Truth is in the Eye of the Beholder (David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas)

If, as Philip K. Dick once noted, characters drive novels and plot drives short stories, what drives a work that falls between these two extremes? One such work, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, explores the way characters deal with and understand the plots they are involved in.

Cloud Atlas consists of six short pieces, averaging about ninety pages, each tracking a different character from the past, the present, or the future. The pieces are loosely connected in one grand plot. Mitchell takes full advantage of this unusual structure to showcase his writing talents. The most remarkable thing about Cloud Atlas is its diversity. The book moves gracefully from the journal of a nineteenth century notary on a Pacific voyage to the prison interview of a condemned genetic slave in a dystopic future to the madcap story of a vanity publisher fleeing from his gangster client. The author gives each of these characters his own distinctive and genuine voice.

Drawing heavily on Nietzsche, Cloud Atlas develops complex philosophical ideas about humanity, power, slavery, and civilization. At least as interesting to me was the technical presentation of the individual pieces. In addition to being substantively different, the pieces are formally distinct. One of the pieces is a diary; another is a series of letters; a third is a novella of its own. Further complicating matters are the different perspectives of the narrators. One is a principled but naïve gentleman, constantly misunderstanding the world around him. Another is a hard-nosed investigative journalist, consciously seeking out corruption and falsity. Yet another is a primitive herdsman, called upon to understand matters far beyond his level of sophistication. (He assesses different cultures based upon their levels of “Smart,” technology, and “Civ’lize,” civilization.) A fourth is a genetically-designed slave, who initially sees the world through the lens of the propaganda used to indoctrinate her.

These devices raise disturbing questions of perception and reality. Is the world of nineteenth-century Pacific missionaries who enslave natives under the guise of saving their souls really any different from the far-future Unanimity, which has brought nearly all of society into mindless servitude? The narratives we see are quite dissimilar, but to what extent are these differences real, and to what extent do they simply reflect the biases of the witnesses we have? The answer the author suggests powerfully complements the substantive themes he develops.

Cloud Atlas is a compelling work that develops an unusual structure in aesthetically and intellectually pleasing ways. Perhaps the best testimony to its quality is the bittersweet mix of emotions I always felt as I moved from one section to another: regret at having to say goodbye to an established character and world; curiosity about who I would meet next; and, above all, eagerness to learn more about how it all fit together.

Hope for an Era (David Foster Wallace – Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)

When a deathbed transcript is punctuated with startling point-of-view devices, and when a third of the word count of a short story about depression is accounted for by footnotes, yet nothing seems out of place, a skilled author is at work. David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a set of short stories that will remind you that the terrors and insights and stresses from which postmodern literature was born can, in the right hands, make us sit still and leave us breathless.

Wallace is notorious for his multi-page sentences and nested footnotes, but nowhere is he juggling a dozen oranges just to prove he can. Rarely, in fact, have I felt more attended to by an author. Salman Rushdie, another allusive worldmaker, can leave me wishing for paragraphs to end, but Brief Interviews never lost its pace. Wallace’s megalocutions are no more superfluous or distracting than Emily Dickinson’s electric brevity.

Further testifying to Wallace’s precision is the degree to which the stories not only excel individually but cohere as a forceful volume. The four identically-titled “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” pieces are a joy; their semi-interrogative form showcases Wallace’s uncommon power of characterization, and their recurrence and arrangement exemplify the book’s inter-story development of themes, motifs, and even individual words.

The literary world is fragmented, and it’s gauche to give anyone must-read status any more, but here are beautiful, readable stories written with careful attention to the contemporary world. Whether your idea of greatness is psychological insight, linguistic mastery, or pure fun, read David Foster Wallace.

Bad Writing Done Right (Eragon – Christopher Paolini)

Eragon might be the worst book that I love. Despite its impressive sales and young author (Christopher Paolini was eighteen when the book was first published), critics have treated the book harshly. Charges have included plagiarism, weak character development, and bad writing. These allegations have all too much merit, but they miss the point. Eragon overcomes its technical failings and manages to tell a good tale well.

