21st Century Literature discussion
2015 Book Discussions
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The Bone Clocks - Full Book (February 2015)
Lacewing wrote: "Violet@40 and Martin@41: I love meeting a writer half-way -- via novels, via online conversation -- and because it means a lot to me . . . Please. "hard for him to commit" and "scared of being bo..."
Lacewing. Your point is well made but I am with Violet - I wouldn't have any problem to say these things face to face. More than that, I am sure that good writers would rather talk about the nuts and bolts of their stuff and what worked best than hearing variations on "your book was great/crap". Hearing from someone who has understood what you were trying to do has a positive, even if they didn't like it - at least you've communicated. But I fully agree that our comments need to retain all the qualities that may be bundled up in the word civilised.
Great post Terry. I think most artists suffer a kind of hangover after great success which can impair their judgement and Bowie was a very good example. As for writers, I'd say Martin Amis is relevant here. He was a novelist largely thought to be in complete control of his gift, of doing nothing that wasn't intended. Then he came up with Yellow Dog, probably the worst novel ever by a first rate novelist. Not that i think Bone Clocks represents any kind of landslide decline in Mitchell's progress as a novelist. I don't think it's as accomplished as his last two but for me it still pulsed with vitality and daring.
I think you echo the majority opinion Caroline - that Bone Clocks wasn't as successful as Cloud Atlas or Thousand Autumns. Regarding Hugo, Mitchell has said he wants to write one uber novel so don't be surprised if some time in the future Hugo gets a novel of his own.
I'd say Bowie's problem was hanging around with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop in Berlin, and what they consumed!
Terry, a question about moderating. As moderator I've found myself listening more conscientiously to what everyone says and embracing every point of view for a while which ultimately has broadened and enriched my reading of this novel. Do you experience novels just that little bit more intimately as a result of moderating the discussion? Just curious. I've really enjoyed my first foray into moderating.
Ian, I agree that very few would set out to write something bad, and I'd be amazed if that's what happened here. But I'm not sure I agree about the necessity of intentionality in any cartoonishness, whether pejorative or not. Writing is *hard*. Balancing plot, character, voice, style, etc, etc, trying to be true to what you're trying to say and please readers, editors, publishers, trying out a new idea, trying not to make things the same as your last piece... The creation of a novel is a complex system, and many of the outcomes are emergent properties. It may be that a writer is trying to do one thing, or focus on one thing, or change one thing, and inadvertently affects another or produces an unintended effect. Of course if they notice they can try and fix that, but it may become like a game of whack - a - mole, and how long do you spend in editing hell, and how can you distance yourself enough from your creation to know how well it and its characters do all the things you wanted, or others might want?
Again, using the music analogy, I'd be surprised the Rolling Stones aren't trying as hard as they can with each new album, but can they be many people about who don't agree on some level that nothing they've done since the mid eighties (being generous) is on the same level as what went before?
I'm not slagging DM or TBC off here, although I was disappointed with it. I'm more building a general hypothesis about writing and intentionality. I think most writers will usually try their hardest, but their work may contain all kinds of potential perceptions they never intended, or couldn't see themselves. Even at the highest level. Like none of us read the same book as each other, the writer reads a different one again as he's writing it.
Violet: short answer - - definitely. I like with the book more, review it and think about its structure, and engage more proactively with all the views (not sure I've moderated one with this many comments, though...).
Terry wrote: "I'm not sure I agree that we should always say of craftsmen that all stylistic elements of their work must be intentional and deliberate, myself. Strange analogy, but take David Bowie. In my eyes, ..."Terry. The Bowie analogy is interesting. Artists are not their own best critics, but I think they have at least a suspicion when their product is bad. On the other hand, what defines an artist is inarguably the process of doing art (and arguably the achievement of a certain minimum standard in what results from the process) so I guess you have to keep working through the less-good periods. Publishing or releasing the less-good may be a matter of economics, a la Crispin Hershey/M. Amis. In respect of the music business (of which Bowie famously foresaw the demise) most of that money went to stoking the star maker machinery behind the popular song [Joni] and maybe it's no longer even controversial to say that music has benefited from the collapse of the business model - who knows which way publishing will go?
