Book Review: "The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell

The Bone Clocks (2014)

Three and half Stars out of Five

David Mitchell

624 pages

David Mitchell is the author of six books, the most acclaimed of which is “Cloud Atlas”.  “The Bone Clocks” like Cloud Atlas was well received critically and was on the nomination list for the Man Booker prize. The two books share a number of similarities: construction, characters, themes, stylistic writing to name a few. And one other concept they have in common is a blurring of the lines between literary genres. This book could be classed as drama, epic, fantasy/science fiction, or even religious.

Like “Cloud Atlas” the story is told in six parts: 1984 England, 1991 Switzerland, 2004 Iraq and England, 2015-20 New York and England, 2025 New York, and 2043 Ireland. In 1984 we are introduced to fifteen year old Holly Sykes and her precocious six year old brother Jacko. Holly lives a working class life with her family in Gravesend where she is in perpetual adolescent/parent conflict with her mother. Following a divisive fight with her “Mam”, Holly runs away and in so doing starts the novel on its way into regions of fantasy and the mundane. Holly lives in a world where an unseen war is taking place, and she is about to become a minor pawn in that war.

Holly like her soon to be missing brother Jacko has some peculiar characteristics. In Holly’s case, she hears voices (the Radio People) and sometimes sees people that go unseen and unheard by others; a Miss Constantine has an unnerving tendency to show up at the foot of Holly’s bed late at night, for example. The novel tells the story of the aforementioned unseen war between the Anchorites and the Horologists. Like Cloud Atlas there are few greys in this war. Miss Constantine and her fellow Anchorites are "vampires" of a sort, while the Horologists (the Good Guys) are represented by one of Mitchell’s recurring characters, Marius. The Anchorites feed in peculiar way off mortals like Holly who have some psychic powers (remember, she hears voices) in order to maintain their youth. The Horologists on the other hand have a different mechanism for living forever; a mechanism that appears to be based on luck rather than merit or vampirism. In any event, they take umbrage at the Anchorites’ method and thus ensues the war.

Mitchell employs very sophisticated stylistic touches in describing his characters. In the case of the fifteen year old Holly for example, she of the working class English countryside, Mitchell has Holly speaking a British vernacular that had me using my Kindle-embedded dictionary on a quite frequent basis. In a later, overly long section of the book, he has Crispin Hershey as an English member of the Literati deliver a couple lectures on how to write creative fiction. Or in the section on Holly’s childhood friend, now war correspondent and husband, Ed Brubek, the narrative goes into some detail on the life of a war correspondent in Iraq. Each of the sections is carefully written with a lot of attention given to the style of the speaker – all are told in the first person narrative form. But here there is a bit of a problem: even though, each person speaks the patois of their character and time, they all speak with a too-informed cleverness that makes each speaker sound essentially like the other.

On the issue of character evolution, we have the opportunity to really test Mitchell’s abilities with the case of Holly. We see her age from a rebellious fifteen year old to a twenty-two year old bar maid to a young mother/novelist to a middle aged mother (where she is finally told the details of the war) to finally as aged grandmother who must make a tough decision. Sure, there are verbal changes that take place over this spectrum of her life stages. But she seems at seventy-six quite nearly the same person she was at twenty-two. All the scars and experiences of her life seem to have left little impression on her character, her morals, or her values.

The book is constructed cleverly in many ways. The central nature of the war between the Anchorites and the Horologists is not clearly laid out until about two thirds of the way into the book. I enjoy watching characters and stories being unpeeled by authors in this manner, and Mitchell is expert at doing this in “The Bone Clocks”. But what of the underlying message in this book? Is Holly’s path through life and her commitment to her progeny the point of the book, is the examination of the various characters, good and bad the message, or is the background story of the warring immortals the lesson? In the case of Holly or that of the secondary characters, there is strength in this book. Mitchell is great at telling the little stories within his books, the stories that help propel the bigger story arc. His characters are witty and often fun to read about, but not I think his big point. If it is the war between the two sets of immortals, the science fiction-like cosmology of these two sides makes little sense from a scientific point of view; one is forced into a religiously inspired fantasy view instead.

