21st Century Literature discussion
2015 Book Discussions
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The Bone Clocks - Part II: Myrrh is Mine, its bitter perfume. (February 2015)
I burned through part two yesterday. I liked Holly in this part, although her role was pretty truncated. Hugo's an interesting character with lots of dimensions. I sorta liked him, even though he was using everyone and was the consumate liar. I had no idea with way he would go at the end. I don't want to say too much yet about Hugo, in case others are just getting into part two. I very much like the mixture of realism and fantasy. Sometimes, I wish the fantasy was reality! And, Violet, I also noticed that the quote on the back of the jacket was from Ms. Constantin. Now she is a piece of work and looks to be a recurring, and important, character.
Glad you're having fun with this book, Linda. I have this sense that it's going to get better and better and people are going to read it ever more quickly. Hope I'm right. I'm about half way through the Hugo section at the moment.
In this section I found myself wondering if Hugo is perhaps a sociopath. Definitely an interesting point of view character!
Have you read Cloud Atlas, Peter? If so don't you think the amoral predatory Hugo is another version of Robert Frobisher?
Peter wrote: "In this section I found myself wondering if Hugo is perhaps a sociopath. Definitely an interesting point of view character!"Peter, sociopath crossed my mind too at one point! I think he even comments to himself about that possibility at one point!
And Violet, I do see some resemblence to Robert Frobisher, but would have to revisit him to make a true comparison, as it did not jump out at me.
Hugo Lamb is a creepy piece of work, a right greedy sociopathic bastard. We do however get a glimpse of vulnerable underbelly, just enough to feel some pity before he succumbs to Miss Constantin's temptations. Also, we see that his milieu and its aspirations have contributed to his condition. Just as Holly's upbringing contributed to hers . . . so now I'm seeing this as equally a sociological and psychological novel. There's more balance between nature and nurture than I usually encounter in fiction. BTW, I recently learned that contemporary psychoanalysts don't say "personality" any more; the nomenclature de jeur is "character defense." Under these defenses is allegedly a natural, authentic, potentially mature self.
So. I'm now wondering if (Mitchell is thinking that) given how we live, our literature and its various genres exposes the deeper implications. I'm sure art critics have made this point, but I've no clue from whence I got the notion.
Anyway. After reading this a few months ago, I tried to re-read, but didn't want to spend time with any of the characters. So far, I only "like" Jacko, Ed Brubeck and Ester Little, and I "care about" Holly and Hugo's victims.
With the back-stabbing Stella, we were prepped to meet Miss Constantin. If we were playing a card game with psychological types, it would be psychopath trumps sociopath.
Mod
Before Hugo joins the Anchorites, he talks about how Holly is officering him a different path in life from the one he's been traveling. I'm wondering if that's directly an effect of the Horologist who took asylum in Holly, or if it's intended as more of a metaphor of the different choices the two sides represent.
Mitchell drops in several references to age and death. The title of this chapter implying the next verse of the song with its "stone cold tombs". Hugo reading Conrad's 'Youth' to the Brigadier. Still trying to decide if these kind of references are clever or a tad forced.
Mod
Whitney, when Hugo touched Holly on the forehead, I wondered if we might have an appearance by the Horologist. Is he, as he said, deeply buried and not doing anything? What will cause him to appear? As I move deepter into part three, that question seems more pressing.
Ah. Realistic effect or metaphor -- good question. I don't see Esther as doing anything. I credit it to an otherwise unaffected Holly. But I note that Esther choose her rather than Stella, for instance. And Esther's way was so different from Miss Constantin's way. Metaphorically/psychologically, I'd venture that the message is, "Damaged goods become receptive to bad magic, and undamaged goods to good magic."
Adding, 10 hours later: Miss Constantin tried with Holly first. Dr Marinus saved her with a chakra treatment.
I'm very glad when others here investigate the musical references. I always preferred instrumental works and I'm now hard of hearing. Are they forced? I vote No, or at least not much. Birds, who (usually!) sing but don't speak, share with us a gene that we can't function linguistically without. Poetry knows more about this than prose does. Also, pop music thrives as an undercurrent that we don't usually give critical attention to. Backgrounding it makes a kind of sense in that regard.
Mod
I don't know, I think that Mitchell is implying a choice for everyone. Hugo almost chooses Holly instead. And the Anchorite's headhunted him. It seems there was a bit of a struggle for his soul going on. Again, maybe a bit too obvious of a spiritual metaphor - he was attracted to Holly, but the Anchorites were attracted to and actively recruiting him.