Martin, great post. I think as an artist you do need to work through those times. In the last twenty years (since the end of what many see as his dodgy period), he has produced some astonishing work (if not as high profile). He got there partly by really shaking up his process (being in a band for a few years)... I wonder if there are writers who've done the same? Can't think of any of the top of my head. [keeping in mind throughout this that it's highly debatable whether DM is even in a slump. TBC was Booker longlisted. I personally see this as well below standard, but nobody else read the same book as me...]
Mod
It felt to me like the whole immortals thread was there as a kind of compare/contrast (Lacewing pointed out many of these examples previously) to our own mortality, as if the author felt it necessary to use as a foil against Holly's mortality and how she dealt with each personal loss (her brother, Hugo, her husband, etc.). But personally, I felt like the fantasy element actually distracted from Holly's story rather than adding to it. I thoroughly enjoyed many of the characters and many passages and I won't hesitate to read more of Mitchell's writing, but too many parts seemed forced or half-formed (mainly, for me, the Iraq war and ecology issues, and how predictable the maze-at-end-of-battle and redemption-of-Hugo were). It was like some wonderful puzzle pieces that didn't quite fit into a whole picture (or, did, but the pieces themselves looked better than the composite image).
After having read this book, did anyone find themselves thinking about mortality in a different light?
Thanks Marc. Agree with your synopsis. Can't say it made me think about mortality in any light much until the last page when Mitchell nudges you to think of Holly as both mortal and undying with the ferrying off into the future of her granddaughter and adopted grandson. There was a haunting poignance about the end I felt.
Re-mortality.Simple answer, yes. The main thing that scares me about dying is not ME ceasing to exist. I mean, I won't exist anymore so I won't know. Haha But what bothers me is never being able to be with the people I love. I would miss them so! So for the horologists, they live on again and again and all the mortals they grew to love within a certain life do not. And you would know that as a horologist having been through it before so you would probably shy away from that after a while. Then life would seem pointless in a way. I mean, what if you didn't care for your fellow horologists? Perhaps you would long for death?
Mod
"We live on, as long as there are people to live on in."
(Something Holly thinks as she's reciting a familiar bedtime phrase that has been passed down in the family. It's also an ironic truth for the immortals in the book.)
The message there seems to be that our immortality lies in our ability to touch the lives of those around us and younger generations. It's actually an incredibly sentimental book from that standpoint.
Sandra, that does seem like a very hollow kind of life (to live on while those you know/love die). Hopefully, we all enjoy the time we do have with those we love, and they with us.
Mitchell's collections of novellas (that together are supposed to add up to a novel) are the closest analogy I can think of to a musical artist making an album. With any album, there must be a threshold issue as to how much diversity can be held together before the integrity of the album suffers. However, ultimately, we have to listen to the album the artist chose to release.When it comes to the Rolling Stones, people tend to forget that the initial critical reaction to "Exile on Main Street" was how sloppy and poorly recorded it was. Our ears weren't able to adjust, so that we could hear and appreciate the songs beneath the apparent noise.
If you take away Mick Jagger's tendency to self-parody, the playing on post-70's Stones albums is just as good as it's ever been. It took me a long time to appreciate it, and I only managed to do so when I started making playlists of the songs during this period and not comparing them to earlier material.
The Stones album that causes me the greatest difficulty is Black and Blue. I still haven't bought it on CD in order to reassess it. However, I think the problem with it is that we weren't prepared to adjust our ears enough to tolerate their embrace of such diverse musical genres as reggae and disco.
There was a time when I wasn't content with a Bowie album unless Mick Ronson was playing guitars on it. It took Bowie's abrupt dismissal of the Spiders to make me open my ears to what he was trying to achieve.
Only a week ago, I was listening to some Tin Machine (which I had originally scorned) and thinking I really hadn't given it a fair go.
Both Mitchell and Murakami ask us to suspend disbelief when we enter their worlds. Some people are just not temperamentally suited to the task, just as some people can't put up with Doctor Who.