The re-incarnation aspects of “The Bone Clocks” appeared in “Cloud Atlas” as allusions; in “The Bone Clocks”, they appear as outright facts. It makes me wonder if Mitchell sees an importance in the concept of re-cycled lives ala the Hindus. His books frequently have conflicts driven by bullies versus the innocent; the entire last section of The Bone Clocks emphasizes this point in a post-apocalyptic vision of Ireland. Thus, Man’s initial and maybe most basic temperament is that of the bully. Some people evolve as they live their lives and become someone higher, someone good. It’s a good concept: evolution towards a higher moral plane. It would be nice if true. In any event, “The Bone Clocks” is a good read, but not, I think David Mitchell’s best – certainly “Cloud Atlas” is better with its grander vision of the world.

Book review: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections (2001)

Three and half Stars out of Five

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen created for himself and his book, The Corrections some unwanted notoriety in 2001 when he reacted coolly to his book being selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club; she took offense; he back pedaled; and voila, instant marketing program. However, that being said, I think I have to agree a little with Franzen, why did Oprah choose this book for her book club? She has chosen a wide variety of books, many with a focus on the family, and perhaps that is the reason The Corrections was chosen; but my goodness, what a family is depicted in this book.

The patriarch of the family is Alfred. As the book progresses, he is increasingly demented as a function of his advancing years. His wife, Edna spends her life frustrated and controlled by Alfred, and then tries to compensate by correcting all around, especially her three adult children: Gary the banker, Chip the English professor/writer, and Denise the successful chef. Alfred and Edna live in their upper-mid western home town of St. Jude (patron saint of lost causes). Their offspring have fled to Philadelphia in the case of Gary and Denise or to New York (and elsewhere) in the case of Chip. All five of these people are carefully drawn characters by Franzen, but they are all also personality avatars of a sort; avatars that share one thing beyond their family connections– they are uniformly unpleasant individuals.

Franzen is an extremely skillful writer and has often been listed amongst America’s best new writers. He has with this book demonstrated that skill by creating five vivid depictions of five very different souls, disagreeable ones to be sure. He uses a multi-lineal story telling technique to describe each of the principal characters (plus a few ancillary ones) that masterfully interweaves these stories/lives in a way that creates a very complete picture of this family. The best thing about this book is indeed Franzen’s ability to tell these various stories and parallel timelines in a manner that will intrigue most readers. What may disappoint most readers are the images he creates of these five characters.

Alfred is throughout his adult life (dementia or no) a controlling, sexually constrained former Kansan who works as a civil engineer for a local rail road company. Like the condescending tone the author uses in describing all the characters throughout book (up to a point just shy of the closing pages), Alfred lives his life living on a high moral plane. He bolsters this self-image with self-told tales of his competency in all areas of life, even those beyond his pristine sense of moral piety. This pious self-image does not originate in the church, but rather in Alfred’s own mind. However, the details of Alfred’s psychological origins remain disappointingly vague. His effects though are displayed in vivid detail; Alfred’s influences on Edna are probably the most corrosive of his mal-effects.

Edna is herself a bright and capable person (or was one once), but one so constrained by Alfred’s influence, that she turns towards an all-encompassing desire to correct everyone around. She bluntly criticizes her children and even plays one off the other by playing favorites. Her character throughout the book is the most damaged by Alfred and is easily the most disagreeable. Her three children range in age and character from the arrogant Gary to the self-destructive Chip to the self-hating Denise. Each of the three children's story arcs is described in terms that can only be likened to a train wreck. Franzen builds up their surrounding scenery, puts them on an arc, and then lets the reader know in clear and certain terms that personal disaster awaits each of the three. But like their mother and father, you will not find yourself hoping for the best for any of them. Rather you will find yourself cringing as you await the inevitable collapse of their various worlds. You may find yourself wondering why you continue to read about these unlikeable and un-relatable characters.

