Concentric Circles: A Discussion of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas

What we ate:

• Crackers and cheese (obv.)
• A tremendously delicious sesame mock duck noodle salad, prepared by Ms. Anders
  
• Some killer bars, made by Ms. Jones
  
• Cheese puffs, with chopsticks

What we listened to:

• Can-Soundtracks
• Beach House-s/t
• Portishead-Third
• Lavender Diamond-Imagine Our Love

Some of what we talked about:

Narrative Structure--"Cloud Atlas'" most noticeably weird trait is its strange structure: six seemingly unrelated (in both content and genre) novellas--"The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing," "Letters from Zedelghem," "Half Lives: the First Luisa Rey Mystery" "The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish," "An Orison of Sonmi 451" and "Sloosha's Crossin' and Everythin' After"-- that, in the book's first half, proceed in chronological order, each story abruptly cutting off in midstream. The process is repeated in reverse in the book's second half, when each novella is resolved.

I said "seemingly unrelated" because each of the novellas leave some residue in the one that follows: journals found in an old bookcase, forgotten music remembered, magically shared birthmarks. In the second half of the book, we discover that these novella's actually frame one another. Zachry's children (of "Sloosha's") watch Sonmi's orison as the reader does; Sonmi watches the film of Cavendish's ordeal as we read, and etc. Which is particularly strange considering that at least one of the novellas purports to be a fiction. Um, by the way, why should anyone give a shit about this?

Time/History--Because it turns out that "Cloud Atlas'" narrative structure is a metaphor for a circular interpretation of time and history. Time's essential circularity is played out in a number of ways in the book--in reflections, refractions and rebirths of each story within the others--but most obviously in the Valleysmen of "Sloosha's" belief in reincarnation.

But it shows up elsewhere, too, in subtler, more complex forms: the dissolute English dandy Frobisher's obsession with Nietzschean eternal return; the metaphor of nested matryoshka dolls; the expansion and contraction of an accordion. Actions and events occur and recur, dissolve and reconstitute at harmonic points on the various layers of concentricity. The book is particularly concerned, though, with the way in which events travel through these rings of time (or the future), gathering layers of interpretation and myth, slowly morphing from actuality to belief, from fact to faith.

Morality/Faith/Progress--As you might've figured, the book's discussion of time and history takes on a distinctly moral color. Most of us found some the more strident articulations of this morality a little heavy-handed. Which is too bad (the heavy-handedness), because there was also some pretty subtle, powerful stuff in there.

The progressivist, linear view of time is particularly associated with a real host of evils: 19th century messianic English imperialism; indifference to and consumption of nature; blind, crass faith in technology; terrible cruelty. Linear time seems to inexorably lead, both narratively and causally, to the apocalyptic catastrophe that looms and lingers around the book's every corner. In this narrow view there is no rebirth, no renewal, no salvation, just death.

It is the ability to see one's own life as interdependent, one's own truth as contingent, to live in community--in short, to summon up the imagination to believe in something outside of and beyond ourselves (as many of the characters come, in various ways, to catch a glimmer of life in the book's other fictional worlds)--that allows humanity to renew itself.

Language--To his credit, Mitchell never lets us rest too easily in our cozy reveries. Yes the above obsession with destiny and progress leads to an apocalypse, but violent catastrophe is portrayed as an inextricable facet of human life, no matter what the era. We might well live more happily in a communal, technology-free, nature-revering culture (as do the Valleysmen in "Sloosha's"). But that culture might also have an average lifespan of about thirty, live in fear of more powerful neighbors, and remain relatively defenseless against disease and death. Humans will always hunger for more. Terrible disaster awaits around every corner. There is no golden age.

Luckily, a corollary to that hunger is a tendency to nearly magical linguistic invention. Every main character in the book speaks a florid homemade language, dependent on its ancestors, sure, but also beautifully, radically new. Some of us were put off (especially at first) by Adam Ewing's pseudo-Melvillian floridity, others by the mystery novel boilerplate in "Half-Lives," but all of us recognized that we had a work of serious linguistic imagination on our hands. People allow words and ideas and even whole cultures to die away all the time. But we also can't help ourselves from reconstituting them in fantastic, unheard-of new ways. It's one of the best things we do.


Melancholy Feelings--From the destruction of nature, to minor, tragic human cruelties, "Cloud Atlas: sure could leave a lady or fella feeling a little blue. Luckily, it also leaves us with some good stuff to fall back on: the solace of good friends; people and the amazing things they say and do; the mellow Fall sun, the pretty leaves.

How David Mitchell is Sort of Foxy and Seems Like a Nice Guy--We decided it would be nice to be his friends. And maybe more than friends?

What We Referenced:

The Paris Review: "David Mitchell, the Art of Fiction, No. 204"

Books about the sea, for instance:

Richard Henry Dana, "Two Years Before the Mast"

and

Herman Melville "Moby Dick or, The Whale"

The Matrix (a movie about philosophy)

Lost

Friedrich Nietzsche (esp. the idea of eternal recurrance)

Toshi Ichiyanagi, "Cloud Atlas for Piano"

Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita" and "Pale Fire"

and other stuff I can't remember now