There are some readers or film audiences who just scorned the whole concept of comet birthmarks in Cloud Atlas. However, to get hung up about something like that simply denies you the opportunity to appreciate the pleasures that wait behind the locked door. There was a time (like Tibor Fischer on Martin Amis) when Mitchell was being accused of being masturbatory in CA, which really only distracted attention away from the fact that the novel was about power, predation and the role of women.
I think we have to be less precious in judging how authors embrace genre stylings in pursuit of their own concerns. Sometimes it's not a matter of their success or failure, but our ability to adjust our ears to a new sound.
Ian wrote: "Mitchell's collections of novellas (that together are supposed to add up to a novel) are the closest analogy I can think of to a musical artist making an album. With any album, there must be a thre..."I must be one of the ten people who liked Tin Machine. The Stones is a great example of genre "exploitation" and how creative that can be. White English boys in the 60's, trying to play the blues, getting it wrong, but coming up with something great in the process. The point is, no one could accuse Keith of not respecting the blues - if you are going to borrow like that, you have to be sincere; otherwise it's just pastiche or plain silliness (if it comes to that not so many soul songs better than Young Americans, or It Stoned Me). Lyle Lovett may be the best exploiter of country idioms for his own twisted purposes, but he sings Stand by Your Man like he means it.
Translate that to writing and if you produce hackneyed third rate SF (not that I'm accusing DM here) it is no justification to say that actually you were writing Literature.
This is the first Mitchell novel I've read and I'm enjoying it very much. Perhaps my enjoyment stems from the fact that I'm not so much concerned with the story line. I like his characters, their quirks and their relationships. I'm about half through the book and looking forward to the rest.
Mod
And sometimes things that initially sound bad turn out to be bad. The effectiveness of Mitchell's use of genre elements is a perfectly legitimate topic. People's opinions may ultimately prove to be ill informed, petty, or completely beside the point, but that doesn't make the dialogue itself somehow improper. Discussions of comet birthmarks may get tiresome, but they don't preclude more esoteric concerns. There's room for all levels of discourse and inquiry; implying that any of them are somehow wrong to engage in is just, wrong.
Whitney wrote: " Discussions of comet birthmarks may get tiresome, but they don't preclude more esoteric concerns. There's room for all levels of discourse and inquiry; implying that any of them are somehow wrong to engage in is just, wrong."I don't have a problem with any level of discussion of any subject matter, nor do I consider that other people's discussion is tiresome, if that's what they want to do. It's their discussion.
Mod
Mod
There's no need to delete anything. I was just getting frustrated that I hadn't obtained any substantive responses to several attempts to initiate discussion of a few issues I had an interest in, e.g., suspension of disbelief, Wordsworth, spirituality, Mitchell's allusions to current religio-politics, the difference between immortality (the body survives indefinitely) and eternal life (the survival of the soul after the death of the mortal body). This thread seemed to be the place to raise them.
Mod
Okay, should have checked befoe posting. I've written a few posts out of frustration as well. By all means - start those discussions! This seems the crowd to respond. I'll be over in the corner with my comic books.
Mod
Not sure this gets at your immortality vs eternal life issue, but I started to think of the Anchorites as spiritual vampires and wondered if they also weren't a bit of an analogy for the human race's relationship to this planet. (Interesting, that historically, anchorites referred to those who withdrew from secular life to pursue a more pure religious devotion and were sometimes referred to as "living saints".)
Hmmm. I think I agree with Ian [sometimes we need to adjust our 'ears'], Martin [writing is different to music] (though I still find the analogy instructive), and Whitney [saying it can sometimes be our 'ears' doesn't mean it always is]. Good stuff. I feel that talking about this stuff is helping me understand my response to books (and to The Bone Clocks).