Corrections is normally used as a description for a dramatic change in the stock market following a long bullish period – in other words, life has been good for the investor, but will now take a steep down turn. Besides its conventional use near the end of the book, this term as a metaphor clearly also applies to the three children: each has in the beginning of their adult lives experienced some success, but is now destined for a fall, largely due in each case to the severe limitations of their personalities. The idea of their lives as a train wreck is somewhat foreshadowed by their father’s career with a mid-western rail road, itself destined for a fall. Of course, another way of using the word corrections is as a synonym for a penal institution – and this use as yet another metaphor if also pretty apt. Edna has damaged each of her children to the point that they each live their adult lives in a kind of correction institution of the mind.

One curious side aspect of this book is that Franzen has infused throughout the book a considerable amount of extraneous information (e.g. cooking, rail road signals, some pseudo-science from neurology and neuro-chemistry, and others); this is often interesting and indicative of a fair amount of side research by Franzen. These side steps don’t really add or detract from the novel, but they did make me wonder what the point was; is this book intended as a morality play, a comedy, some odd, gothic picture of modern life in America. This latter point is one I kept coming back to as I moved through the book, whether I was considering some mundane aspect of what Edna ate for Christmas breakfast or what was the message from Alfred’s hurtful influence on all concerned. What is the intended style and point of this book?

The book does include some comic elements such as Chip’s attempt to con people into buying Lithuanian sand and gravel before the coming sand and gravel shortage becomes too acute. But this is hardly a comically turned book; rather it is a very well written character study. However, other than Alfred’s mental disintegration, it has virtually no over-arching plot or character evolution. The book focuses on Edna’s final state that comes courtesy of Alfred, but really doesn’t describe the path taken by her to get to her always critical/correcting view of the world. With respect to the three children, two have by the book’s end, moved to a better place, both physically and spiritually; but like with Edna there is no real depiction of that transition.

If we return to the idea of a character study and the secondary idea of how one person can affect those around him, then I remain disappointed. When I look at problems and I see something that is broken, I want to know more about how that something became broken. If Alfred is the axle on which this story turns and is that broken part affecting and breaking the four parts connected to him, I want to know more about his origins. I just did not gain a good understanding of where Alfred came from, only where he ends up. Bottom-line, a well written story on many levels, but ultimately it left me wondering what the point is.

Book Review: The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong

The Great Transformation (2006)

Four Stars out of Five

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong has gained considerable notoriety as a popular writer on religion. As a former nun and then later as an atheist, she brings a perspective on the topic of God and religion that is generally one steeped in compassion and open-mindedness on these subjects. She has in recent years rejected her atheism and returned to the ranks of the believers but her belief system seems to me (an agnostic) to be somewhat out of the main stream in terms of the issues and values she brings to the forefront of the discussion. She definitely brings an appreciation and sense of value to the other major religions, and most especially she brings an historian’s methodology to her writings.

In The Great Transformation, Armstrong investigates in great detail the historical and philosophical origins of Confucianism and Taoism in China, on Hinduism and Buddhism in India, on Judaism (or perhaps more specifically on monotheism) in Palestine and on rationalism in classical Greece. The events and philosophical antecedents for each of these four regions are discussed in great detail, while the degrees to which each of the four overlap is discussed somewhat more shallowly – perhaps considering the length of the book, this was a consequent and intended decision by Armstrong.

The book is centered on the idea of the Axial era, a term originally coined in 1949 by the philosopher Karl Jaspers. The Axial era is generally considered to have occurred from 800 BCE to 200 BCE. Armstrong discusses the Aryan tribes entering into Northwest India and the near constant level of conflict that brought on the creation of the Vedic texts as a means to help their society to bring peace back into their lives. A similar scenario unfolded in ancient China during the era of the warring states. In this period, a rigid set of rules (Li) and ancestor worship were used to help stabilize their society. Meanwhile in Palestine, the various Jewish tribes were reasonably stable from a societal point of view until the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions of the 6^th century when the first temple was destroyed and a large fraction of the Jews deported to Babylonia. In each of these three cases, intense social unrest and warfare threatened to destroy the various cultures involved.

