/10/nerdist-podcast-the-wachowskis-and-tom-tykwer/

The way in which the directors mirror some of the guys' comments makes me worry less a bout seeing the film. They get a bit overblown at times but it's an interesting listen.

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I'm not sure whether this is the appropriate place but starting a new thread seems a bit much:

I just saw the film last night and was extremely pleasantly surprised.

The negatives: All the subtlety of the book is gone. Some of the makeup was pretty bad. Having the same actors all the time is a bit distracting but is also just fun to watch, especially at the end when during the credits they show who played which roles. almost guaranteed to be some surprises in there.

The positives: Changing the narrative structure from the russian doll model to a layer cake makes the themes resonate much more through reinforcement. A huge amount of subplots and characters got axed but it didn't really affect much. David Mitchell is on record as saying that the film (like any book-to-movie project) is an interpretation, and I would say that as such it succeeds. A lot of the acting and visuals are good.

Overall I went in expecting the worst so that may colour my impressions, but after hearing the directors being so passionate about it I had to go see it and I'm glad I did. Recommended, if only because it makes for interesting discussion fodder.

This is probably my favourite book adaptation since The Descendants.

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The audiobook of cloud atlas was amazing! Each of the readers where really great, and gave the characters really wonderful voices. It was just really well done. I especially enjoyed Frobisher's voice!

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Sorry I'm way behind the majority here but I've only just finished Cloud Atlas partly due to having a near fatal reaction to the Lusia Rey and Cavendish parts leaving me feeling utterly unmotivated to read on for a long while.  

I really enjoyed both the 1st and 2nd part of the sextet but when I hit those stories I felt like I was dragging myself forward. Unlike a lot of people I shot through both Somni and Sloosha's parts with the language causing me no problems at all. I wonder if that may be because being dyslexic a lot of the rules and rhythms of written languish bounce of me anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised that a pattern of speech which discarded a lot of their trappings didn’t bother me too much.

 

The first thing I wanted to ask about is that contrary to what a lot of people are saying is that I think within the 'reality' of the tale Buenas Yerbas is a real city.

 

Why? Because Meronym mentions Buenas Yerbs (on page 285) while talking about the old cities that her ship visited while searching for pockets of civilisation. 

A few possible implications come to mind:

 

1. Somehow the fictional Buenas Yerbas has become a semi-mythical “Atlantis” type city for Meronym's people.

2. It's one tiny facet different about the world of cloud atlas, which actually means nothing in the bigger scheme of things.

3. If we assume their overlapping lifespans means one or another is a fictional character within cloud atlas's greater world, then Buenas Yerbas existence could mean Lusia Rey's story arc could be 'real' and Timothy Cavendish could be the invention (possibly of Lusia Rey in later life).

 

The last ones a bit of a stretch but I think it's interesting that perhaps Chris and Sean's decision to decide Lusia Rey's arc is fiction could be influenced because they live on the west coast, and to them the non-existence of Buenas Yerbas is a very immediate thing.

 

On another note while I do agree the brand verbs did date it, I can see where Mitchell was coming from. I'm not sure its as a result from our status as a island nation but in the UK there are certain brands who's usage in language has outstripped their ubiquity as products.

The most obvious one is Hoover. Sometimes I watch a US drama and I hear people talking about Vacuuming a carpet, but that’s a term I’ve never heard anyone use in the UK, its always “hoover”. Despite the fact in the UK Dyson's have long become far more common than Hoovers. Apart from hoovering, googling is probably the best modern example and something that could conceivably become a generic term (although as a friend pointed out this happens constantly with drug names). 

 

Would be interested in particular what people think about Buenas Yerbas existence within the world of this particular Speculative Fiction means (or does not mean).

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I'm going to a signing/interview event with David Mitchell later this month, in support of The Bone Clocks' release. Looking forward to it!

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Here's a weird piece of news that I thought might be of interest to Idle Thumbs readers: a professor recently discovered that the US and UK editions of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell contain entirely different passages

 

The differences aren't just to do with changing grammar and Anglicisms - some of the passages are just entirely different.  For example:

 

In the UK text, for example, Mitchell writes at one point that: “Historians still unborn will appreciate your cooperation in the future, Sonmi ~451. We archivists thank you in the present. […] Once we’re finished, the orison will be archived at the Ministry of Testaments. […] Your version of the truth is what matters.”

 

In the US edition, the lines are: “On behalf of my ministry, thank you for agreeing to this final interview. Please remember, this isn’t an interrogation, or a trial. Your version of the truth is the only one that matters.”

 

This is crazy. I can't recall any examples of this happening before, at least in fiction written and published in the same language. But then maybe it happens more than we realise. After all, it's the kind of thing that would be extremely hard to check outside of academia, especially prior to ebooks. As you might expect, the reason for the error is a matter of banal human error: somebody left their job, somebody else took over, and nobody bothered to check that their submitted amends were in sync across the pond. Working as an editor myself, it's all too easy to see how this could happen. Version control is a nightmare everywhere, all the time.

 

Anyway, I enjoy Mitchell's extremely British comment about why it happened ('It’s a lot of faff – you have to keep track of your changes and send them along to whichever side is currently behind...and I have a low faff-tolerance threshold...').

 

Also, his subsequent refusal to clarify as to which version of the novel is the 'correct' one is great. You would think there is at least a file on his computer called 'Cloud_Atlas_FINAL.pdf' but apparently not!

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The example is particularly enjoyable in that it's about "versions" of the truth. Wow.

 

This also gets to some interesting stuff to me about what an artistic work is - how different would these two editions have to be for them to be separate artistic works? Could they be the same thing, yet have no crossover in terms of duplicate sentences or passages? It sounds strange, but translations by different authors to the same language can be markedly different throughout. In any case, there's something very cool about the indefinitivity* of a creative work. (*That's definitely not a word.)

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