July 31, 2006
cloud atlas
file under: books
cloud atlas is everything i hoped it would be and more. if i had mr. mitchell's literary genius, i just might be able to do it justice. given the actual state of things, that's not going to happen. if you don't trust me, read any of a hundred glowing reviews.
let me begin by saying that i have been a fan of david mitchell ever since ghostwritten, his first novel. in that book, he did something that captivated and inspired (even if it fell just a tad short for some). he picked up on a theme that has fascinated me for years – connectedness: the invisible connections between people, places, events. history chronicles some of them, but most are relegated to the entropic scrap heap of the universe. he wrote a novel that connected the dots; it was still arresting, even if the lines were dotted.
cloud atlas picks up that thread and weaves a dark tapestry, one that alternately depresses, amuses and enthralls.
<some minor spoilers follow>
...
cloud atlas further plumbs the theme of connectedness, through six semi-linked narratives that span perhaps 400 years, from the late 1800s through to an unspecified, post-apocalyptic future. how he tells these stories is the great narrative conceit of this novel. it is an accordion, with stories that unfold through the first half of the novel, only to be completed in the second in reverse order.
each story is interesting in its own right, although the degree to which the characters are sympathetic varies significantly. one of the stories even appears to be metafictional, but one is never quite sure. the thing i found so amazing was his voice: he imbued his wildly divergent characters with life, simultaneously spanning genres, from high-seas adventure to gritty, dystopian science fiction. i have only read two authors who can span genres in this way (martin amis and iain banks), and i daresay they don't do it quite as well as mitchell (blasphemy, this is, as an avowed fan of both of the aforementioned writers).
all of this is grand achievement, and yet mitchell does more.
his collection of tales contains a central theme, one that stitches his threads together. he tells a morality tale without unduly clubbing us over the head with the lessons he wants to teach. he takes a look at human history, finds us wanting, finds us weak. and yet, at the last moment of the novel, he brings us back from the brink to say – wait, it doesn't have to be this way.
some books you finish, put down, and never think of again. other books hit the bin with force after completion. and yet a third category of books live with you forever, the kind that bring a fierce melancholy at their completion, a yearning for more. cloud atlas brought me to the brink of tears when i finished it...tears of joy at the hope it imagined, tears of sadness that its tale was told.
Posted: 07.31.06 at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
the unconsoled
file under: books
the unconsoled is only the second book i've read by kazuo ishiguro. the first of his that i read, remains of the day, still stands as one of my top ten books of all time. i wish i could say the same about this effort.
while stylistically flawless with pitch-perfect prose, the story left me uninspired. my first and foremost complaint was length – did the novel have to be so long? i felt like things hardly changed after the first 100 pages, and yet i had to slog through 400 more. i kept expecting some light to pull me out of the darkness, but it never came.
i won't bother with a synopsis. you can find it on amazon.
the thing that i still wonder is, what was ishiguro's point? why did he write this novel? to illustrate the endless self-absorption of people? to illustrate how our best efforts at self-effacing politeness are ultimately selfish and destructive? each of the characters of this story toil through life with only their own interests at heart. they seem soulless and charmless, with few redemptive qualities.
i just don't know. i barely finished the book, and was so relieved when i did. i will read him again, but it's going to be hard to do it without severe skepticism.
Posted: 07.31.06 at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
July 7, 2006
march of the penguins
file under: movies
life is a precious thing. we all struggle to preserve it, whether or not we realize this truth. march of the penguins, a french documentary, illustrates the point that no matter how hard you think your life is, the emperor penguins have it much, much harder.
when i was a kid, i consumed anything and everything related to nature: jacques cousteau, national geographic, audobon society books, camping and hiking around southern california. i've always been a sucker for anything related to the natural world, so it stands to reason that i should fall for nature documentaries.
this one is different.
...
it tells a story that is, for all intents and purposes, unbelievable. in a nutshell, emperor penguins survive and breed under the harshest conditions on the planet, for months on end, under constant threat of death by starvation and exposure. over the course of thousands of years, they have perfectly adapted to their environment, and can live despite their inhospitable surroundings.
they don't fight each other to survive (with rare exceptions). indeed, the inhospitability of their surroundings forces them to create a "heat collective" to stay warm. mothers and fathers have to swap childcare roles repeatedly, all the while under threat of death to their offspring by freezing. they are the apotheosis of Darwinian adaptation.
this isn't a new story. we're constantly faced with examples from the animal kingdom of creatures who prove themselves capable of feats well outside our comfort zone. and yet there seems to be something different about these penguins. maybe it's the otherwordliness of their surroundings; maybe it's the way they take weeks to pick a mate, despite desperate circumstances; maybe it's the way the couples show love for each other (however transitory). maybe it's the fact that they waddle across Antarctica for miles on miles with tiny footsteps, all just to get food for their chicks (one each, at most).
the thing i found the most amazing was their single-mindedness. almost everything the penguins did was explcitly geared towards reproduction: their uncanny sense of direction, their ability to stave off hunger and withstand cold, their sense for seasonal and environmental changes. everything they did and were capable of, just to do their best to make sure their young survived.
watching these penguins made me realize the trade we've made: bigger brains and a more diversified set of abilities, at the expense of an ability to survive the harshness of the unadulterated natural world. basically, we've traded brains for everyday fortitude. we can meet challenges, to be sure, but take the average human and drop them in the forest 100 miles from civilization, and they'll be dead before anyone can find them.
we can learn a lot from animals, now and a hundred (or a thousand) years from now. they can remind us of our humble animal beginnings, of our need to bond in order to survive. they can remind us that we aren't necessarily as strong as we think...