And thank you Linda - I'd forgotten he touched her forehead. A definite invoking of the immortals. And I'm surely getting an "eye of Shiva" vibe from the whole forehead thing.
Having read and thought about existentialist teachings, for instance, I've come to see greed for things as closely related to desire to defy death. Both defy our inevitable limitations. Same for wanting to be or know or experience as much as possible.
Your mileage may vary . . . From an evolutionary stance, song is prior to speech and Hinduism is prior to most other metaphysical systems. Schopenhauer, a significant precursor to existentialist thought (and who greatly influenced Freud, without acknowlegment), concluded that all we really need to know comes from Hindu texts.
The magical/realistic/ideological stuff is both realistic and symbolic. People everywhere believe such concepts and they are used by the author symbolically to make sociological and psychological points.
Hugo's touch: interpersonally, we touch each other continually and when we allow intimacy, we can be said to grant another a kind of asylum.
Violet wrote: "Have you read Cloud Atlas, Peter? If so don't you think the amoral predatory Hugo is another version of Robert Frobisher?"It's been a couple of years since I read Cloud Atlas, but [Possible mild spoiler for Cloud Atlas] (view spoiler)
Just finished part three and need a thread! I'm definitely into this book now.
That's spot on, Peter. I hadn't read much of the Hugo section when I compared him to Frobisher but I see now he's a kind of fascinating (de)evolution of Frobisher. Hugo is the will to power in a contemporary form: greed (one is jumped back to his conversation with Miss Constantin about power). He's the personification of the rapacious dog-eat-dog entrepreneurial spirit born, some would say, out of Thatcher/Reegan politics.
Linda wrote: "Just finished part three and need a thread! I'm definitely into this book now." Thread for part three up now, Linda. Looks like you're our pace setter! I feel like the kid with asthma who's trailing a lap behind.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Great quotes from Lacewing - "we touch each other continually and when we allow intimacy, we can be said to grant another a kind of asylum." Intimacy is very much a theme of this chapter. Holly's struggle (and Mitchell cleverly makes us realise it is a struggle for her) to resist intimacy with Hugo a case in point; Hugo creating an intimacy with the tramp, by coming to his aid; and Hugo's sexual conquests which should involve intimacy but don't. "Damaged goods become receptive to bad magic, and undamaged goods to good magic." This is an interesting idea too though I'd say the distinction between damaged and undamaged in this novel is very ambivalent. How damaged is Holly and how damaged Hugo? Holly perhaps is damaged in her own eyes but not really in ours, the reader. Conversely Hugo is probably undamaged in his own eyes but very damaged in ours.
Also, I think Hugo’s a great creation as a character because no matter how unlikeable he should be we can’t help warming to him. We warm to him partly because of his virtuoso ability to charge up a constant current of vitality through language and partly because he succeeds in convincing us that, whatever he does, the real parasite of the story is the self-satisfied Chetwynd-Pitt. Also, whenever we’re on the point of disliking him he does something surprisingly tender or willingly makes an ass of himself – helping the tramp and losing the skiing race (great scene that) for example. I also really loved the passage where Mitchell makes everything vanish in the ski resort until we’re left looking at “the skinny girl in the mint-green ski suit”. Real virtuoso writing that.
I am enjoying this voice and this character now. I do find myself warming to him despite his many objective faults (to put it mildly). I think the comments about personality being a defence seem very appropriate in talking about Hugo. Mitchell does a good job of showing us how he came to be how he is, how it makes sense of the world for him, to be that way. Whilst leaving space for some of the sparks that that nurture worked with to be down to nature.
Mod
Love seems like a possible alternative to the greed/manipulation that Hugo has embraced, and while he doesn't commit to the path, the seed has certainly been planted...
I like how as a reader I actually feel like I'm traveling in time--not just because years have passed between sections, but because you're so immediately immersed into Hugo's present in such a concrete way. Reading Mitchell reminds me a little of that early '80s American TV show Voyagers where the main characters would literally fall on the ground into a new place/time and have to quickly figure out their surroundings. As a reader, you're trying to piece together what you know with what's before you and what you think might come.
The soundtrack of this novel continues to baffle me. Murakami always has a soundtrack to his books. You sense he's simply sharing some of his favourite music with us. You don't feel that with Mitchell. But neither is he using music iconically representative of its time. Mitchell's way of composing a novel is so scrupulously diagrammatic that you have the sense nothing is just randomly chucked in and yet I can't for the life of me work out what he's getting at with his musical score. Now we've got George michael, Roxy music, a medley of disco anthems i've never heard of, Herbie hancock, Miles davis and John Cage. I romped through Hugo. I'm now wondering if the narrative voice is going to become ever more sophisticated and evolved as the characters mature.
