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Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
I have to say it took me some time to get in sync with this book. There seem to be so many books now with multiple plots that the reader just knows will come together in some coherent way. Maybe I'm getting tired of that premise. But I did, at last, get that magic moment, and for me, it all hinged around that story book, and the various attempts and obsessions at translation. When you examine the question, how many of our ancient scripts are dependent on the choices made by the translator(s)? How many translations of Dante's Inferno are there? And translated one way, a word means owl, another way it means omen. Which is it?Even books that are written in the reader's native language can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The concept that there are so many of us who are obsessed or addicted to the written word, warms my heart, to say the least.
It was hard for me to get a grip on those different subplots at the beginning too. I read it on my big car trip to the Southwest last fall. I just had my Kindle and my phone with me so I didn't have easy access to a broad introduction like the one Gina so helpfully posted.In time, I settled into the stories, which I found more and more engrossing the longer I read. Yesterday, I listened to an online Book Club Favorites interview with Doerr which his publisher Simon & Schuster organized. See
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqJeqLFGPBk
I found this very interesting. Doerr discussed how he worked and and freely answered questions from the online listeners. He is very animated and enthusiastic about books and his readers. He said that he started the book with just the characters of Anna and Omeir and the siege of Constantinople. As his theme broadened to emphasize the preservation of a book (and hence culture) through the centuries, he added more characters. He does not work from beginning to end. Rather, he writes parts of the book out of order, writing the sections that interest him most at the time. He does this to get a feel for where the story is going and how he can link the different parts. He tried to put in "resonances" of the stories in some of the other subplots.
There were times at the beginning when I felt like I was reading separate short stories, but in the end the structure of the book as a whole worked for me.
How about the rest of you?
I rarely look at reviews after I've read a book, but I wondered at how this book was reviewed. There were so many really good reviews but two reviews panned it (James Woods in The New Yorker and Ron Charles in the Washington Post). I'll just say that I disagree with both of them in big and little ways. I do think that they are worth reading, but beyond that I'd rather discuss the book itself ... which I really loved.Here's a link to the Bookmarks aggregation of reviews on Literary Hub:
https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all...
If I were forced to describe this book in the most general way and with the fewest words, I might say it's about the costs and risks that love imposes on us ... when we love others deeply ... and when we also love a book.
I’m at the “engrossed” stage after struggling at the beginning to grasp structure of the novel. I’ll refrain from comment until I finish other than to say I’m enjoying it very much.
Larry,I looked at the review aggregation site you mentioned:
Literary Hub: https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all...
I was curious about the negative reviews in the New Yorker and the Washington Post. Obviously the structure of the book didn't work for these reviewers - fair enough, but those reviews were downright snarky.
Ah well, to each his own.
Ann D wrote: "Larry,I looked at the review aggregation site you mentioned:
Literary Hub: https://bookmarks.reviews/reviews/all...
I was curious about the negative reviews in the New Yorker and the Washington Post. Obviously the structure of the book didn't work for these reviewers - fair enough, but those reviews were downright snarky.
Ah well, to each his won. ..."
I expected better from them. They are intelligent. James Wood is often brilliant, which explains why he is a Professor of Literary Criticism at Harvard. But still ... A lot of it just gets down to what you said at the end "to each his own." And the Romans got this sort of right 2,000 years ago, with the saying, "De gustibus non est disputandum." I say "sort of right" because if we all really believed that everyone's opinion about everything was equally valid, then why would we even have conversations like we are having now.
In the cases of these two critics, I'll keep on reading them, but I have to confess that there are a few critics whose reviews I have stopped reading because their reviews on more than one occasion just seem so ignorant ... and divergent from my own opinions.
Another general statement then. I thought that this novel was difficult because of that structure, the switching between time periods, but it more than repaid the effort in reading it. And the structure was totally essential. I don't know what the novel would have been without that structure.
Ann, at the risk of diverting our attention from the novel, here's a link to an interview with James Wood. It's titled "James Wood on How Criticism Works." And it is pretty good at doing that.https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2020/1...
In the author's notes at the end, Doerr says that he wrote the book as a paean to books. I like that he says that, but I don't think that really says enough about the author as a writer or any other writer, for that matter. It seems to me that most authors can honestly say the same. Does it seem like I am panning this book? I'm not. I simply feel that Doerr does not give himself enough credit. Or maybe he's just a humble guy.
I am trying to remember a book that I have read in recent years, where so many of the characters have stayed with me after I finished the novel. I keep thinking about Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance ... and even some of the minor characters.
Thanks for the link to the Wood interview. He certainly is very erudite.As a reader, I don't think we are coming from the same place. I like beautiful writing, but great storytelling is also a prerequisite for me. As far as I am concerned, (not all will agree and that's fine) this book has it in spades. Wood dislikes this book because he finds it too didactic, too optimistic and too constructed by the author.