My problem with this novel is essentially very simple. The last time I looked forward to reading a novel with so much anticipated excitement was when Delillo's The Falling Man came out. I had recently discovered him and was so excited. However, that novel proved to be a disappointment. Exact same thing happened with The Bone Clocks. It was like the love letter I had been waiting for when it arrived in the post. I was almost afraid to open it. My hopes were up too high. I knew that. But even after ten pages I knew it wasn't going to be the love letter I hoped it'd be. I wanted Mitchell to go up a gear; instead he had gone down one. That was my feeling. Questions about suspension of disbelief or ragged stitching together of genres were secondary. Somehow it was as if he was using inferior brushes and paints and I never quite stopped feeling that. I'd still include him in my favourite twenty living authors but he's slipped a couple of places down when i was expecting him to cement a place in the top ten.
Marc wrote: "...and thus they were like adding a triangle player to a few songs on the album."The only prescription is more cowbell!
Marc wrote: "Not sure this gets at your immortality vs eternal life issue, but I started to think of the Anchorites as spiritual vampires and wondered if they also weren't a bit of an analogy for the human race's relationship to this planet."There is definitely the beginning of an environmentalist theme in the last chapter. I don't think the dystopia has resulted solely from an economic crisis.
What I was thinking about came from my attempt to process the Charlie Hebdo murders. I imagined a Heaven in which there might be two rival deities who fought their battles through humans on earth. Then I wondered whether this was the whole point Mitchell was getting at with the Horologists and the Anchorites.
I'm a bit rusty on the detail. However, I can't recall whether he ever mentioned any Gods, unless the immortals are supposed to be Gods.
In the last few days, prompted by the Wordsworth quote, I wondered whether the immortals were trapped between heaven and earth. They can't quite leave the substance of fleshy humanity, in order to arrive in Heaven, where if that's part of Mitchell's cosmogony, presumably there is eternal life, but in a spiritual rather than a physical form.
These are more Judaeo-Christian concepts of Heaven, and Mitchell might not embrace them at all. I just wanted to see what others felt.
I don't think Mitchell has finished with these themes yet.
He might come to rue Somni in his chronology as I can see the potential of a great novel charting the state of affairs at the end of the Bone Clocks to the advent of the world in Sloosha's crossin. That'd be a great book.
The very focal insertion of bigoted Christianity into the text at the end of TBC was a bit odd, as if it was part of a to-be-continued narrative. That woman and her preaching seemed the one element that undermined the community spirit. Religion was pretty low key in the book until then. Struck me as peculiar at the time. Unless he's already sowing the seed for the next installment.
Marc wrote: "Ian, do you think most people who didn't embrace this book had issues with suspension of disbelief? Suspension of disbelief is sort of like a handshake between reader and writer, an informal contract: the reader agrees to take at face value as real-to-the-story whatever the writer presents and the writer agrees to make the story as true to itself as possible."I don't want to generalise to that extent. Having read a lot of reviews, both negative and positive, I felt there is definitely one set of negative reviews that just didn't like Mitchell's embrace of fantasy at all, as if it wasn't a legitimate subject matter for "serious literary fiction".
If you're temperamentally disposed to suspend disbelief, then there is still your point as to whether the author lived up to their part of the pact.
You also make a good point about the author making the story as true as possible.
However, I'm not sure whether Mitchell regarded himself as bound by this rule in this case. Maybe in Thousand Autumns, but not here?
I think the novel deliberately adopts a cartoonish, comic-strippy, boys/girls own adventure modus operandi, at least in part.
As is usually the case in all of Mitchell's works, the issue that confronts me is whether the juxtaposition of disparate elements works.
Readers are not agreed on this issue. However, I re-read the passage in the first chapter where we're introduced to Esther Little to focus on the transition from realism to fantasy and ended up admiring how he had achieved it.
Violet wrote: "It was like the love letter I had been waiting for when it arrived in the post. I was almost afraid to open it."Sometimes it pays to leave a love letter unopened on the mantelpiece for a few days before opening it ;)
On the bright side I won't perhaps have such high hopes for the next one. :)
Violet wrote: "On the bright side I won't perhaps have such high hopes for the next one. :)"Novel?
Mitchell novel. The novel I'm now most looking forward to is the next Nicole Krauss. What about you?
