Cloud Atlas

I'm not a big fan of what I call "stunt writing" - the kind of writing that calls attention to the author's cleverness with minimal concern about the reader's pleasure or enlightenment.  (For that reason, I'm in the tiny minority who find Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections unreadable.)  But there is no greater joy than finding a writer who is a breathtaking stylist, who can do remarkable, unprecedented things with a sentence, and who can simultaneously move you deeply. 

David Mitchell began his career as an unrestrained stylist - his novel number9dream (note the lowercase title - always a bad sign) overflows with run-on sentences and ideas that drown any opportunity to uncover an actual novel.  But Cloud Atlas is a miracle of a novel - a stunt novel that qualifies as great literature on every level.

The stunt is unprecedented in my experience: The novel is actually six stories, arranged like a set of nesting dolls - the first half of the first story is followed by the first half of the second, then the first half of the third, fourth and fifth.  In the center is a complete story, followed by the second half of the fifth story, the second half of the fourth, then the third, the second, and finally, the completion of the first.  In addition, each story is told in a completely different style - the first, a 19th century journal of an ocean voyage, a la Conrad; the second, a romantic epistolary tale of doomed love in pre-WWII Bruges; next, a Grisham-style thriller with a perky heroine, secret documents and a cliffhanger; fourth, a farcical tale of a contemporary cad trapped in an old-folks home a la Kingsley Amis; and fifth, a horrifying, hard sci-fi tale about cyborgs in a corrupt, totalitarian, and decaying future.  The tale at the center is a stylistic tour-de-force - an adventure fantasy set in a world of savagery and mystery, featuring a shocking secret and told in an invented dialect Anthony Burgess would admire.

What makes Cloud Atlas a novel - a great novel - is that ultimately, every story connects with the whole in a real way; all are part of one ultimate tale.  The resonances are astonishing, and hit with surprising force because they are so unexpected.  Every story wrestles with an aspect of the question, "what does it mean to be human?" and Mitchell drives you to feel and think deeply about the implications of that question and its possible answers.  

This is not just an exercise in complexity and style; Mitchell's characters are not types, nor ideological constructs.  Their humanity is palpable.  (In fact, the most human of all is probably the least human - a cyborg of achingly real sweetness.)  Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable reading experience - entertaining, challenging, and filled with a passion not just for words, but for humanity, too.

Nine Stories

"See more fish."  If that sentence doesn't bring tears to your eyes, you haven't read J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, a collection of short stories published in 1948.  It's unfortunate that many people who have read Catcher in the Rye don't read Salinger's other work.  In a way, his relatively small collection of works - Catcher in the Rye, four novelettes (Franny, Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, and Seymour), and these short stories - can be seen as one larger, integrated work, and not just because of the focus on the Glass family as primary characters.  Thematically, almost all of these works share the same concerns about the loss of innocence and the hypocrisy of modern life (or, as Holden put it, "phonies").

The strongest of these stories contrast the beauty of children not yet spoiled by adult influences - greed, jealousy, and most powerfully, war - with the fragile state of young men trying to endure their initiation to those influences.  In the two most powerful stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esme, With Love and Squalor," that initiation was profound - the horrors of World War II.  The protagonists of both stories meet young children who give them a glimpse of the beauty hidden by all the horror they've seen.  For one, that glimpse is enough to keep enduring; for the other, it's a fatal reminder of all he has lost.

Other strong stories: "The Laughing Man," about a young man's fall into adulthood as seen through the eyes of a boy he coaches; "Down at the Dinghy," a seemingly simple story of a mother and son with a heart wrenching twist; and "Teddy," the tale of a 10-year-old wise beyond his years.

If you decide to read all of Salinger, at least read "Bananafish" first.  It is the author's thematic keystone, and perhaps the saddest story in American literature.

Things Fall Apart

Like most Americans, I am sadly ignorant about African literature.  According to a recent New Yorker profile of Chinua Achebe, who wrote Things Fall Apart in 1959, Americans have limited access to African literature of the past 50 years because of a dearth of English translations.  I don't buy it.  More likely, the dearth of translations is due to a dearth of interest and demand by American readers. Since I count myself among the transgressors, the New Yorker profile struck a chord, and I picked up Things Fall Apart, a cornerstone in 20th century African lit and originally written in English (a choice for which Achebe, born in Nigeria, has taken critical heat ever since).

Achebe's novel is the story of how one man, his family, his village, and his culture are crushed by the arrival of white Europeans in the early 20th century.  Okonkwo is a leader in his village - a brave warrior with a large family and a successful farm, respected for his courage, and feared for his quick temper.  His story is told in the third-person, but from the limited perspective of one who shares the same culture and background as Okwonko, so that we experience Okonkwo's internal struggles with change as he does.  The story is told in the manner of folk tales; many such tales are told within the novel, as they are passed on from Okonkwo's wives to their children.