The most serious charge is that the book (and its sequel, Eldest) steal wholesale from other sources, including the first Star Wars trilogy and The Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien allegation deserves little credence. Fantasy authors have been borrowing from Tolkien since he invented the genre. It does seem that the books merely rework the basic plot of Star Wars. Is that necessarily terrible? After all, the Star Wars movies themselves were a reworking of the monomyth from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. And let’s be honest: the genius of Star Wars lies not in its unremarkable plot, but in the way it used this basic plot as the framework for the iconic special effects that define the series.

The alleged failings in Mr. Paolini’s writing certainly exist, and it would be wrong to describe him as more than an indifferent author. Most of the time, the quality of the writing is only a minor annoyance. At other times, particularly when the author attempts a lyrical description of a landscape or a poetic turn of phrase, the results can be cringeworthy. The author’s unsophisticated style is sometimes painful, but at other times it is surprisingly effective. The awkwardness and confusion of Eragon’s relationship with the beautiful elf prince Arya, for example, is touchingly genuine, in a way that a more sophisticated writer would be hard-pressed to emulate.

Eragon is charming. The characters, though not always well-developed, are likeable and interesting. The story resonates with such rich cultural antecedents as Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. It is an entertaining tale, simply told, that does not pretend to be more than it is.

Semifiction (Dry – Augusten Burroughs)

I’m no sucker. I know that nonfiction is not always literal fact. A stream of controversies and scandals should have us all convinced that dialogue gets tweaked, character traits amplified, and events misremembered (or worse). I don’t generally approve of this practice, but even a stodgy guy like me appreciates a writer who knows his subject well enough to give us, say, the thoughts of a man who died before he could have possibly communicated them.

I couldn’t, however, dismiss the author’s note beginning Augusten Burroughs’ alcoholism memoir Dry:

This memoir is based on my experiences over a ten-year period. Names have been changed, characters combined, and events compressed. Certain episodes are imaginative re-creation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events.

I consistently wondered how much “imaginative re-creation” had been infused in various scenes, many of which are either admirably described real-life events or mediocre plot devices. This guessing game is all the more disturbing because one suspects that Burroughs could have written a good factual memior: he displays a mechanical competence all too rare in the form, and he achieves both real poignancy and real humor.

This discomfort with issues of accuracy is not just pickiness, but an effect of a larger problem in Dry. Too often Burroughs is less interested with shaping a memior than with groping for the nearest button, be it a childhood trauma or a penis joke. Some of these moments succeed individually, but there is a destructive interference in Burroughs’ desire to be both Sylvia Plath and David Sedaris. Nonfiction is full of writers who have molded everything in their power, including the truth, to serve their readers, but in Dry both the truth and the readers have been sacrificed to narrative self-indulgence.

Courage, Serenity, and Wisdom (A Connecticut Yankee – Mark Twain)

We often recall that Jules Verne wrote about spaceships before they were invented or that George Orwell warned the world of the dangers of totalitarian governments before the excesses of Stalinism and Maoism became widely apparent. Less is remembered about Mark Twain, whose Connecticut Yankee Hank Morgan travels sixteen centuries back from the nineteenth century to discover the twenty-first century woes of regime change and nation-building. That’s too bad, because A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court offers valuable lessons about the uses and limitations of great power, lessons that should resonate with today’s Americans.

Connecticut Yankee is the tragic tale of a flawed man’s doomed effort to bring his superior albeit imperfect civilization to the oppressed masses of England. Twain’s insights into his failure carry lessons that are even more relevant today than they were when the book was written.

In the novel, Hank is set against the world. Hank’s technological knowledge gives him an insuperable material advantage. But the raw power Hank is able to wield is insufficient to overcome the people’s ingrained obedience to the nobility, the theatrics of Merlin, and, above all, the Church. When Hank works within the system, he is able to accomplish much with his knowledge. When originally arrives in Camelot, he escapes execution and becomes the king’s vizier by using an eclipse to portray himself as a great magician. Working in secret, he trains an army of technicians who build the basic infrastructure of society. By showing the King the injustices of slavery, he even wins the slaves’ liberation.

