I was a third into this book and I could not care less about it. It didn't seem we were meant to be.

Then suddenly my heart was aching for the characters and their stories, and it did catch me by surprise.

And now it's been a week since I finished it, and I still find myself thinking about it. 'Okay, you win, book!' I have to admit grudgingly. You've wormed your way into my heart and I'd better make my peace with it.

Why did I resist liking it so much? Why did this book and I have such a rocky start to our relationship? Sheesh, let me think about it as I lie here on the imaginary psychiatrist's couch in Freudian times.



You see, its 'revolutionary structure' and all - it is basically six stories, five of which are arranged like concentric rings around one central uninterrupted story, slowly moving from A to Z as the stories go along (from Adam to Zachry), - leads even the author to question,n  "Revolutionary or gimmicky?"n
And I say - gimmicky, my friend. Jarring, unnecessary, trying too hard and yet being needlessly distracting.


(Hey, you can also compare this book to the rings a raindrop makes in still waters. See, I can be allegorically poetic when need arises).

Would I have been easier for me to love it had it come simply as a collection of six stories related by the larger overarching theme? Perhaps. But we cannot always chose what the things we love look like, can we? Sometimes they just have to have that incredibly annoying anvil-heavy comet-shaped birthmark, and I have to make my peace with it.

"Another war is always coming, Robert. They are never properly extinguished. What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions, and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation-state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be. War, Robert, is one of humanity's two eternal companions."

This book is a message, yes. About the never-ending power struggle that seems to be inherent to humanity, that drives it forward - until one day it perhaps drives it to the brink of demise. It's about the amazing resilience of humanity that bends but never breaks under the never-ending forward march of the power struggle. It is about our seemingly inevitable separation into the opposing camps - the oppressors and the oppressed, the powerful and the powerless, the haves and the have-nots, justifying those sometimes murky and sometimes crisp division lines with the arbitrary but hard-to-overturn notions of superiority and entitlement. It is also about the never-ending human struggle against such division, in one form or another.

"But, Adam, the world is wicked. Maoris prey on Moriori, Whites prey on darker-hued cousins, fleas prey on mice, cats prey on rats, Christians on infidels, first mates on cabin boys, Death on the Living. The weak are meat, the strong do eat."

.........................

The first/last story of Adam and the central/middle story of Zachry (again, A to Z! See how smart I am? See? Can I please have a cookie now?) provide the real framework to this story, mirroring each other and reflecting off each other in the repeated motifs of tribal wars and slaughter and the meeting of 'developed' and 'primitive' nations, told from the viewpoints of members of first one and then another and underscoring essential humanity below all the superstitions and prejudices and mistrust. The revelations at which both Adam and Zachry arrive are simple and perhaps overly moralistic, but still relevant and humane. And despite the moralistic heavy-handedness, I loved them.

"Why? Because of this: — one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction."

As for the rest of the stories, David Mitchell plays with every genre and style he can imagine, trying to fully immerse himself in the period, real or imaginary, that he chooses to describe - with mixed results, at least for me.

I hate to say it, but Robert Frobisher's story (the composer of the titular Cloud Atlas musical piece) left me cold. Luisa Rey's pulpy cheap prose held my attention only for the first half of the story and Timothy Cavendish's flowery adventure - only for the second. Sonmi-451 for the first half of the story was delightfully reminding me of The Windup Girl that I loved, and fell flat in the rushed second part. It almost felt that some of these stories were too large for the limited amount of space Mitchell could give them, and they would have been benefited from expansion.

But the Sloosha Crossing story - Zachry's tale - won me over completely, once I got over the migraine induced by overabundance of apostrophes in this futuristic simplistic dialect. S'r's'l'y', Mr. Mitchell, there had to have been some perhaps less 'authentic' but also less headache-causing way to tell this story. But I got over the initial defensive response and allowed myself to enjoy this scary postapocalyptic setting which in so many ways reminded me of The Slynx by Tatiana Tolstaya. There is just something that I love about the postapocalyptic primitive society setup, something that speaks to me while terrifying me to death at the same time, and this story had plenty of that.

