21st Century Literature discussion
2015 Book Discussions
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The Bone Clocks - Part V: An Horologist's Labyrinth (February 2015)
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Visual media has vanished from the last part which, as well as containing a dystopian vision also contains a utopian one – in the form of the back to nature theme and the community spirit which Mitchell went to great pains to create in this part. The world was thus both a better and worse place without it. He kind of lets us decide. So I think, as Lacewing and Ian have pointed out, the influence of visual media did play a big and intended part in this novel. Ed was a reporter and through him we saw the Iraq war behind the newsreel so to speak but it very much called to mind the television footage. And I also think that Mitchell had oodles of fun smuggling into the text emblems of his own favourite television experiences, like Dr Who, Eastenders.
Clearly, of textual support I have none. Thanks, Whitney.I also remembered Sharon watching a show while Holly argues with Mum, and Ed turning the TV off to prove he's not a news junkie.
Whitney, i don't think anyone's saying it was a treatise on television. I said someone could write a treatise on what role popular culture, including TV, played in the novel and Lacewing and ian have been great at identifying subtexts in the novel without in any way insisting these are the only filters through which we read the book.
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The Not So Good: The scifi aspects of this section reminded me how I felt reading American Gods - there seemed to be a lot of build up to battle and then the battle wasn't all that impressive. I'm not sure, in this case, whether there was too much silliness, or if it was too over the top, of if Mitchell simply can't write a battle, but I did not particularly care for the scene inside the chapel, or whatever it was. It felt rushed, clumsy, and fairly confusing. Also, we spent so much time thinking about Jacko's labyrinth map and wondering when it would prove relevant, then when it finally shows up, it takes about 5 minutes to read through. I think this section would've been stronger if Mitchell had made the battle or final scenes more about Holly solving the labyrinth than about unleashing psycho..whatever energy about in a place that was part structure and part live being.
I also found this section to be a bit more confusing, at least initially, than the others. In the other sections, I was usually able to figure out who the narrator was and what was going on by the end of the first chapter, or at least by several pages in. Here, though, it took me a few chapters to fully understand what was going on. I think this was because Marinus has had so many lives and is surrounded by multiple characters so I had to pay a bit more attention to figure out where and when in Marinus' many lives we were in at any one point.
The Good: I loved Marinus as a character (or at least I did once I got past the initial confusion). Having Marinus around sort of answered a lot of the questions I had building up throughout the book. It also made me feel a bit more relaxed because s/he sort of served as Holly's protector throughout her life. I really loved Marinus discovering the clues left behind by Ester Little. I was also a fan of Marinus' descriptions of his/her past lives, particularly as a young child in Russia.
It's been a long time since I read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet so I can't fully remember, but wasn't there a Dr. Marinus character there too? Here, Marinus references being in Dejima surrounded by the Dutch.
With you here Caroline. Marinus was great; the battle rather less so. Yes, Marinus was the doctor on Dejima but like you I forgot until this part. Except I always thought of him as a man even when he was a woman so must have retained the memory in a backwater of my mind.
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21st Century Literature
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The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (other topics)The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (other topics)
Mitchell mentions Dr. Who, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica, and also 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' being on the television, but I'm not seeing how presence or absence makes it a treatise on television. He references what were, at least to him, touchstones of the different eras, which is directly related to his theme of time and aging.
Mitchell mentions beer, wine, gin, whiskey and homebrew, multiple times. That doesn't make the book a treatise on alcohol. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just looking for textual support for the assertion.