In ancient Greece, a different path was shaping up. They too were engaged in near constant warfare either between the various polis or later with the Persians. In the case of the Hellenic world though two different groups rose to help their society to deal with their problems: the Tragedians (Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus) and their nascent scientific community. These multi-century long changes in each society slowly developed as each society moved from hunter/gather communities to farming communities to empires. As they did so, the level of war and dukkha (to use the Sanskrit term) or suffering always seemed to rise. And while these four societies separated as they were by hundreds or thousands of miles (and indeed there was no interaction with the Chinese societies at all), they all started a near simultaneous philosophical/religious evolution as well. Each of the non-Greek societies fostered the growth of a belief system that moved from a belief that “one’s own needs could trump anyone else’s, if I have the means to take what I want from you” to several variations on the Golden Rule. As I read through this book, I was astonished at how the concept of “do not do to others that which you would not have done to you” arose independently in the three non-Greek regions and how in the words of Rabbi Hillel in the year zero (or so) this simple concept could actually be used to summarize the whole of the Torah.

The Greeks definitely took a different turn. To their credit the Tragedians seemed (to me anyway) to be on the same path as the various philosophers in the other regions. They would use their Chorus members to impart the moral lessons of the various plays in which they acted out recent Greek history and would attempt via these plays to help their society to cope with pain and to grow in a moral sense. In the meanwhile and with the advent of Socrates, Plato and especially Aristotle, the Greeks began their march towards a rationalistic interpretation of the world; a worldview that came to govern western society to this day.

The strength of this book is to be found in the careful recitation of the events leading up to the development of Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, rabbinical Judaism, Christianity and Islam. With Armstrong’s careful narrative it is remarkably easy to see where these seemingly quite different religions have come to some very similar final conclusions, again focusing on the core of the Golden Rule. The weakness of the book is Armstrong’s attempt to use the conclusions reached by the various Axial age sages as a lesson plan for the modern world to solve our problems. I agree with the concept, I just don’t see on my own nor in the book what would a successful implementation of this ancient wisdom look like.

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Four Stars out of Five

PG13

Peter Quill: Chris Pratt

Gamora: Zoe Saldana

Drax: Dave Bautista

Goot (voice): Vin Diesel

Rocket (voice): Bradley Cooper

Director: James Gunn

Writer: James Gunn and Nicole Perlman

Art Direction:  Ray Chan

Is it really necessary to review a comic book-movie? One could argue "yes" based on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy; a series of movies that truly were works of cinematic art and fine acting. But that is not really the argument in the case of Guardians of the Galaxy (GOTG). Right from the beginning as the characters are introduced in the movie, one quickly surmises that movies with talking trees (whose entire vocabulary consists of “I am Groot”) to wise-cracking raccoons to a sound track from the eighties (on a Sony Walkman, no less) are not aiming for Best Picture nominations.

However, I must say, this movie was thoroughly enjoyable. The wise cracking raccoon (voiced by Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper – nominated for American Sniper) and the equally wisecracking hero, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) had me laughing through most of the movie. Even the dour, incapable of not taking-any-comment literally Drax (WWE wrestler Dave Bautista) was able to drop a few one-liners into the dialog. The dialog is often funny, and the final scenes of destruction (apparently obligatory in comic book movies) were oddly anti-septic, and while not funny, not engaging in any real way such that the mood of the movie was not diverted.