Violet wrote: "Mitchell novel. The novel I'm now most looking forward to is the next Nicole Krauss. What about you?"I wasn't sure whether you were referring to your next love letter! I didn't know there was a new Krauss on the way.
Maybe:
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray
Ian wrote: " I imagined a Heaven in which there might be two rival deities who fought their battles through humans on earth. Then I wondered whether this was the whole point Mitchell was getting at with the Horologists and the Anchorites."That would be a rather Gnostic (or perhaps Manichaen) viewpoint. Which is possible: Harold Bloom had a thing about Gnosticism, so it's a thing in some literary circles. But I rather thought TBC's cosmology had no gods, just a mysterious afterlife. Certainly several characters denied the existence of any gods.
Some additional context with respect to suspension of disbelief and the supernatural.Coleridge is credited with coining the term "suspension of disbelief" in relation to a creative project he joined in with Wordsworth:
"... It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
"Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us ..."
Mitchell quotes one of Wordsworth's Lucy poems in TBC.
In Wordsworth's "Ode (Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood)", he seems to suggest that we experience the likes of Heaven when we are children, but gradually we grow up, become creatures of habit and put it all behind us:
"I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway...
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won."
Holly hears voices during her childhood. Only later do we learn that they were probably the immortals.
I know this is a long bow, but I wonder whether, despite becoming a wife (spouse) and mother (parent) and doing all the things that might normally lead to an "habitual sway" (it happens to us guys as well), Heaven and the voices remained with Holly, at least on and off, over the course of the novel.
In a way, I want to speculate that the subject matter of the novel is/includes the suspension of disbelief, including the context in which the term originally arose.
I think suspension of disbelief is more of a mischievous recurring aside than a theme per se. Mitchell preempting and defending himself against criticism on that front. In fact I'm wondering if all the criticism he's had hasn't affected his storytelling a little negatively. The sense that it's difficult to establish exactly what the central theme of this novel is - if it's mortality I'm not sure it has any revelations to offer - is perhaps a clue to the misgivings lots of people had. It was a lot of fun but I'm still a bit baffled by its governing aesthetic aims.
Mod
I share your bafflement. Mitchell has said that he wrote the book as a response to thinking about his own mortality. I think people have already pulled out some good bits about how it relates. You and Jim were discussing the maturation of Holly as representative of the maturation of humanity in general, and you saw Holly as representative of how a soul lives on in their descendants and in the lives they touch, as opposed to the more literal immortality of the Horologists. Marc saw the Anchorites destructiveness in their quest for immortality as representative of the destructiveness of ongoing generations of humanity. Ian delved into some of the religious / spiritual ramifications of the types of immortality discussed.
So is the book largely a meditation on mortality, sort of a meandering contemplation of the implications? Or, as you asked, is there a more definitive central theme or conclusion?
Mod
I would have to agree. If this had been a book by an author I'd never heard of, my response would likely have been much more positive.
Peter wrote: "That would be a rather Gnostic (or perhaps Manichaen) viewpoint."Thanks, Peter. I haven't read much about this subject matter, but it's been interesting to read about Valentinian Gnosticism in this context. There is mention of the semi-divine in Valentinius, although they were positioned between God and nature. Wood's review of TBC partly complains about the Gnosticism that he detected.
Mod
I love the part in the interview you linked to where he says: "But I don’t think about genre. This is how I live professionally. This is what I do. I like to test lines like that, whether they’re true or not. And it’s justified by the text. It’s not just me being smarmy and post-modernist."
I really need to go back and look at the Wordsworth poem and think more about the implications--I gave that next to no attention when I was reading the book.
As for the suspension of disbelief theme/thread... This sort of plays out as a trust-your-gut notion in the book. One could read this as an argument for faith... perhaps?
Whitney--I don't think there is a more central theme in this book than love and mortality. Lots of other ideas and lesser themes, but nothing as central.
It's a good interview and a good attitude to genre/non-genre.
First question, do you find writing easy? No writer would ever respond to that in the affirmative even if, now and again, it's true. It's like admitting you don't put much thought into what you do.