And now, apparently, there will be a movie, which explains why everyone and their grandma is reading this book now, getting me on the bandwagon as well. The movie, that from the trailer seems to be focusing on the part that made me eye-roll (just like it made Mr. Cavendish, editing Luisa Rey manuscript!) - that damn souls connectedness bit. I thought the hints at it were unnecessary dramatic; to me enough of a connection came from all of the characters belonging to our troubled and yet resilient human race. But to each their own.

"He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!" Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

4 stars is the final verdict. And maybe someday in the future I will reread it being prepared for the gimmicky structure, and I will not let it annoy me, and I will maybe give it five stars. I would love that!

——————
Recommended by: Kris

Clouds Illusions?

I was belatedly drawn to read this book via the publicity for the film version, which I have not yet seen. I am usually put off by any sort of media hype, but I must reluctantly confess a huge appreciation for this tour de force of a novel. Each segment is a virtuoso performance of style and variation of the leitmotif that threads throughout, like the musical work of the title, illustrating the central theme of the abuse of power in all its forms, and man's inhumanity to man throughout the ages. Optimism for humanity's future is, however, suggested by the hint of karmic redemption.

Given that to review Cloud Atlas has become a perilous activity in GR, since it can elicit all kinds of backlashes and from a variety of stands, I will only include an innocent declaration of intent.

In respect to the book and to the following incumbents: the author David Mitchell, the publisher, the editors, the printers, any reading groups, any member readers in GR, whether friends or followed or followers, any member of Management in GR, and even, yes! even the new owners of GR.

I, Kalliope of GoodReads, and any other of my possible avatars, both past and future, as well as my mortal and limited self, do not wish to:

Annoy, pester, criticize, torment, blame, madden, provoke, badger, despise, anger, bother, vilify, exasperate, scorn, displease, insult, irritate, tease, mock, taunt, vituperate, reproach, revile, affront, slam, rile, deride, abuse, outrage, irk, offend, vex, bully, belittle, nor show any disrespect to the aforementioned.

Nor do I, Kalliope of GoodReads, and any other of my possible avatars, both past and future, as well as my mortal and limited self, do not wish to:

Congratulate, applaud, cheer, hail, laud, pay homage, honor, admire, eulogize, flatter, sanctify, commemorate, acclaim, glorify, idolize, boost, cherish, venerate, revere, exalt, rave, fete, esteem, praise, celebrate, approve, solemnize, chant, adore, commend, bless, extol, compliment, proclaim, nor endorse anything nor anybody of the aforementioned.

I also wish to add that the above declaration has been submitted with the conviction that it is reliable and that it has been narrated in good faith.


As for my stars… well yes, I’ll have to admit the five stars.


P.S.: I just hope now that with the above disclaimer I shall not fall prey to anyone or to anything and that civilization will continue its proper march undeterred.

I have no idea if the movie version of Cloud Atlas will be any good, but it was worth making just so we could get that excellent trailer. In fact, they probably shouldn’t even release the movie. Just use the trailer to promote the book. It worked on me because once I saw that thing I couldn’t get this read fast enough.

An American notary crosses the Pacific and encounters many unsavory characters in the mid-1800s. In 1931 a young man fleeing his creditors cons his way into the home of a respected composer. A female journalists tries to expose a dangerous conspiracy involving a nuclear reactor back in 1975. In the early 21st century an aging publisher finds himself in hot water after his biggest professional success. The near future has an Asian society based on corporations using genetically modified fabricants as slave labor, and the far future finds a young man in Hawaii living a primitive tribal lifestyle playing tour guide to a woman from a place that still has technology.

These are the six stories that David Mitchell links together. They’re nested one within another and also mirrored in the first and second half of the book. If that’s all that he accomplished here, then it’d just be a really clever way to structure a novel, but it’s the way that Mitchell hit six completely different tones yet uses the same themes in each that the book really shines.

I’m beyond impressed with the way he made each story feel like it’s own separate tale. If someone had told me that this was a book written by six different authors, I would have believed it, and each is intriguing in it’s own right. Themes of slavery and people being controlled in one way or another along with depictions of misused or corrupted power come up again and again, but whether it feels like serious dystopian sci-fi or a beach read thriller, Mitchell makes it all hang together until it really does feel like one epic tale. And the thoughts at the conclusion lead to one of the greatest ending lines I’ve ever read.