The movie begins with an odd little side story involving young Peter Quill at his dying mother’s bedside. Following her passing he races outside to be captured by a spaceship (yes, I get this makes little sense). The movie jumps forward 26 years and we watch the now-grown Peter as he makes like Indiana Jones and many other pulp fiction heroes. He has obtained an object that his employer and several other malefactors want to possess. Thus begins a ridiculous story of bad guys and good guys chasing after the object, Peter, and his new gang of friends. Besides the aforementioned raccoon, talking tree and Drax, there is also a green-skinned Gamora played by the previously blue-skinned (Avatar) Zoe Saldana. There’s not that much point in detailing the story line or the various plot holes in it. But it is fun to watch for the various big money actors in the movie: Glenn Close as the leader of the Good Guys (Xandarians), John C Reilly (one of Glenn’s soldiers), Josh Brolin (a really bad guy named Thanos), and Benicio del Toro (The Collector).

The acting and the story line aren’t the story. The art work and CGI are often astounding. I am amazed at what passes for de riguer CGI in 2014. Of course, talking trees and raccoons are ridiculous, but they are done so well in this movie that you completely forget how ridiculous a concept they are and just accept them as characters (and in the case of the raccoon, a pretty funny character). Bottom-line, if you like space operas and have a sense of humor that embraces the sarcastic, and if the ridiculous amuses rather than offends you, then GOTG might be your movie.

Movie Review: Annie (2014 Version)

Annie (2014)

Two and half Stars out of Five

PG

Annie: Quvenzhané Wallis

Will Stacks: Jamie Foxx

Grace: Rose Byrne

Guy: Bobby Cannavale

Miss Hannigan: Cameron Diaz

Director: Will Gluck

Writer: Will Gluck and Aline Brosh McKenna

Music: Greg Kurstin

Cinematography: Michael Grady

Annie (2014) was an ardent effort, but ultimately failed to deliver.  The decision by writer director Will Gluck to re-set the 1982 version (itself set in a quasi-1940’s milieu) in modern day New York City was an interesting choice with respect to the whole concept of updating a period piecemovie to contemporary scenes. Concurrent with the time change there were additionally a number of character re-writes; most notably the conversion of Daddy Warbucks into cell phone magnate/mayoral candidate Will Stacks. This latter change is I think symptomatic of the problems with which the movie is laden: updates that seem not only pointless, but in many cases distracting.

The movie begins with Annie (Quvenzhané Wallis) in a school room where she quickly displays her boundless joy and propensity to burst into song. The first song was in some ways an inspired foray into improvised percussion as the various students clap and stomp their way through the song. Wallis is an outstanding young actress with a fair voice; but this first song like so many in this movie failed to resonate with me. Clearly a great deal of thought and practice went into the careful performance of the song, and yet it just isn’t a pleasing performance. This is a pattern that repeats time and again throughout the movie. Another good example is the soon to follow introduction to Annie’s foster home with her fellow wards under the care of Miss Hanigan (Cameron Diaz). The other young actresses all have fine voices, but as they work their way through “Hard Knock Life”, I just kept sitting there unhappy with the new version of the song. To be sure, it is easy for one to become wholly engaged with a particular version of a song, so much so that any subsequent version sounds false, but I am not completely convinced this is the case in this movie. The choreography and scene setting continually seemed thematically disconnected from the songs being sung.

There are two great exceptions to this point view: “Who Am I” and “I Don’t Need Anything But You”. Both songs feature Jamie Foxx. He is the prime reason to see this movie – should you choose to see it. He has a strong pleasant voice and superb acting ability. “Who Am I” was sung by Foxx, Diaz and Wallis in an intriguing series of scenes that segued from one singer to the next. This attempt to display each singer’s emotional state and to provide a contrast between the three was again not really successful. Again and again, I can see and appreciate director Gluck’s attempt to try something new in terms of telling the story of Annie, but it just doesn’t work in this movie version.

