Sunday Pages: "Cloud Atlas"
The end of an epic novel by David Mitchell.
Dear Reader,
On Wednesdays I meet up on Zoom with a group of old friends, a quarantine reprise of when we all lived in New York and used to go out for beers every Wednesday. A running joke for months now is that my friend Chris refuses to watch Uncut Gems, even though I’m almost certain he’ll love it, despite his oft-expressed antipathy toward Adam Sandler. “Hey, Chris,” one of us will ask, “did you watch Uncut Gems yet?” (This is not, I’ll admit, one of our group’s better inside jokes).
Uncut Gems is a polarizing movie. It’s all kinds of stressful, a two hour heart attack, and is populated by unlikeable characters, beginning with Sandler’s Howard Ratner. At one point, Ratner’s had-it-up-to-here wife, played with delightful derision by Idina Menzel, tells him, “I think you are the most annoying person I have ever met,” and most viewers would probably agree.
Even so, there’s something about the Safdie Brothers film that is electric. The plot hinges on a black opal that Ratner, a Diamond District jeweler, imports from Ethiopia. There’s something magical about the gem, and Kevin Garnett—the now-retired NBA player, who plays a younger version of himself in the movie—is convinced of its otherworldly properties. And I mean convinced. Garnett, quite unexpectedly, turns in the greatest athlete acting performance of all time. You feel it. The gem is real, and it’s primal, and it’s magic—and that sense of wonder is somehow sustained throughout the entire movie, like a contact high. For two hours, my body is buzzing, watching a cast that includes a playwright, a power forward, a sports talk radio host, the Frozen chanteuse, a variety of colorful non-actors, The Weeknd, and the guy from Happy Gilmore, and yet every performance soars. This isn’t an adrenaline surge, like from an action movie; there is a metaphysical element to it, because of the titular gem. It almost feels religious. A movie about a degenerate gambler shouldn’t, but it does.
Trying to explain this to Chris for the hundredth time, I tried to think of other things that made me feel that way. Station Eleven, the novel by Emily St. John Mandel, came to mind—quite my favorite fiction work of recent memory. And, my friend Charles reminded me, Cloud Atlas. “The end,” he said, “that last quote. Oh my God!”
(It doesn’t really spoil anything, I don’t think, but I am going to quote that last line soon, so stop reading now if you’d rather me not give anything away).
Yes, yes, Cloud Atlas. Six novellas, loosely interconnected, moving through the centuries, from the early nineteenth to the post-apocalyptic future, and on every page, that Uncut Gems surge of “oh, wow, this is so cool.” A modern masterpiece. (Not that he is obscure, by any means, but if David Mitchell had a less generic name—or if he threw a “Foster” between the first and last—would he have a larger cult following, I wonder?)
The novel ends where it began, with “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,” a seaman on an ocean journey far from his American home. An experience on the trip has changed him, and he resolves, when the voyage ends, to take up the Abolitionist cause, to fight the abomination of slavery. As he ponders this, he imagines his conservative father-in-law mocking him about his choice:
“Oho, fine, Whiggish sentiments, Adam! But don’t tell me about justice! Ride to Tennessee on an ass & convince the rednecks 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 at, lynched, pacified with medals, spurned by backwoodsmen! Crucified! Naïve, 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 do 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?
Eighty million drops of seawater ousted Donald John Trump from the White House. A small percentage of that number—a few hundred thousand drops, probably—ended Lukashenko’s reign in Belarus. Twelve thousand drops flipped Georgia blue. A few hundred drops created a coronavirus vaccine. Two drops are going to be the next President and Vice President of these United States.
Every drop matters, every drop counts.
Fifty-two days.
Greg, This article is SOOO good. I was surprised that you were writing about something other than current politics, something other than the demented demise of Trump...and then you DROPPED it. The Donald Drop, right towards the end...and each drop does indeed mean so much.
This morning, while checking my smartphone for any new text from my sister, I noticed this regular Sunday article. Nervously, I read the article. Nervously because my only other Greg Olear Sunday read was the story about the Coast Guard kitchen and the piece of meat that fell on the floor. This article is actually sweet and delightful. [not that I limit myself to sweet and delightful, by no means, but the Floor Meat story put me off a little bit.]
In reflecting on what I am reading today, and on the Floor Meat article, I realize that Greg must be a literary Type 4. He likes things strange and unusual and quirky. Things that are out-of-the-ordinary. He appears to have a literary menagerie, an eclectic collection of literary things that might not even have anything else in common except that they appeal to him. My other sister is a Type 4, so I have some direct experience with this creature. [not meaning to offend here, trust me, I am quite the oddity myself, I get to hear that observation routinely from my wife] I call it the Artist type but who knows what Enneagram purists would say.
I must confess, full disclosure, I am not an Enneagram devotee or expert. No way José. In fact I would likely offend any Enneagram purist: even my wife has objected on occasion to my rather creative use of the system. I just use the character types in a rudimentary way, providing my own story embellishments as needed for specific people, to help me understand the motives and Gestalt of a particular person, to develop more sympathy and empathy and appreciation for a person. You see I am a Type 5, the Investigator-Student-Teacher. I'm always seeking to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge base. Study and investigation are my loves.
My post is basically completely unrelated to the article, thanks for reading. I am completely unfamiliar with any of the works Greg mentions in this piece, not being a literary person; my very narrow specialty is my own science fiction story universe and anything that relates to it.