Marc wrote: "Mitchell has a real way with characters and an amazing talent for making me like (or, at least, thoroughly enjoy)"Telling distinction between liking and enjoying a character. It always baffles me when people criticise a novel because they don't like the characters, as if they only want to read about people they'd have tea and scones with. It's impossible, for example, to like Osmond and madame Merle in The portrait of the Lady but it's a piece of cake to enjoy them.
I can be guilty of not liking a book if I don't like the characters. Or perhaps I don't really need to like a character but I MUST understand what drives a character and be able to identify, even just the tiniest bit, with a character for a book to work for me. I understand rationally, the flaw in this kind of reaction, but it's hard to control!Now of course Hugo is a despicable person, but he shows just the tiniest bit of vulnerability that you can't help but enjoy him, even understand what drives him, even though you may not agree with any of his choices.
Sandra wrote: "I can be guilty of not liking a book if I don't like the characters. "Yeah I know what you mean, Sandra. I think if the author wants you to like a character you don't then you start having real problems with the book. I had that problem with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Sometimes an author can be too heavy handed in trying to manipulate your emotions through the lead character. But, like you said, Mitchell is very clever with Hugo...
Regarding the fantasy elements of this novel I have to say these are the parts I’m most uncomfortable with. But I don’t do fantasy at all. Never read Harry potter and Lord of the rings bored me so I’m probably going to be a very difficult customer to please. But both times the narrative has veered off into magical realms my feeling has been akin to when commercials interrupt a riveting film. However, I’m really hoping Mitchell can win me over and I wouldn’t put it past him.
Ben@24: In part 1, Holly repeatedly notices bird song. In this part, Hugo notices machine sounds. On page 171, he snorts some coke and then "We have liftoff. / The bass is reverberating in my bones and godalmighty that's good."Note that we open with Hugo Lamb (Christ the Lamb) in a church, listening to choir music. In the history of Western music, church organs first gave us the deep reverberation of bass.
So Mitchell's sound track is more than a song list. The ambient sounds are less obvious in the next section.
Mod
You need something to hold on to with a character--like Sandra said, to understand or identify with them. And I never really thought about it until Violet's comment (#25), but it has to come from the personality or behavior of the character and not because the author is trying to force you to relate to the character in a certain way.
Britten is the only music I've enjoyed in this novel so far! Canny observation about Holly with the birdsong and Hugo with the bass - I guess that relates to their spiritual/fantasy roles in the novel.Re the fantasy Marc, I was thoroughly enjoying Hugo until it seemed to me a bit of forced plotting when Holly so easily suddenly succumbs to his overtures. When it became clear that was so as to enable Mitchell to whisk him off to sorcery land I felt a bit cheated. Hugo's dilemmas in the real world were beginning to get really compelling. Now and again you can glimpse the overlaying lines between two different novels - a pretty common criticism of Mitchell's predisposition to fuse disparate narratives I know, but at the moment I'm feeling I'd rather have the Hugo and Holly narrative in the real world. Next chapter, which I've not yet started, is going to be decisive I feel in convincing me the realist/fantasy fusion is working.
I also was "disappointed" that Holly succumbs to Hugo. It just did not seem in character. I mean, I know we sometimes don't always think in a logical fashion when it comes to sexual things, but I felt Holly, in this section, is shown to be grown up and somewhat jaded, a little more worldly and sophisticated and so, not so easily won over by someone who is as apparently self serving as Hugo.
Sandra wrote: "I also was "disappointed" that Holly succumbs to Hugo. It just did not seem in character. I mean, I know we sometimes don't always think in a logical fashion when it comes to sexual things, but..."Exactly Sandra. My thought entirely.
Mod
Perhaps it was Holly who seduced Hugo. For a guy who spent so much time saying he'd never fallen in love and is a real womanizer, he fell hard.
It was the convenient speed with which it happened that jarred a bit for me, Whitney. Holly's armoured from head to toe and then suddenly initiates the seduction. Especially afterwards when you realise why - Mitchell needed it to happen to change the trajectory of the plot.
Yep, Linda. Holly is a bit damaged and so vulnerable and probably controlling as a defence. Makes sense that she needed to feel herself to be the instigator.