If you want to see Annie, rent the 1982 version with Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks and Ailene Quinn as Annie. Their performances and the direction by John Huston will far more adequately tell her story and do so in the setting (i.e. 1940’s New York) where the story does not seem like an anachronism. Finney’s performance and Quinn’s singing are not that much better than Foxx and Wallis, but the nature of the story telling is just simply superior. Annie’s story is one that ought not be updated to contemporary times; it needs to be left in the odd little version of 1920-40’s America originally envisioned by the comics writer, Harold Gray.

Movie Review: Boyhood

Boyhood (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

R (for teenage drug and alcohol use)

Mom (Olivia Evans): Patricia Arquette

Dad (Mason Sr.): Ethan Hawke

Mason: Ellar Coltrane

Samantha: Lorelei Linklater

Writer/Director: Richard Linklater

Like the issue regarding the meaning of life, time is one of those eternal questions that Man has puzzled over for a long time. Einstein showed in his treatise on Special Relativity that time was valid regardless of whether one thought of it as going forward into the future or back into the past. A consequence of these calculations is that time might actually be thought of as a sequence of discrete events rather than a continuous series. In other words, the old analogy of time as a river could still be valid, perhaps more so than one might have previously thought. But in an expansion of the metaphor, it is now necessary to think of the molecules of water within that river as the discrete slices of time.

Writer/director Richard Linklater released in 2014, Boyhood, an ambitious twelve year movie project to follow a six year old boy and his family through their particular rivers and slices of time as he grows to adulthood. The story begins by introducing the viewer to Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater; director Linklater’s own daughter) and his mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) as they pick up their lives in Texas. The movie’s tone is light and the story line inconsequential in the beginning as we watch young Mason and his family move through suburban life. The story moves slowly forward in time as it carefully defines the recently divorced characters of Olivia and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), and as it shows the forces and events shaping Mason.

As a newly single mom, Olivia must make a decision on how she will live her life following her divorce. She decides to return to school which requires a move to Houston. Once there she embarks on a reasonably successful professional pathway but continues to make poor choices in terms of her husbands. For her children she takes on the role of the parent that defines the limits in their lives, while (once he returns to their lives) Mason Sr. takes on a much more laissez faire approach. The dichotomy in their approaches to life displayed by the parents plays well into the movie's theme. That is, how does one view and live one’s life: Olivia displays a devotion to the rules and structures of modern living; one needs to pay the bills and put a roof over one’s head to get through life versus Mason Sr.’s approach that emphasizes the joy of life without giving too much thought to bills and such.

Arquette is getting much of the critical praise for her performance in the press, but my opinion is that Hawke’s performance was the more nuanced and his character the more useful in propelling the story along. Mason Sr. has multiple discussions with his growing son and provides both verbal guidance and examples from his own life (good and bad) to help guide Mason into adulthood. Hawke’s character even provides  a mixed message in terms of whether he himself finally “grows” into adulthood as he leaves behind his youthful dreams of musicianship for that of accountant; or even more cliché-like, as he sells his Pontiac GTO for a mini-van.

The plot has several key scenes that help to fully explain Linklater’s vision for this movie: there is the scene by Arquette as she cries her anguish over a fit of “is that all there is”, to Hawke’s defense of selling (out) his GTO or to the final scene’s depiction of Mason and some new friends on a camping trip. This final scene is a good one but also symptomatic of my only real complaint about the movie – it tends to be pretty explicit at times about its message. In the final scene, Mason sits alongside a river with a young woman as they discuss life. They discuss in a sense the discreteness of time and wonder how one should grasp and live these moments, or rather should one merely let life grasp them; that is, just jump in that metaphorical river of time and events and float along; don’t worry about your destination, just enjoy the trip.

This is a beautifully made and inspired movie. Everyone should see it and most will likely enjoy it. I am astonished at Linklater’s vision and ability to carry out such a long-term project. His eye for the details of life is amazing, while the editing that went into the movie is so smooth it was often hard to tell when one year let up, and the next began. The movie is not a sad or overly intellectualized vision of life, but is instead a very sweet and satisfying image about how a view of time can help one gain somewhat an understanding about the meaning of life.