Posted: 07.07.06 at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
hero
file under: movies
i was skeptical about zhang yimou's film hero. i'm not entirely sure why. maybe it was because i thought that, after several other films that looked to be of this ilk, another director was trying to capitalize on the "kung-fu art film" phenomenon in America (e.g., Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
ok, maybe he was, but he did a brilliant job of it (despite his less-than-stellar follow-up house of flying daggers, a visually stunning tale that hewed just a bit too close to its dragon-born antecedent).
hero is not just visually stunning; it's also a powerful historical tale fueled by romance, deception, and betrayal. the performances are amazing, the action choreography is excellent, the cinematrography is superior...i'm stumbling over myself to find more superlatives.
Posted: 07.07.06 at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 1, 2006
look to windward
file under: books
iain banks has a universe inside his head. probably more than one. who knows. at the very least, he has one with a multi-species civilization called the Culture, comprised of a few trillion people living a few tens of thousands of years down the road. they're spread across the galaxy, and when not pursuing their wildest dreams (since poverty, money, disease, and internecine conflict have all been eradicated), they are engaged in a vast philanthropic effort to help those civilizations who aren't quite as, shall we say, well off.
he's written a number of things involving the Culture:
- the state of the art (collected short stories and a novella)
- consider phlebas
- use of weapons
- player of games
- excession
- inversions (apparently only vaguely Culture-related)
- look to windward
the last ostensible book in his Culture novels is look to windward, and it's a fitting finish to a remarkable series, especially given that the first Culture novel was consider phlebas, both of which refer to a few lines from Eliot's Waste Land:
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
[NOTE: i will make no attempt to analyze the philosophical underpinnings of The Waste Land, Banks' works, and the connection between them – i leave this task to far braver (and perhaps more presumptuous) souls.]
and now, my review (and possible spoilers) follow...
...
in the Banks spectrum of writing, from experimental and opaque to expository and transparent, look to windward (hereafter referred to as LTW) falls toward the latter end of the spectrum. at its heart, it's a story of revenge, of the bloodlust hatched by violence (civil war, in this particular case).
as i mentioned, the Culture like to think of themselves as helping other "less-advanced" species. through their Contact and Special Circumstances groups, they interact with other species, often attempting positive (if covert) interventions aimed at the betterment of said species. their moral high-ground is often muddy, though, and Banks takes an ambivalent view towards their erstwhile philanthropy. LTW is a solid example of philanthropy gone horribly wrong; in their attempts to help a species called the Chelgrians, they inadvertently trigger a vast civil war that results in the deaths of millions. oops. so, what do they do? why, they go in, stop the war, and try to fix things, of course! make reparations, as it were, for their missteps.
major spoilers coming...i'm not kidding here, people.
while some Chelgrians are vaguely understanding about the whole thing, a splinter group decides to exact their revenge in true eye-for-an-eye spirit: one Culture citizen for every Chelgrian killed. without this retribution, those lost Chelgrian souls are trapped in a literal limbo, unable to enter the known (manufactured?) heaven created by the Chelgrians and facilitated by Soulkeepers implanted in the minds of all Chelgrians. how are they going to manage genocide on this scale? obvious: tap a superior species for some help, get a spy to infiltrate the Culture, have him go to one of their vast Orbitals, and then use a mind-triggered displacement device to put wormhole-opening warheads inside the AI that controls all Orbital systems.
yeah...it's quite a story. and i didn't even mention the odd interludes in interstellar space with these encapsulated air-worlds filled with intelligent gas-bag ecosystems that have been around for billions of years. one has to wonder if the scotch helps him dream this stuff up. in any case, the novel is a great read, leads to a satisfying conclusion, and rounds out the Culture novels quite nicely (in this reader's opinion).
...
aside from the raw power of his imagination, Banks uses the Culture as a means to explore a possible future state of humanity, and to comment indirectly on contemporary society. he's Scottish with pretty liberal politics; it's pretty easy to imagine him thinking of the Culture as a reasonable future analog to the current state of American hegemony and morally superior attitudes. regardless, he manages to say some pretty interesting things about the world, our values, how we spend our lives, how we relate to other people.
at the end of the day, he's just a fantastic storyteller. i'm not sure whether he would want to get into the symbolism of his novels, or the possible political statements he's making. it just seems like he's having fun writing, and as a reader, i always do, too (except maybe for feersum endjinn – sorry, mr. banks, couldn't really get into that one).
Posted: 07.01.06 at 4:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
number 34
file under: my life
the results are in: san francisco is the 34th most expensive place to live in the world. given the fact that elaine and i seem to be struggling to buy a house (despite a more-than-decent combined income), i guess i'd have to say i'm a little surprised.
a few cities in that list seem like they should fall a little lower than SF (Istanbul, Douala, Lagos). i only say this because Elaine and I have been idly pondering moving elsewhere, thinking that the housing madness that has gripped SF is a localized phenomenon. based on that list, it looks like we're wrong. strictly speaking, that listing is a reflection of total cost of living (not just housing), so there may be other things at play. even so, we may not be moving as quickly as we might have thought. ;-)
Posted: 07.01.06 at 3:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