I don’t even think I need to see the movie now.

I found Cloud Atlas to be less a novel than a series of short stories. And on top of that, I found the quality of the stories varied wildly. Furthermore, the differences in style and tone of the various stories jarred me.

Some modest spoilers ahead (the worst is hidden), so stop here if you don’t want to know anything about Cloud Atlas whatsoever.

I just couldn’t shake the feeling that Mitchell had written a series of short stories then later decided to weave them together. This could certainly be factually inaccurate, but as a reader impression, it really doesn’t matter his intention. While reading it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were short stories with gimmicky tricks used to tie them together.

Mitchell uses several techniques to relate the stories. The first is to have them set sequentially in history. Each of the stories is set in a different period travelling all the way into the far future (two of the stories would qualify as science fiction). Initially the stories jump forward in time—and then they cycle backwards. He breaks up the stories in Cloud Atlas like layers of an onion so that they read as follows:

Story 1a, Story 2a, Story 3a, Story 4a, Story 5a, Story 6a, Story 7, Story 6b, Story 5b, Story 4b, Story 3b, Story 2b, Story 1b. This has the effect of going forward in time to Story 7 and then back again to complete each story arc.

Mitchell is perhaps attempting to create a vast narrative of history circling back on itself. If he was, he fails partly because several of the stories are so … parochial; they fail to capture anything significant about humanity’s trajectory. As an example, I would single out the story of the British publisher who finds himself trapped in an old folk’s home. Or the story of the young composer. Yes, they give a relative snapshot of some portion of society, but they are so focused on a niche experience that they do not communicate very much about society overall. In contrast, several of the other stories, such as the Luisa Rey story and the two set in the future (and even the one set during the time of colonialism/abolition) do capture a broad sweeping look at the history of the world. This disjunction in subject matter was one of the elements, along with the shifts in style, that was jarring.

A second technique Mitchell uses to connect the stories is to have each story interact with the previous by proposing they occur in different sorts of media. For example, a book found by a character in story 2 tells story number 1. A movie watched by a character in story 3 is actually what happens in story 2, etc. I found this to be a rather thin gimmick. Particularly because several of the overlapping connections were truly farfetched. For example, one of the stories is about an old man escaping from an old folk’s home where he was imprisoned. It was a rather humorous short story overall with minimal profound insight. The story that followed it was set in the far future, when a clone evolved beyond its obedience guidelines to become the figurehead of a revolution against the enslavement of clones. The clone is caught and sentenced to death and as her last request before execution she asks to finish watching the movie she had started viewing … about the old man who escaped from the old folks home. This bothered me for two reasons. One, I didn’t believe that anyone would really make a movie about the old man escaping from the old folks home. I just didn’t buy that. Second, the story of the old man was rather shallow and lacked any profound characteristics that might appeal to the values of a revolutionary hero about to be executed. She could’ve asked to see a movie about Mahatma Ghandi or Buddha or Martin Luther King but no, instead she wants to watch this goofy movie about a publisher/scam artist who got himself trapped in an old folk’s home. This highlighted the artificiality of the technique for me and made it feel contrived.

Lastly, Mitchell gave each of the main characters an ambiguous birthmark that looked like … a comet, I believe. As if to imply … they were reincarnations of each other in some fashion. Or perhaps the spirit of rebellion reborn. Thematically each of the main characters seems … to some degree ... connected to fighting the “system,” if in unequal measures or fashions. This device felt easily tacked on to connect the stories.

As I mentioned earlier, the stories varied in quality. Just one example: The “Luisa Rey Mystery” was the biggest failure for me. It reads like a supermarket mass-paperback suspense thriller. And Mitchell apparently knew it wasn’t up to the level of the other stories because (this is complicated, brace yourself) … the character who was the old man, the publisher, has a manuscript copy of the Luisa Rey Mystery from “the author” who is pitching it to him. He makes some offhand critical comments about it, but notes that, “Hilary V. Hush might … have written a publishable thriller after all … selling at Tesco checkouts; then a Second Mystery, then the Third … overall I concluded the young-hack-versus-corporate-corruption thriller had potential.” So, in essence, the reader is supposed to buy this story because it’s intentionally written poorly? Like a pulp thriller? There is a similar comment about another story in the sequence, “Some of the accents didn’t seem right, but …” Okay, so Mitchell knew his writing wasn’t perfect so he excused it in a subsequent story by having characters comment on how it wasn’t perfect? Seemed like lazy writing to me. Maybe he wrote the Luisa Rey mystery when he was young and figured out how to plug it in here.