Marc wrote: "Sorry to disappear there for a few days, but lots to chew on in this thread. Ian, I didn't really feel like Mitchell invoked any references to God (or gods)--the immortals seemed to be serving thei..."Marc, my own experience is that the knee jerk reaction is valuable but suspect and I think it is great that you have posted after time for reflection. I'd also observe that writers' own comments on their work is suspect for all sorts of reasons. My own more considered reaction is that I liked this book more after it stayed in my head for a few days beyond finishing it.
I think some of the comments that are out there about this book, particularly when they go so far as suggesting that DM is trying to create a theology (it would have to be an anti-theology, surely) verge on the silly. but Dm's own reported comments regarding genres are disingenuous unless he's just saying he's entitled to use what comes to hand in the cultural froth that surrounds us.
That whole use of a poem thing is suspect - it is unfair the expect a reader to derive an emotional resonance from interpolated works unless (s)he happens to be familiar with the work; and unreasonable to expect that readers should check out the reference. Too easy to pile on borrowed gravitas by invoking T.S. Eliot or whoever.
For me, on reflection, the question posed by the contrasting immortals was a moral one. Are we, as individuals, prepared to accept that our posterity is achieved through the genetic chain that links us back to the first people (less, unfortunately, the fictional conceit that links consciousness through different generations) and therefore to work for continuation and progress of the species; or are we irrevocably tied to a notion of personal survival and remaining in a state of willed suspended adolescence which seems to be an affliction de nos jours?
In this sense the horologists would represent not so much a denial of time's arrow, as a mitigation - our elements do continue in the universe; it is only that the particular combination of them that makes up the accidentally conscious "I" do not endure, outside the confines of the fiction.
In other words, humans are desperate for some continuity beyond their own short physical lives; Horologists represent the philosophic accepting response to this problem and the other gang illustrate the narcissistic response of doomed egoism. It's been the same since Dorian Gray consigned that horrendous daub of a picture to his attic.
By the way, I am not suggesting that this is a key to the author's conscious or unconscious intent and if DM was thinking along these lines as he typed the pages of Bone Clocks, I'm sure that he's too smart to express, or even to sense, that fortune cookie reduction so unambiguously as I have suggested it.
Interesting that Ishiguro was saying the other night that he'd got a vampire novel in development but had to suspend it due to the success of Twilight (presumably associations were too vulgar for this writer's tender sensibilities).
Inevitably, writers will be drawn to writing about the preoccupations of the times; and forms of immortality (whether by extending one's own life or taking the power over life and death, as per American Psycho and just about everything else) detain us immoderately.
From your post I would only take issue with the notion that good vs evil is an inherently Christian issue. We should go back to the Icelandic sagas that DM makes much of in this book. The contrast between right/wrong is clear in the pre-Christian sagas. It's the notion that it is not permissible to do harm, even to avoid the harm of damage to self-interest, that could be termed Christian. The pagan gods are mostly pragmatists in this respect. the Judaic tradition merely asserts that if oxygen masks drop from the panel above, you should fit your own before attempting to assist the person in the next seat; which is exactly what the stewardesses keep telling me. i.e. right and wrong is constant, but our views on what the contrast obliges us to do are variable.
Marc wrote: "I really need to go back and look at the Wordsworth poem and think more about the implications--I gave that next to no attention when I was reading the book.As for the suspension of disbelief theme/thread... This sort of plays out as a trust-your-gut notion in the book. One could read this as an argument for faith... perhaps?"
Here is a link to the wiki article on Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Gray
I was originally interested in the implications of the following comments insofar as they might relate to "The Bone Clocks":
"Lucy Gray, like the Lucy of the Lucy poems and Ruth of Wordsworth's "Ruth" are, according to H. W. Garrod, part of "an order of beings who have lapsed out of nature – the nature of woods and hills – into human connections hardly strong enough to hold them.
"Perpetually they threaten to fall back into a kind of things or a kind of spirits.""
This order of beings seems to be trapped between the divine and the human or nature, i.e., in the Gnostic context, they might be seen as "semi-divine".
