Who is that voice in my head?

Hearing the voice in my head change into someone totally unrecognizable is what happened to me on several occasions while reading “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell.  First and foremost, the Diary of Adam Ewing started this story off in a way which was totally unexpected and apparently set in “the spittoon of the South Pacific.”  For the entire first forty pages, I was unsure if this was the kind of story that I would enjoy because I was finding it difficult to relate to the narrator Adam because of his dialect.  Eventually I found my brain growing accustomed to the words on the page and I found my inner voice as that of Adam and I was able to wrap my brain around the story… and then it just stopped.  First it was there and the story was gone, vanishing into thin air. 

I thought my book was defective and I decided that I’d return it to the book store in a day or two and I continued on to the section about the “Letters from Zedelghem.”  It was uncanny but my brain adapted to this story more quickly and I found myself reading, sounding in my head like I were writing the letters as a spoiled, manipulative British cad.  What is interesting, now that I take the time to think about it, is that reading about Luisa Rey didn’t affect me at all.  Probably because it was written in a contemporary format of the language I understand and that my brain readily assimilates to.  It was like reading just ceased to be challenging and the words just flowed in like a typical story I’d read for entertainment.  It was something my brain could easily recognize so my thought processes relaxed. 

Then, just when I thought I was making progress, Mitchell switched gears and took me to London and dropped me into the mind of an elderly British man.  Not too difficult because the language here was also contemporary but after hearing Luisa in my head, it made my brain feel a little tired, just as though I was Timothy Cavendish taking a wearisome journey.  However, this was just a setup because Mitchell was really just warming up my inner voice up for Sonmi-451.  Reading as though I was a futuristic Korean clone was a place my brain really fought to go…at first.  Then, just like those brain teasers that spell words without vowels in order to show how the brain adapts, my brain adapted to Sonmi-451.  Then finally, Zachary arrived and it was like the stretching exercises before the actual workout worked.  For the first few pages I struggled with Zachary’s voice in my head and then he was just there as if he’d been there all along. 

The long drawn out point of all this is that I liked allowing all those characters with their different words and narratives into my brain.  I liked flexing my brain muscles to allow the characters to take root in my head and lead me down the path of their various stories.  I appreciated how Mitchell made me work for it a little, getting to know the characters via their dialect.  However, it was a clever way to get me to relate to the characters by having them all tell their stories in the first person.  I think it was this literary scheme that made the story and the characters within in it compelling.       

Melissa's Post on Northanger Abbey

Hi Melissa,
I'm just recopying your blog post here--same as I did for Jennifer--so it is more visible to everyone in the class.
EHA

I agree that Austen takes us out of the story with her personal commentary, and I particularly enjoy the extra angle she provides by doing so. It adds a more personal touch to the story, and it treats any Austen fan to intimate moments where you can see how her own mind wonders during the writing process. As Jennifer mentioned, the scene when Austen takes a moment to highlight the conflict between novels and poems, as she mentions that poems are, "...so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living..." Though her commentary is quite insightful, it does not necessary fit into the narrative, and this begs the question: Does this moment highlight her imperfections as a writer, or is it too valuable to critic? The comments she makes are truly insightful, so they cannot be disregarded as mistakes, yet they are not completely integrated which hints at her immaturity as a writer. In my opinion, though such an inclusion might not be 'proper' because it really does break the flow of the story, the point she is making is too well asserted and relevant to her time to not be seen as incredibly valuable. 

On a completely different note, I cannot ever read Austen and not be enamored with her ability to explore the tensions between the sexes. A specific quote from Mr. Tilney when he states that, “man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal” truly struck me because this so eloquently sums up the traditional gender roles men and women have lived with for thousands of years. Austen explores this truth in her story’s so well as she unveils the struggles both genders face with the rigid behavioral practice. Sure, we see the emotions that Catherine faces as she has to sit back and wait for men to approach her, but she also, and possibly unknowingly, emphasizes how difficult these standards can be on men. It would be very one sided to see the brutish Mr. Thorpe as being completely selfish. Instead, he has anxieties of his own and feels the pressures to perform, and he has just not managed to execute his actions with the proper finesse to garner Catherine’s favor. To sum it up, Austen’s exploration into gender roles helps reveal how flawed these standards can be for both sides. 

