Reading in bed: Book V

Book V:  Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

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*Isaac Sachs looks down on a brilliant Pennsylvania morning.  Labyrinthine suburbs of ivory mansionettes and silk lawns inset with turquoise swimming pools.  The executive-jet window is cool against his face.  Six feet directly beneath his seat is a suitcase in the baggage hold containing enough C-4 to turn an airplane into a meteor.  So, thinks Sachs, you obeyed your conscience.  Luisa Rey has the Sixsmith Report.  He recollects as many details of her face as he can: Do you feel doubt?  Relief?  Fear?  Righteousness?

A Premonition I'll never see her again.

Alberto Grimaldi, the man he has double-crossed, is laughing at an aide's remark.  The hostess passes with a tray of clinking drinks.  Sachs retreats into his notebook, where he writes the following sentences.

• Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnessed die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave.  Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction-- in short, belief-- grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
• The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the impositions of will.  Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past.  (He who pays the historians calls the tune.)
• Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future, too.  We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up-- a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams.  This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today.  Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
• Q: is there a meaningful distinction  between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows-- the actual past-- from another such simulacrum-- the actual future?  
• One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past.  The doll of "now" likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
• Proposition: I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey.

The detonator is triggered.  The C-4 ignites.  The jet is engulfed by a fireball.  The jet's metals, plastics, circuitry, its passengers, their bones, clothes, notebooks, and brains all lose definition in flames exceeding 1200 degrees C.  The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts.  Now the bifurcations of these two pasts will begin.

*Excerpt from pages 392-93

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There's that long standing debate about which is better, the book or the film, and I feel it's a very terrible question because there is no way there can ever be one true answer!  I fell in love with the film counterpart of this novel over the summer and knew I had to read the book right away.  I started right at the end of summer which turned out to be terrible timing because I only managed to get through a third of the 509 pages before school started and what is reading for fun again?  For a while I carried it with me and read a few pages during commutes but I find that I really enjoyed it best when I was able to read it in bigger chunks!  I think that's because the book itself is structured in a way that demands it; there are actually six total stories inside this novel that are broken into halves except for the story in the middle. 

1. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

2. Letters From Zedelghem

3. Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery

4.  The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish

5. An Orison of Sonmi-451

6. Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After

Okay, I'm going to be a dork here but I really enjoyed the organization of the book where the first five stories paused halfway before being finished in backwards order that they were read.  A big component of the book was the idea of how time and histories are connected and altered through events or objects that characters or plot points would revisit by referencing one another.  One of the best part about reading this book was figuring out who and where and when and how all the stories related to one another, aside from the reoccurring comet shaped birthmark.  Although the film version did a fantastic job of translating such a dense story into a film (and all under three hours too, phew!) the book has a lot of details or story lines that were altered or not included at all.  On the flip side the film contained new details that I actually wished were there when reading the book.  You can probably find a lot of reviews out there siding with either the original novel or the film's take on the stories but I think it really is worth it to give both a chance.  When watching the movie I was drawn most to the Sonmi-451 and  Adam Ewing's story lines but with the book I really enjoyed Luisa Rey's and Zachary's (Sloosha's Crossin') parts the most.  I forgot to mention it earlier but another really impressive thing about the novel is that David Mitchell wrote each portion in a completely different narrative style.  It really is like six books crammed into one!   

Now that I've read the book and watched the film I can say I appreciate how each medium differs from each other, most notably by their characters and plot points.  I will say the movie is a lot more optimistic, romantic, and overall more 'presentable' than the novel which did tend to be a little more grim and less 'pretty' but I don't mind at all!  I think it was the polished sentiments of love spanning throughout time in the movie that I was really drawn to but I was actually craving for more depth in some of the stories in the film and reading the book really satisfied that!  Just in case you're wondering I will probably re-watch the film before I read the book again (that's how much I loved the movie, which by the way has very impressive imagery and costumes!) 

Reading in bed really is an accurate name for these book reviews.  I find that I make the most progress in my books when I'm cozied up in my PJs without any obligations or pressing errands that need to be done!  Also more and more I find myself finishing up books when I am unable to sleep, usually because I have overdosed on sleep hours the days before, and end up reaching for a book to busy my brain!   I think this means I will never be able to read anywhere else except for in beds!