Kevin's Watch

I'm sure there's a topic on the book somewhere, but damned if I can find it. Started reading it after finishing TLD. Not very far yet, I'm just into the second "chapter", but so far very interesting. I've been looking forward to this book for a while; I know little about it and never saw the movie (heard it was bad).

-jay

yeah , its somewhere in the flicks forum. I haven't read the book. The movie was difficult for me to watch. It tries too hard to cover too much and a lot is lost.

Wouldn't mind reading the book, though. It was an interesting concept.

I've seen a lot of people praise David Mitchell's books quite highly, but haven't gotten around to reading any yet myself.

I read this a while back and really enjoyed it. It takes quite a few chapters to get into it, and it's well worth it when it really begins to kick off.

I rarely read 'literary fiction' (where's luci! ) and was very pleased when this turned out to really be a science fiction book

u.

I've seen the film and enjoyed it. I'm going to read the book soon.

Just finished Cloud Atlas. Glad I did, highly interesting and entertaining. I was hoping to see even more connections between the stories, but the little tidbits that he placed throughout to connect them were well done.

And heck, it only took me 4 months to read. Much better than my year long Donaldson reads. Haha...

Now to figure out what to read next...

Are any of David Mitchell's other stuff worth it?

-jay

.. Mitchell apparently has a new book out called 'Bone Clocks' which has been getting rave reviews ..

I on the other hand was disappointed to learn he wasn't the same uptight, hilarious English comedian from Peep Show ...

Saw the movie. Thought it was okay. Kind of liked it, but wasn't in love with it.

I think I'll add "Bone Clocks" to my "To Read" list.

-jay

Haven't seen the movie or read the book yet. IIRC, the GF enjoyed the movie.

--A

Ok - I've read the book and seen the film now (finished the book last week, saw the film a while ago) and so am something like ready to post.

I've digested what I have seen and read and have drawn a few conclusions from it.

First, as a comparison, I'd say of the two it is the book that hangs together the best. The film is indeed a difficult watch, and one reason for this is that they abandoned the nested, Russian Doll structure of the novel. This resulted in a mish-mash of threads that lost form and coherence in the lengthy three hour viewing time. The book by contrast, starts at the earliest point chronologically (some time in the seventeen hundreds) then progresses in a series of 'chapters' - each a separate half of a story - to come forward in time through the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty first centuries, to the latest chronological point, some time in the future where (in the centre of the book) a complete story is told. The chapters then progress backwards if you like, each picking up where the half stories of the earlier chapters finished off, in reverse chronological order back to the original tale which finishes off the novel. It is this ordering that the book gives, abandoned in the film, that makes it structurally more coherent, and thus easier to comprehend. The stories, on the face of it unrelated, have each a brief connection to the previous one - a glancing confluence - and there seems to be a relationship between the central characters of each by virtue of a shared recurring birthmark that they all possess, but beyond this no relationship exists. So the question is 'what is it all about'? What is it that these apparently unrelated stories have in common, that the author is trying to convey.

Well, to answer this, we have to look for deeper themes - themes that are not explicitly spelled out, that we have to tease out for ourselves, to find what I think, are the central and rather beautiful messages of the book. In essence the book is about the cyclical nature of existence, it is about how we each of us are neither one thing or another, good or bad (and this I think the film gets across well by having the same actors in good roles in some stories, indifferent in others, and yet bad in others) and finally how in the face of bad situations, when evil seems to have the upper hand, it is small acts of beauty and goodness that saves the world. That (to return to SRD's favourite topic) despite will never triumph while even the smallest act of goodness remains in the world to thwart it.

To be certain, it is a long way of telling what is in essence a fairly simple message - that while there may be no meaning as such in life, this does not mean that there can be no purpose (this purpose being that we should do what we can to leave the world a better place than we found it.....or failing that, to at least leave it no worse) - but the tales are engaging, the characters interesting (and to greater degrees more or less likable) and the cumulative effect satisfying. The book won the Booker Prize I believe, or was certainly short-listed. I'm not sure I'd go quite that far with it; I liked it, indeed was moved by it, made to think by it - but great literature - well, that I'm not so sure about. But certainly worth a read, certainly not time spent that you will regret and certainly a provider of food for thought that will leave you a little wiser, a little more sympathetic to the human condition, than before you picked it up.

peter wrote: That (to return to SRD's favourite topic) despite will never triumph while even the smallest act of goodness remains in the world to thwart it.

I haven't read the book, peter, but I once saw the movie, and while I didn't consider it brilliant, it at least felt heartening, and for the reason you gave. Good summary!

Thanks Cord Hurn - appreciated!

I don't know how I missed this thread...dang

YES I love david Mitchell!! huge fan. Cloud Atlas...awesome book.
I LOVED the movie too...huge Wachowskis fan as well

I liked Bone Clocks best to *read* I think but I thought the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker did an incredible directing job with Cloud Atlas...the cast did *multiple roles* so as a consequence, the make up and costuming were also awesome, I can't say enough about how brilliantly this film was shot and edited. (just my opinion, not carved in granite. just me effusing because I truly loved it)
to me this movie is like a study on so many levels of storytelling and moviemaking.

Cloud Atlas the film is what really made a Wachowski fan of me.
then...
Sense8.
and Doona Bae.

and I read in two different sources today that David Mitchell will also be writing with Lana Wachowski and Alexsander Hemon the next Matrix movie. (4)

I would guess the film narrative was interwoven rather than nested so that all each story's fulcrum could come at the same point in the movie.

If the book is nested, as you describe Peter, wouldn't that mean you'd have a series of resolutions following each other? In the film, all the emotional climaxes were roughly simultaneous.

The story's were not so much emotionally climactic in that sense though Rigel: though each one had a resolution of sorts - the were not impactful in the sense of an ending. In the novel the effect was that of a series of wrappings up that to a degree was more of an unfolding than a traditional denouement. The final move to a different narrator (the son of the first central character of the novel) allowed for a summing up of sorts that the film did not employ (but still, much was left to the reader's own judgement).

I think in retrospect I may have been way too hard on the film in my first observations on it; I simply don't think I got it (I'm slow on the uptake at best when it comes to ferreting out meaning that is not explicitly stated). I'm going to give it another shot in the light of the novel's having worked so well for me and see how it goes.

It may be the difference in the medium .. I saw the movie and wasnt wowed by it .. didnt totally hate it but didnt love it either.

I found the movie a little fragmented which the book maybe ties it better in your Russian doll analogy .. dunno.

But am interested to read the book now do many of you have highlighted it.

Skyweir wrote:It may be the difference in the medium .. I saw the movie and wasnt wowed by it .. didnt totally hate it but didnt love it either.

I found the movie a little fragmented which the book maybe ties it better in your Russian doll analogy .. dunno.

But am interested to read the book now do many of you have highlighted it.

I read the book a few years ago, then tried the film but couldn't get through it.

The feeling the book left me with was that it was written as something much smaller (the two stories in the middle) and that layers of padding were added around those to make them a novel.

I enjoyed those two stories; the rest seemed like disposable fluff.

!!!!!

Just wander in here like it's nothing...

How the hell you doing Cj? Good to see you around man.

--A

I'm a casual guy

I'm well enough. Not much to report. It's been an uninteresting decade or so.