Hopefully, someone who is still reading TBC now can confirm that God or the divine doesn't get a look in. I don't recall.
This topic isn't meant to be incredibly heavy or serious. For me, it's primarily a hook upon which to hang a fantasy, whose major quality is its playfulness and cartoon/comic strip character.
Mortality falls on a continuum that includes mortality, immortality and the divine, plus possibly the semi-divine, if they aren't just former mortals.
As far as I am aware, Mitchell is an atheist, so I'm not expecting him to posit a theology. I think James Wood took him far too seriously in his review, probably because Wood has thought and written about these issues for decades, and sees them wherever he looks.
Belief definitely fits in with (religious) faith. Arguably, disbelief might equally fit in with atheism or agnosticism.
However, what Coleridge and Wordsworth were trying to do in pursuit of the argument about the suspension of disbelief was open up poetry to a fantasy about which you had suspended disbelief. In a way, poetry might constitute an alternative realm to religion.
If you read many of the early reviews of TBC, many readers were turned off by the fantasy themes, quite apart from any stylistic issues about how successfully they were integrated into the whole.
This is similar to the environment into which Coleridge and Wordsworth launched their joint venture.
In retrospect, all of Mitchell's novels require us to suspend disbelief. There has been some sort of migratory soul in all of his books apart perhaps from BSG, although even that story might not be concluded yet.
You don't have to be theistic or believe in souls to derive pleasure from Mitchell's fiction. However, I think the pleasure is greater if you can and do suspend disbelief.
Stylistically, I don't think it's adequate to piggy-back Wordsworth or anybody else, just by name-checking them mindlessly. However, I suspect/speculate that Mitchell is intentionally placing himself and readers on the boundary between realism and the suspension of disbelief.
Of course, having placed us there, I think he was also hoping that, most of all, we would have fun.
Ian wrote: "Marc wrote: "I really need to go back and look at the Wordsworth poem and think more about the implications--I gave that next to no attention when I was reading the book.As for the suspension of ..."
In addition to the final section in Ireland, which deals with the re-emergence of religion as a negative force and includes the observation that if you could reason with a religious person, there'd be no more religious people; DM has Holly's reaction to glimpsing the migratory souls crossing the sands, where she wishes she could show the religious how deluded they are - this is rather a clumsy passage given that her "insight" is based on fantasy, but I think it's clear that Holly speaks for the writer in this moment and I'd be amazed to discover he was anything other than a non-believer.
I found your post fascinating.I'd like to add that fantasy is always with us, particularly in the context of English culture (don't suppose Shakespeare meant the Tempest to be seen as history).
I don't know much lit crit but have always distrusted "artistic movements" which seem to be most convenient for teachers and critics with an axe to grind. Not sure that anyone outside the metropolitan elite sets out to follow a lead - mostly individuals write about what preoccupies them and it's not surprising that shared locations and historic moments generate similarities.
In modern times, most of our best selling authors write fantasy, so the only question is whether "serious" novelists are permitted to write it - a meaningless question surely.
As I understand the Lyrical Ballads project, Coleridge and friend wanted to adopt more natural (ballad) forms. Studying those forms they couldn't help but note that the subject matter of English traditional folk music that sustained the ballad form is full of faery stories that have been around since the Celtic period. At every time of English cultural history there's been a willingness to suspend disbelief for the sake of the tale and a deep interest in the fantastical - whether fashionable or not. [Maybe that's why English actors do so well in the blue screen CG movie epics].
True. But there's a difference between doing something that happens to fail (whether at the time or retrospectively) and writing something that is deliberately bad. Relatively few writers take the latter approach, unless they're trying to get a Bad Sex Writing Award. That's all I would mean by deliberate or intentional. Personally, I don't think that Mitchell deliberately writes badly, even if some readers feel that his writing is bad. On the other hand, if a reader feels that his writing is "cartoonish", I'd speculate that there was a pretty high chance that he (Mitchell) was aiming for that effect and he didn't think of it in pejorative terms. Any pejorative implications in "cartoonish" are subjective on the part of the particular reader.