Now here I am, about to sound like a hypocrite: I found the politics in Cloud Atlas, uggh, so obvious and so blatant that at times it felt more like Mitchell was lecturing than storytelling. Yes, I agreed with his politics, I agreed with them, but damnit … not good enough! Okay, really, I should be the last person to complain about this because I am so deeply political and all my writings are too. My first novel, Death by Zamboni was truly didactic in its politics. Obvious and in your face. However, it was intended to be so because one of the things I set out to do when I wrote Death by Zamboni was to break every single rule of fiction writing that exists. All those “rules” and “guidelines” you learn in seminars, classes, or magazines about writing. It was rather a big fuck you to expectations and the status quo. I had fun breaking the rules. But a book like this … it’s supposed to be both believable and to have a narrative that communicates with the reader emotionally. As most mainstream literature attempts to do. Admittedly, it is very difficult to create awareness about political matters without seeming contrived. But that is what separates a great work from a so-so one. It manages to be political in the way it embodies humanity without feeling as if it’s lecturing you. In that regard, Mitchell utterly fails.

On the plus side, I did enjoy much of the writing. As standalone stories, the ones without the most blatant politics were quite enjoyable. Will I read another Mitchell? Absolutely. I’d like to see what he does with a single novel thread rather than something so segmented. He obviously has great talent as a writer, but this particular book was a mixed bag for me.

The other night I had a dream. I dreamt I was floating down a roiling murky river, tossed this way and that as the waters swirled and eddied, sometimes towards the shore, sometimes away from it, twirling in circles as the river, trees and sky formed a dizzying kaleidoscope of cloudy blues, greens and browns.
Beneath the muddied surface of the water, fish of all sizes swam about, the larger ones chasing the smaller in an endless and vicious dance.

Floating alongside me were a great many objects, some of which sailed so close that I could almost reach out and grasp them. Among the drifting debris was a row of shells, some larger, some smaller, all bobbing about like floats on a fishing line. I managed to grab one of the larger ones and pulled it towards me. It seemed unattached to any line that I could immediately see and I wondered what purpose I could put it to. Being quite thirsty, I dipped it in the cloudy water and drank a mouthful, but the water was so oily and unpleasant that I spit most of it out again. I turned the shell in my hands, examining it closely. The exterior was covered all over in symbols as intricate as a Maori tattoo.

So entranced was I with the pattern that I was almost knocked senseless by a piece of debris that came sweeping towards me with a powerful rush. A raft was my first thought, and I grabbed at it with my free hand and hoisted myself onto it. But this was no ordinary piece of debris. Instead I found myself lying across the battered body of a concert cello; the softer wood of the top had been smashed, but the back and sides which had been carved from a sturdier tree were still intact. I now had a makeshift canoe and holding my tattooed shell close, I hauled my legs aboard and sat clear of the murky water and the scavenging fish beneath.

Using both hands as paddles, I tried to steer myself towards the bank but the current was too strong. The row of floating shells continued to bob close by me so I plucked another from the water. This one was smaller than the first and although it was also intricately decorated, the designs were entirely different. Dots and dashes, some with tails, some without, swooped and dived like little black birds all over its surface but hidden among them, almost invisible, lay one of the symbols from the larger tattooed shell. I was a little intrigued and reached for another. Smaller than its companions and with a less interesting design, I almost threw it overboard but decided to keep it as it fit so perfectly inside the other two. It also made for a better sized drinking cup and being ferociously thirsty by this stage, I decided to drink from the river again. Oily and slimy as it was, this time I swallowed more and felt my strength restored enough to try again for the shore and escape the roiling river. But the current held me fast in its grasp and I could do nothing but fish for another of the floating shells. Smaller again and covered with a pattern of overlapping circles like the internal workings of a clock, I placed it inside its companions where it nestled snugly. Again I drank from the river and found it strangely addictive. An even smaller shell now lay within my reach so I pulled it in and searched its surface for familiar patterns. Nothing struck me as recognisable at first glance but then I spotted a symbol I had seen several times already and I knew that this shell also belonged in the set. I drank some more river water and fell into a deep coma-like sleep.