Hank’s downfall comes when he uses his power to force change on others. In a climactic scene, he duels all the knights of Britain and defeats them using technology. Having forcibly destroyed chivalry, he replaces it with a version of nineteenth-century capitalism and begins to unveil his wonders of technology. His triumph is short-lived. Using the pretext of a rivalry created by the rapacities of the new capitalism, the Church strikes at Hank and his men. Despite his power and material successes, the people turn against him. In an ironic twist, Hank proclaims a republic in England, then retreats to a fortress where he destroys the hosts that the people have sent against him in an apocalyptic battle. Hank’s men die, poisoned by the corpses of the men they’ve killed, while Hank himself is cast into a deep sleep by Merlin.

Though Twain indicts Hank’s arrogant effort to forcibly recast Arthurian society, his message is more than a simple rant against imperialism or nation-building. Quite clearly, the society of sixth-century England is simple, often barbaric, and at times downright evil. The reader cannot help but cheer Hank when he helps free the slaves, or when he schemes to replace the established church with freedom of religion. Hank has his prejudices, but his true downfall is his lack of judgment. He undertakes worthwhile enterprises and fatal mistakes with the same confidence and assurance. As a result, his valuable civilizing project goes down to destruction, and he himself is consigned to magical sleep in an isolated cave.

A prayer from the early twentieth century implores God to grant the courage to change that which can be changed, the serenity to accept that which cannot, and the wisdom to tell the difference. The problem with Hank, and with some of today’s leaders, is not that they have too much courage and not enough serenity. They deploy both at times. The problem, Twain reminds us, is that they sometimes lack the wisdom to choose the appropriate tool.

Making Up the Rules

I came to own The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 the same way I come to own so many other books: I saw it, opened it, couldn’t put it down, and bought it. In an era when bargain shelves are cluttered with books attempting playful eclecticism but achieving pointlessness, BANR is a delight.

The big names shine: don’t miss Naguib Mahfouz’s short story “Room #12″ or the “Lesson in Creative Writing” from Kurt Vonnegut, and prepare to live a better life after reading David Foster Wallace’s commencement address at Kenyon College. Beyond these titans, however, there is much more to enjoy, including some pleasant surprises. Three comics have been included, and they prove the form’s capacity both for excellent fiction and for sharp journalism. There are also some unexpected passages in the fully reproduced Iraqi Constitution, as in Chapter Two, Article 36: “D. Every Iraqi has the right to participate in sports, and the State should encourage its activities and promotion and will provide its necessities.”

The collection alternates, sometimes jarringly, between political urgency (Tom Downey’s “The Insurgent’s Tale” and David Rakoff’s “Love It Or Leave It”) and playfulness (headlines from “The Onion” and a list of 700 hobo names). We might reconcile these threads in “Pirate Radio,” a jazzy short story, hardly longer than this article, from Rick Moody. Amid the wonderful nonsense and semi-sense of the station’s history and programming are some sobering moments:

The pirate station broadcasts news programs, but never at the top of the hour, and only when bootlegged from other stations. The substance of the news in these programs is altered slightly in order to mislead: the weather is said to be sunny, no matter the weather; the stock market is said to be going down without respite; the high school football team is said to be losing; newcomers are said to be bringing prosperity to the town; and the war is always said to be going smoothly, with little loss of civilian life.

“Pirate Radio” reminds us that writers, underground DJs, and editors of compilations all make up their own rules, and so do tyrants. The analogy resonates: we recognize that nonrequirement can produce virtuoso writing, goverments that do whatever they want, and volumes as enjoyable as BANR 2006.

The Looking Glass War – John Le Carré

John Le Carré is justly famous for his ability to describe the bleakness of Cold War Europe behind the Iron Curtain, but The Looking Glass War saves its greatest insight for the British spies who aspire to be the book’s heroes.