Northanger Abbey's Opinionated Narrator

Being a twenty first century reader reading an eighteenth century novel, getting through Northanger Abbey for me was a little bit on the challenging side, chiefly because of the novel’s overly “literary” writing style, which involved paragraph-long sentences and antiquated dialogue. However, an element that I also found to be initially distracting but later intriguing was the author’s tendency to inject herself into the story. We first notice this on page 33, when the narrator explains why she is quickly skimming Mrs Thorpe’s personal history. Basically, to provide a more thorough insight would entail “three or four following chapters” of redundant recollections of various characters and conversations.  I did not feel that I was taken out of the story. After all, it isn’t particularly easy for me to truly immerse myself in a story that I read more as an insight into the social climate of eighteenth century Europe. Instead, I got the sense that the author felt that both she and the reader were new to the concept of a fictional novel, and therefore felt it necessary to peel the curtain back and explain why things were. This being Austen’s first novel, this explanation seems to make sense.  

However, it is when Catherine and Isabelle are discussing novels in chapter V that the author puts her foot down and offers not just an explanation, but an opinion. In a very jarring transition, the author goes from describing Catherine and Isabelle’s mutual interest in novels to putting up a defense of novel reading while criticizing reviewers who, at the time, disparaged novel reading. This is where I feel that things get quite out of hand. The final page and a half of the chapter is spent entirely on extolling the wonders of novels, where “the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties […] are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.” To make a contemporary allusion, this, for me, would be like Zero Dark Thirty having one of its characters suddenly turning to the audience and going on a rant on everything that makes waterboarding wrong. With that said, Northanger Abbey is clearly a work whose historical context must be taken into consideration upon reading. It is obviously difficult for me to understand where Austen is coming from when she has to explain the virtues of novels, which today are universally accepted as the bearers of some of the greatest literary works. Reading the novel from a more educational, historical perspective, the author’s interjection serves as an interesting nugget of evidence of a society that regarded novels in a different light. Reading the novel purely for its fictional story, it is an unnecessary bump in the road that serves no purpose.

Jennifer's post on Northanger Abbey

Hi Jennifer--I am just reposting your comment as new post, so everyone can see it more easily!
EHA

Northanger Abbey is really unlike any book I’ve ever read. So far, I’m finding the book very Jane Austenesque. So many of the themes are similar to Pride and Prejudice, which is one of my favorite novels. So far Catherine Morland is very similar in description as Elizabeth Bennett. It seems as though both were described as pretty but on the plain side of attractiveness but their personal qualities seem to be so appealing that they are prettier for it. There are some of the same themes recurring in that in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth did not care for Mr. Darcy at all and the same is true of Catherine’s feelings toward Mr. Thorpe.
What is so intriguing about Northanger Abbey the literary telling of this story by Jane Austen. We were warned that this book constantly takes the reader out of the story and reminds the reader that they are indeed reading a book but the way in which Jane Austen does this is pretty compelling. I almost feel like the author is reading the story to me and then interjecting her intentions to me in a similar fashion to a ‘side bar’ in a courtroom. It is like she wants me to know how she intended her characters to be viewed in my mind’s eye. The reason I say so is because it seems that she mostly pulls me back out of the story when introducing a new character.
I also really like how Jane Austen talks about literature in general in the story, throwing in little bits and pieces of intrigue. On page 36, it seems as though she is going on a tirade about reviewers and the “undervaluing of the labor of the novelist.” This part of the book was quite unexpected. I wondered immediately if this was a revision to the novel after she bought it back from Benjamin Crosby & Company after they neglected to publish it after acquiring the rights from Austen’s brother. It seemed in the moment that I read the passage that she was really taking the ‘side bars’ and utilizing them to make a broader statement about the literary community and the strengths of the writers versus the weaknesses and failings of literary critics and publishers. As the story continues to unfold, I’m actually looking forward to more ‘side bars’ because I feel like Austen is taking the time to befriend me by letting me in on her little secrets. It is a little silly but it does feel like I’m making a new friend in some ways who is trusting me with her private thoughts.

A link to the trailer for the movie adaptation of Cloud Atlas, one of the first novels on our reading list.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYjSPPy08Dg