When I opened my eyes, the canoe was floating within yards of the shore and I reached out to grab a tree root so that I might pull myself free of the river at last. Just then a most intriguing little object floated not far from me, inscribed all over just like the shells and I had to make a decision, ignore it completely or paddle river-ward to retrieve it and so lose my chance of pulling myself free of the viscous torrent. The temptation of the mysterious object was so strong that I left the safety of the bank and followed in its wake. When I finally reached it and pulled it on board, it proved to be an egg-like shape covered in the strangest markings yet but which fitted perfectly within my nest of shells, inspiring such a protective instinct that I immediately looked about for something to cover it with. Of the remaining shells floating about me, I fished out the one closest in size to the egg and placed it carefully on top. Now I was more intrigued than ever as I could see the pattern of this one resembled exactly the one which matched it in size. I drank once again from the river and reached for another shell. Again the correspondence with the one beneath it struck me forcefully; the same clock-like patterns covered it as if this was somehow itself part of the workings of some giant time piece, some cog within a greater cog. Gone were all thoughts of escaping the river now as I alternately drank the viscous liquid and then fished out yet another shell to fit over the last, each covered in symbols, and each finding their match until I had a giant tattooed egg inside which five others lay snugly, each telling a different story.

I felt so euphoric from drinking the river water and so impressed by the neatness of this treasure that I raised the egg to the stars in orison and immediately toppled overboard into the murky depths of the river where the fish swam about busily eating each other. Two larger specimens were fighting over a smaller one, and as I watched, the largest one chased the other away and turned towards its prey. For an instant, I thought it was about to release it but no, its powerfully tattooed jaws swallowed it whole while its gaze turned towards me. Eat or be eaten, I thought and opened my mouth wide to attack. Before I could sink my teeth into its scaly flesh, I woke from my dream in a lather of sweat. When my heart finally stopped racing and my mind unclouded, I felt a huge relief to have finally escaped that viscous river.
But I noticed the oddest thing, my mouth tasted most curiously of soap.

David Mitchell writes in a really masterful style of writing with an excellent command of the English language. This story is split into different interlacing parables. There are six different testaments that span several centuries each one breaks a period of time and space. The stories are very interesting but I found as the stories went by nearer to second half of the book I was not fully immersed into the story. So if it lacks in anything this novel is some gripping and immersing element, sometimes I found I did not care enough for the characters due to the changing of testaments, where in one straight testament you would build the audience and glue and bond them to certain characters. But then again that was probably the authors set out task to write in this way, a technique used by Italo Calvino, actually this story written in a similar fashion to one I have read called Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
I loved the character Timothy Cavendish a very English old school character had very funny insight into the world. I loved his take on the underground and London.

n  
"Over an hour later London shunted itself southwards, taking the Curse of the Brother Hoggins with it. Commuters, these hapless souls who enter a lottery of death twice daily on Britain's decrepit railways, packed the dirty train. Aeroplanes circled in holding patterns over Heathrow, densely as gnats over a summer puddle. Too much matter in this ruddy city."

Excerpts
"Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides … I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life’s voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds."

"He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!” Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"


"Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I’ve stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again."

“We—by whom I mean anyone over sixty—commit two offences just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman’s memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.”n

http://more2read.com/?review=cloud-at...