The book revolves around the unnamed Department, an espionage agency that achieved greatness during World War II, but which has since become a backwater. When evidence of secret Soviet maneuvers surfaces in East Germany, the egotistical chief of the Department sees a chance to return his agency to its former prominence. To gather evidence, he pulls together a team of second-rate spies: the experienced but cynical veteran; the naïve, idealistic youth; and a lonely ex-agent who longs for a return to the camaraderie and importance of his war service. Together, this ragtag band attempts to mount a modern intelligence operation. Though they lack the requisite expertise, materials, and manpower, they all trudge along, seeing in their fumblings an opportunity to transcend their gloomy, trivial lives and be part of truly meaningful events.

Though the drama of the operation is compelling, the true heart of the story is the study of the varied motivations of the spies. Though they all believe in the greatness of the Department, the contrast between the manipulative pettiness of the chief and the honest, foolish enthusiasm of the new recruit is striking. Further contrast, and a dose of reality, is provided by the knowledgeable and experienced insights of the famous George Smiley, who plays a supporting role in the operation.

Though one of Le Carré’s less popular works, The Looking Glass War showcases many of his best qualities: grim realism, a full appreciation of the moral ambiguities of the Cold War, and psychologically compelling portraits of the lonely, unhappy people who inhabit his pages.

On Mary Oliver

I’ve spent a few months now delighting in Mary Oliver’s poetry, and I have a proposal. First, though, let’s remember “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a popular American poem when there aren’t any popular American poems. It’s engaging and powerful and rhythmic, but that’s not enough to make a poem better-known than any other (possibly excepting jingles like “Casey at the Bat.”) It isn’t even the single best twentieth-century poem about human contemplation of snow, thanks to Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man” (“One must have a mind of winter / To regard the frost and the boughs / Of the pine-trees covered with snow…”)

Nonetheless, we live by Frost much more than by Stevens, despite the latter’s wisdom and eloquence. For whatever reason, Frost’s woodsy observations have made for better entries into our collective subconscious than Stevens’ searing abstractions. Very few painters, I trust, have scrambled to depict Stevens’ “The Idea of Order At Key West.”

Many of us can recognize or recite lines from Frost, and we are likely to read him in schools or to contemplate his reading “The Gift Outright” at Kennedy’s inauguration. However dimly his influence shines on us, it does so more brightly than any other modern American poet’s. We have had no successor to Frost, no more recent poet whom we know in any meaningful, collective way. It’s sad, in a way, that we are unlikely to find her in Elizabeth Bishop. None of Bishop’s contemporaries is better than her, but her brilliance is a little too much like Stevens’ for her to be a very public poet. Look at the epiphanies her narrator stuns us with in “In the Waiting Room:”

I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?

This moment is magical, but we would hardly expect all our sixth-graders to give recitations of it.

We could, however, happily assign them Mary Oliver’s “The Sun,” which is not rigid enough to chant but does leverage the observational force of a sunrise into a narrative impact we all should live by. We could find some collective, yet personal, comfort in “Wild Geese,” and remind ourselves of human dignity in “Singapore:”

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want her to rise up from the crust and the slop and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life…

Mary Oliver’s poetry is so fulfilling you might not notice the extent of its technical precision or its subtle attention to the poetic tradition. Like Robert Frost, she is a nature poet too good to be filed away under “nature poetry.” Like Robert Frost, she is wise and, though never indulgent in fluffy cheer, a source for real inspiration. And like Robert Frost, she is someone we could all love, and grow from, together.

So let’s get copies of New and Selected Poems: Volume One into our classrooms, and then, after we take a break to look at some robins and pebbles and oak trees with our new eyes, let’s make a few thousand copies of “Singapore” and throw them off the rooftops, and bring Mary Oliver where she belongs: in our common psyche.

Welcome

Welcome to Idle Trade. We intend this as a book blog in the simple and valuable tradition of book lovers of all backgrounds reading widely and sharing their reactions enthusiastically. Robert is a law student and I’m a freelancer/gambler; each of us will, at least once a week, post about a book we’ve read. We hope you enjoy, and comment, and keep on reading.