It is Recommended Reading Night at PTMYB, dear friends, although, as always, I must start with a caveat: What works for me might not necessarily work for you. Having said that, this works for me, and how.
Not long before we left for Scotland, Lloyd picked up a copy of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It is a very, very rara avis of a book that drives Lloyd to use the L word -- no, silly persons, we're not talking about the pay-cable series here -- so last week, casting about for something that would divert me from my writer's block and other blues in the night, I borrowed Cloud Atlas from Lloyd. Reader, I married a smart man.
I won't even try to synopsize Cloud Atlas -- although if you want one, the Amazon link has a couple of nice ones -- but I will share a bit of it, as always keeping fingers crossed on that whole Fair Use issue. Considering that the story arc is not so much an arc as it is a boomerang, it feels odd to say that the novel ends on an optimistic note. The novel is actually comprised of six novellas, starting on a Pacific-crossing ship in 1850, proceeding to Belgium in 1931, California in the mid-1970's, present-day England, a dystopic, hypercapitalistic Korea several hundred years from now, and a postapocalyptic Hawaii; from there, we travel back through time and space: Korea, England, California, Belgium, back to the Dutch ship in the Pacific that starts it all. Once you see Mitchell's vision for how we end up, it is illogical, at least within the confines of the story, to imagine that anything could change, could be made better, and yet I was left feeling that change was possible, that the course of history could be altered for the better.
I will try to share it as best as I can, without spoilers, although if you're still afraid that the store is being given away here, I won't hold it against you if you decide not to read it. But if you find yourself craving a little optimism in pessimistic times, or if you question whether conquest and brutality really is inevitable, then this is for you.
What precipitates outcomes? Vicious acts and virtuous acts.
What precipitates acts? Belief.
Belief is both prize & battlefield, within the mind & in the mind's mirror, the world. If we believe humanity is a ladder of tribes, a colosseum of confrontation, exploitation & bestiality, such a humanity is surely brought into being...You & I, the moneyed, the privileged, the fortunate, shall not fare so badly in this world, provided our luck holds. What of it if our consciences itch? Why undermine the dominance of our race, our gunships, our heritage & our legacy? What fight the "natural" (oh, weaselly word!) order of things?
Why? Because of this: -- one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
Is this the doom written within our nature?
If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth & claw, if we believe divers races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass. I am not deceived. It is the hardest of worlds to make real. Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.
A life spent shaping a world I want Jackson to inherit, not one I fear Jackson shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living...
I hear my father-in-law's response: "Oho, fine, Whiggish statements, Adam. But don't tell me about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks that they are merely white-washed negroes & their negroes are black-washed Whites! Sail to the Old World, tell 'em their imperial slaves' rights are as inalienable as the Queen of Belgium's! Oh, you'll grow hoarse, poor & gray in caucuses! You'll be spat on, shot at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naive, dreaming Adam. He who would do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"
Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?