Ο ατλας του ουρανου: γινεται να χαρτογραφησει κανεις τον ουρανο(ή τα συννεφα οπως λεει ο τιτλος του πρωτοτυπου)?προφανως και οχι.αλλαζουν θεση, αλλαζουν σχήματα. Μετουσιωνονται μεσα σε αυτο το βιβλιο.σε ημερολογια, σε μουσικα κομματια, σε σημαδια στο σωμα..οπως οι ψυχες. Η μετενσαρκωση εχει και σε αυτο το βιβλιο του Μιτσελ(οπως και στο δεντρο της τυχης) εξεχουσα θεση.ετσι λοιπον οι 6 ιστοριες που παρουσιαζονται, παρολες τις διαφορες τους -κυριως στην εποχη που εκτυλλισονται, αλλα και στο ειδος τους(αστυνομικο, ιστορικο, sci-fi)-εχουν και πολλες ομοιοτητες.προσωπα που νομιζαμε οτι αφησαμε πισω εμφανιζονται με ξεχωριστο τροπο ξανα και ξανα και κυριως ολα αυτα εκτυλλισονται γυρω απο εναν βασικο αξονα: την ανικανοποιητη φυση του ανθρωπου. Την συνεχη επιθυμια του δυνατου να φαει(εντός και εκτος εισαγωγικων) τον αδυναμο .ομως ειναι ετσι η δικαιοσυνη που υπαρχει στο συμπαν που ενω ο δυνατος φαινεται να κερδιζει, ουσιαστικα ο λιγοτερο ευνοημενος ειναι αυτος που σε ολες τις περιπτωσεις παιρνει τα πιο σημαντικα μαθηματα και μπορει να μετουσιωσει τον εαυτο του σε κατι καλυτερο..
Το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον ΝΑΙ αξιζει 100% τον "θορυβο" που το ακολουθει.ειναι ξεχωριστο σε ολα του.στον τροπο γραφης, στους χαρακτηρες που με τοσο βαθος μας παρουσιαζονται, στο πως αριστοτεχνικα 6 φαινομενικα τελειως διαφορετικες ιστοριες δενουν, στο οτι τα ειδη τους ειναι τοσο διαφορετικα που δεν μπορει κανεις να πιστεψει οτι ολα τα εγραψε το ιδιο χερι, σε αυτες ολες τις μικρες λεπτομερειες που δινει ο Μιτσελ κλείνοντας το ματι στον αναγνωστη.ειναι ενα βιβλιο -εμπειρια που μου ξυπνησε πολλα συναοσθηματα: συγκινηση, λυπη, γελιο, προβληματισμο.και ολα εδεσαν μεταξυ τους μαγικα..

3 conflicted stars !

Gosh I struggled with this book.

Is this book well written? No doubt about it.

Is this book overwritten and too stylized? At times, yes it was.

Were the stories wonderfully original? Yes they were.

Did the stories fail to move me? Alas, they did.

This was the main crux of the matter. The stories did not resonate with me one bit. At times I could enjoy them but I found them so empty and unsatisfying. These stories were intellectually brilliant but emotionally bankrupt. (there I said it and I apologize as I am aware of how many people adored this book.)

I'm glad I read it but I am more relieved that the book is over.

An exceptionally well crafted 'nested' book about predacity, the way mankind inherently preys on itself. Unfortunately, although some of the six interwoven tales are brilliant, some of them are just passable. I still think the author has an exceptional talent and mind though. 6 our of 12

One morning while reading Cloud Atlas I was leafing through The Lie that Tells the Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction by John Dufresne and I opened to a page talking about how you have to leave room in a book for the readers to do some of the work. The readers need to fill in some of the gaps. According to Dufresne, this isn't just some advice that a writer can't give every piece of minutiae in a book, because that will make it unreadable, but also that readers want to put in some of the work. It makes them feel involved in the work, it invests them. Maybe Dufresne says this, but I was only leafing through the book while going to shelve it, but I think that this is one of the most important parts of a novel and something that maybe everyone else is going to be like, 'well duh', but that I only have somewhere in the back of my mind and rarely put words to the dim thought.

Two days ago I wrote the first paragraph. Now is two days later. I've thought of this some more. I realize that DFW talks quite a bit about this idea in the Lipsky book.
I've also thought of a rough scale of books that expect you to bring something to the table / put some time into them to get something out of them.

Children books
Newspapers / Self-Help-ish type books
Average Non-Fiction / Journalistic books
Average work of fiction
Literary Non-fiction
Literary Fiction
Philosophy / Poetry / Avant-Garde (whatever the fuck that means) Literature.

I have more distinctions to draw in almost all of those categories, and seriously your average newspaper / new bestselling 'expose' by Glen Beck, or a how to big up a woman using lying and deceit book all demand the same amount of work on the part of the reader, zilch. It's better actually in all those cases if the reader just doesn't think much at all it lets the message seep into the mind better that way.