Holly goes to Hugo only after (1) he's been separated from his cohorts and (2) he's given her a hard lesson re Jacko-related guilt, tells her not to be a "self-blame junkie."As I see it, her juvenile experience with lust was deliberately contrasted with how she came to know Ed Brubeck (as boy-man). She's now able to see beneath trappings: Hugo is in love more than lust and it is this that she responds to. They mutually come to accept and see each other more fully.
Simultaneously, I note that in Holly's apartment Hugo attends to snow and wind, in contrast to machine noise. Also and symbolically, Hugo's previous life has been obliterated and then he's taken further into it by means of a blizzard and white-out conditions.
I'm seeing more and more density in this book. It's rich and subtle.
Loving your observations Lacewing. They're like the layer of archaeology beneath where I'm scratching away.
The whole conversation here, Violet, is tuning me in. I'm seeing much, much more this time around than I did when reading it alone a couple months ago.
Mod
Enjoying your insights into the musical and visual clues in the book. Maybe Mitchell should try writing screenplays, where he could really play with these elements.
Whitney, I think this one would make a good movie. I'd be glad to see it. There's no doubt more than one screen writer at work on it as we speak. Who knows? Maybe Mitchell is already involved in script consultation.Hmmm. So far, there are no overt references to movies. The only thing I caught (maybe) was tweety birds with ribbons in part 1; would that be Disney's Bambi?
Wordsworth anyone? p200-201 "Pfenninger quotes: ... " and we get the whole of a Wordsworth poem. Having zero lit crit credentials, I wouldn't try to guess what Wordsworth meant, but I sense that it's thematic -- it's given right after Hugo asks to have Psychosoterica explained to him.http://www.bartleby.com/106/180.html
Mod
"She seem'd a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years."
referring in the poem to an unnamed dead woman, but applicable in a very different sense to the Anchorites because of their immortality.
There are some wonderful emerging themes in this thread: manipulation, influence, vulnerability, tenderness, touch, tactility, tangibility, damage, defence. The humans themselves are a battleground within which other powers or forces play.
Ben wrote: "Regarding the fantasy elements of this novel I have to say these are the parts I’m most uncomfortable with. But I don’t do fantasy at all."With all Mitchell, I'm interested in the juxtaposition of disparate elements and whether/how it works. Here, the transition between realism and fantasy occurs internally between chapters (rather than at the boundary). Thus, we get a chance to scrutinise the moment in which the change occurs (e.g., Holly and Esther from the first section). Do you think they segue neatly, that they bleed into each other, or do you find the change jarring?
That's my sense, too, Whitney. Just checking if someone here had a different slant on that poem. It's so brief, and I kind of know not to assess one poem alone but to consider a poet's body of work.
Mod
I'm definitely no Wordsworth scholar myself. But given this crowd, I wouldn't be surprised if one turned up.
Hi, Ian. I enjoyed your Bone Clocks review and look forward especially to your comments on the fantasy/metaphysical/etc aspects.
Lacewing wrote: "Wordsworth anyone? p200-201 "Pfenninger quotes: ... " and we get the whole of a Wordsworth poem..."We actually only get part of the poem. It's called "Lucy":
http://www.online-literature.com/word...
Holly seems to have met with a rather lukewarm response as a voice. Several of us have commented on the linguistic restrictions imposed on Mitchell by his determination to make Holly realistic as an adolescent girl and thus a rather rudimentary purveyor of language. What then do we think of “master dissembler” and sophisticated predator Hugo Lamb? As Ben said he’s very reminiscent of Robert Frobisher in Cloud Atlas, the bi-sexual rogue and budding composer. My take so far is that I’m enjoying this part much more than the Holly section. Hugo gives Mitchell access to far more instruments in his orchestra and as a result the prose is much richer and more inspired.
Lacewing has pointed out that Mitchell is very fond of realms “of magical thinking that resist the limits of lived time.” Very true of this novel whose central theme is further clarified at the beginning of this part with the quote (on the backcover too), “What is born must one day die. So says the contract of life, yes? I am here to tell you, however, that in rare instances this iron clause may be…rewritten.” So says the wonderfully captivating Immaculee Constantin, the same Miss Constantin who was at the centre of Holly’s “weird shit”. So Mitchell continues laying down the network of intersecting paths where the characters meet on their pilgrimage through the pages of the novel. Are we loving this merging of a very real universe with an utterly surreal counterpart? Some said the bloodbath in the Holly section was a bit too Harry Potter. Does the marriage of realism and fantasy work for you so far?