The most ingenious aspect of Things Fall Apart is that it gives us the time and exposure we need to see and feel life in Okonkwo's village.  Incidents reveal the details of domestic life, the village's system of justice, and its hierarchy, religion, economics and art.  At first, the society seemed foreign and primitive to me; halfway through the book, my growing respect for the sophistication of their culture made me ashamed of my initial response.

Of course, this appreciation and respect (and shame) is what makes the destruction of Okonkwo's society so devastating in the latter chapters of the novel.  The Christian, European conquerors are equally blind to the value of this culture, and don't bother to take the time to learn and appreciate its value.  Their invasion demolishes Okonkwo's life at every level - his family, his village, his culture, and ultimately his own soul.  Fifty years after his novel first appeared, Achebe's voice is still powerful, and his message, sadly, still relevant.

The Aubrey/Maturin Novels (Master & Commander)

It's fascinating that the best adventure novels in the English language are formally untitled.  The novels - Patrick O'Brian's stories of British naval captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey and his friend, ship's doctor and secret agent Stephen Maturin - have no umbrella name, unlike say, Lord of the Rings.  Most people who know anything about them call them the "Master and Commander" novels, probably because of the excellent film with Russell Crowe as Lucky Jack.  But for those of us who have read them and love them, it doesn't matter.  

In truth, the series of 20 novels is really one novel - an epic saga of the Napoleonic Age that begins with Jack's first command, and first of the spectacular successes that lead to his nickname, and ends decades later with his rise to admiral.  But that simple description doesn't begin to summarize the complex narrative of the rise, fall, and resurrection of one of English literature's most captivating heroes, or the story of a fascinating lifelong friendship between two very different and fascinating individuals.  

The books are brilliant in their portrayal of action at sea, and of the political intrigues of the time.  They are also compelling romances, especially the long, tragic story of Stephen and the Lady Diana, his alluring, self-destructive wife.

But O'Brian's genius is most evident in two achievements: His incredibly compelling descriptions of life at sea in the first years of the 19th century, and the creation of an unforgettable friendship between two entirely different types of hero.

As good a storyteller as O'Brian is on land, his novels really take off when the mooring lines are thrown off and his heroes take to the sea.  Life in the British Navy is brutal and harsh, a constant struggle against weather, hunger, drunkenness, and the extraordinary danger of every ordinary day at sea.  Mistakes are frequently mortal.  And yet the adventures experienced by even the most common sailor - the thrill of finding new cultures, the excitement of battle, the bonds formed between men who depend on each other for their safety and sanity - make you wonder if 20th century life can offer anything remotely as inspiring.

O'Brian's adventures are unabashedly old-fashioned - they could have been written 200 years ago - and Jack Aubrey is the perfect hero for them.  Reading these novels and getting to know Jack over a 20-year span, you realize how rare a bird is the traditional hero in modern literature.  In our age of irony and cynicism, Jack Aubrey should seem too good to be true - but he's not.  Aubrey may be one of the most sophisticated characters in 20th century fiction.  Jack is flawed - boastful, spoiled, headstrong and naive - but his flaws make his courage and audacity more believable, and more admirable.

Stephen Maturin is in many ways Jack's opposite - intellectual where Jack is instinctive, repressed, angry and suspicious where Jack is sensual and trusting.  Stephen is more of a 20th-century heroic ideal - the anti-hero, scornful of authority and traditional institutions.  A secret agent for the British government - which, as an Irish national, he loathes with a passion - he thrives in darkness, while Jack is a creature of noise and light.

And yet their friendship is what truly brings these novels to life, and the evolution of their relationship is what ties the books together into one satisfying whole.  In the first novel, Stephen first sees Jack as conservative and shallow, a happy tool of imperial power, while Jack finds his doctor to be argumentative and irritating.  By the end of the series, after numerous battles, personal failures, shared deprivation and triumph, the two men have built the kind of friendship rarely found and greatly envied.

I say "men" because I have a bias - I think these are books that few women will enjoy as much as most men.  Their emphasis on friendship and their lack of compelling women characters (Lady Diana strongly excluded) will - I think - lessen their attraction.

O'Brian's greatest asset is patience.  Knowing from the outset that he was going to tell his story over the course of 20 novels, he takes his time and goes into great detail with each.  Don't think "Moby Dick" and its lengthy discourses on whaling techniques; a better comparison is Dickens.  Both share the ability to describe situations concisely and convincingly while keeping the narrative moving like a war frigate at full sail in a howling gale.

My favorites in the series: HMS Surprise, in which Jack takes command of the ship he will love most his entire career; The Reverse of the Medal, in which Jack falls victim to poor judgment and political intrigue; and The Far Side of the World.  But the truth is, I love them all, and read them all in order, one right after the other - and when I finished, I felt empty for a week with the loss.