Your awful boilerplate James Patterson-esque novel requires a higher degree of reader interaction with the text. Even if it is just to (un)consciously fill in the appropriate gestalts that will allow the author to work his / her twists of the plot on the reader. In this case it's the readers mind working against the reader and for the author as the reader attempts to solve the mystery going on and the author and mind are working in tandem at misdirection. As one continues up the ladder here more and more is expected on the reader's part for the work to succeed.

Part of the trick to finding a book one will enjoy is to find a work that is in synch with the amount of work you are willing to put into the book. A lot (but not all) of the people who say they only read non-fiction are in effect saying they are pragmatic people, when they read they want to be told what to think and get the meat out of the book ASAP. They want to know X so they read a book that will tell them X. For example if X is the secret to existence, they want to read something that tells them the secret (even if it's wrong) than say wrestle with a hundred pages of say Samuel Beckett to find out what that secret may be. This is a very silly example but it's sort of the kind of thing that people do in fact read books for. I'm not going to say anything about critical faculties or correctness, it's just that a self-help / new age book is going to present material in a way that the reader takes on a relatively passive position, they are told things; as opposed to other types of literature where if the reader doesn't bring something to the text there is just a bunch of words that tell some story that who really cares about. Like, I didn't read Proust because the thought of reading a few thousand pages about a guy who spends a lot of time laying around in bed was riveting to me. There is something more that I'm hoping to gleam from the book, and the book isn't going to just spit that something up without a bit of something from myself.

This is one of those books that demands a bit of work on the part of the reader to put the whole thing together.

I don't really know what the book means. I feel kind of the same way as I do about Infinite Jest as I do about Cloud Atlas they both are big in scope, but at the same time so myopic. The book almost feels like it could have been a TV show from Jonas Wergeland's "Thinking Big" TV series in the Kjærstad novels. The novel is a bunch of stories whose sum is greater and smaller than the whole, depending on what way you decide to look at the work.

Cloud Atlas is six temporally successive stories broken up into 11 sections. The first five stories are split into two, with the first part being told in the first half of the novel and the second in the later half. Only the sixth story is told without any interruption. One could re-read this novel by reading the six stories as six complete stories and look for different connections between them, and maybe they would read differently than in the way Mitchell lays them out. The way that he does put the stories though creates a Escher-like narrative that one can't successfully orientate him or herself into the story. The hole's an author normally leaves open for a reader to peer into the fictional world shift as the stories continue to unfold. I want to almost say that there is something of a mobius strip quality to this novel, but I don't want there to be any Joycean undertones here. If there needs to be a literary anchor for the term than maybe John Barthes' short story "Mobius Strip" as a referent.

I'm saying a lot without saying much at all.

I want to say that this book is awesome, but that you have to want to work with the book. The book might ultimately fail to fully do everything that Mitchell wants it to do, but I'm not sure what he does want it to do. There are arrows pointing to where the author might possibly want the reader to go, but there are also nods and winks that give the reader the choice to pursue other avenues of thought. The only problem with these winks and nods is that the narrative is not fully contained. There is no big act of misdirection being played where the reader can be surprised but ultimately comforted, and without the comforting part there is an unease left in this kind of novel. But it's the really good kind of unease that authors like DFW, Evan Dara and Pynchon expose for us.

Ironic that I happen to read Cloud Atlas in the same year I read Calvino AND Gibbon's Decline and Fall. All I would have to do is read a little more Melville and perhaps some Jared Diamond and it would be impossible to explain as a mere coincidence. I loved the book. Maybe I'm a pushover for puzzle novels, structural creativity, narrative flourish, thematic clouds, etc., but I really enjoyed every page of Cloud Atlas. I do think this is a strong enough book that it deserves a place on the shelf next to DeLillo or Rushdie. Mitchell took a couple big risks and they paid off fairly well. Not that this is a perfect novel, and it is hard to justify giving it five stars when I also give Dostoevsky and Kafka five stars (certainly they deserve galaxies not stars). I guess the way I look at it is thus - if I read a novel and it makes me want to read another couple novels by the same author it deserves at least 4 stars. If, after reading an author's work, I want to go buy every damn work written - I'm pretty certain that justifies a five star rating.