I did not find the book too optimistic, and I appreciated that the different stories ended with a measure of hope. Doerr's interrupted stories frustrated me at times, but his method definitely kept me reading to find out what happened.
Below is a quote from Doerr about his own approach to reading. It also applies to me:
" I got into reading to leave my own life – not to escape my own being, but to multiply it by exploring other experiences"
Guardian interview: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Mary Anne,Good point about the difficulty of translating ancient texts and the search for the original meaning. Whenever I read that only a minuscule number of the books by ancient writers even survive, I feel sad and wonder what we have all missed out on.
I wonder if Doerr call CCL " a paean to books" because a fictional ancient text is used to tie his whole novel together. Libraries also play a positive role, although I found the one on the Argos with all its fake "truth" pretty demoralizing.
Ann D wrote: "Thanks for the link to the Wood interview. He certainly is very erudite.As a reader, I don't think we are coming from the same place. I like beautiful writing, but great storytelling is also a p..."
Ann, I agree with everything you said here ... the quoted and the unquoted!
Like most everybody else I was a little bowled over at first by the wide and diverse net he was casting. But the strength of his writing carried me through, even if my suspension of belief was a little strained at times. By midbook though, I was ploughing right along.If I have any major quibble with this book it isn’t so much with the book per se, but with the fact that I’m beginning to tire of his shtick. This was my 4th book by Doerr. All the Light We Cannot See and Four Seasons in Rome with you guys here in CR. About Grace on my own.
Three of these four books relied on the same formula. Find a bunch of disparate individuals and situations, hop back and forth between them seemingly willynilly, then tie everything together at the end. He does it very well, but I’d like to see him stretch his wings beyond his familiar structure sometime.
Ann, I love that quote from Doerr you posted above from the Guardian, about why he reads. That really fits for me too.I read this book last year so some details are less clear now but, like many others, I was initially confused by the structure and characters of the book and it took a few sequences for me to get into gear with the story. Once I did, my enjoyment continued to grow. I’m not tired yet of this form of novel, as long as it’s done well. I particularly enjoyed reading Anna’s story while I was reading a book on the history of libraries and collections and materials such as manuscripts. Parallels between books, even small ones, are fun.
I read Ron Charles's review and others in Goodreads before starting this book and admit I was probably driven by confirmation bias to seek out reviews that agreed with my initial assessment of the book synopsis (which was, "this book sounds like a stretch"). So unfortunately I could not get into this book, as much as I appreciated "All The Light We Cannot See." I don't mind novels with different timelines and narrators, but was turned off by the timeline that takes place in the modern day. I found myself wanting to stay in Constantinople. Not to be political, but the notion of en environmental terrorist also turned me off, as so much if made of left-wing terrorism, even if I know the author is himself concerned about climate change and its impact on humanity. Maybe six or more years ago, I could have looked past this. I'm sorry I couldn't get to the part where the book builds momentum.
I finished tonight. I have appreciated the discussion here. I listened to the interview on YouTube and appreciated hearing AD describe his writing style. Here is my review comment: The structure was challenging. The plot was interesting. Unfortunately, I didn’t connect very strongly with any of the characters. In some ways it felt like 5 separate stories were forced to come together to satisfy AD’s need to create a complex novel. The writing was fabulous and the research AD did was clearly evident. Four stars instead of 5 because of my mixed reaction and because I think ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE was a better book.
Good posts everyone. It's nice to see a variety of views here.It will be interesting to see what Doerr does next. He spent 10 years working on Alll the Light You Cannot See and 7 years on CCL, so it might be awhile. It would be nice to see him work with a less structured and complicated plot. He's gone about as far as he can go in this direction.
I liked Alll the Light You Cannot See somewhat better also. It struck me as very original and we were allowed to spend more time with the characters.
There are a lot of similarities between ALL THE LIGHT and CLOUD CUCKOO LAND. Both books are works of historical fiction which have parallel stories that eventually converge. They also have seriously handicapped protagonists -Marie Laure in ALL THE LIGHT who is blind, and Omeir who has a cleft palate - a defect which makes him a monster in the eyes of strangers. Orphans make appearances in both books- Werner in Germany, Anna in Constantinople, and Zeno in Idaho. Doerr is obviously drawn to young characters who are struggling with terrible disadvantages.
I like the characters in both books. My favorite in CCL is Anna, and I appreciated her gentle love story. It was nice to find some happiness in a book that dealt so much with danger and hardship.
But the character who touched me most in this book was Zeno - -bullied because he was so different, damaged by the trauma of war, coming close to love in Korea, but never really attaining it. Yet even his life had some redeeming aspects. He found meaning in translating CCL and sharing it with the children. At the end he became an actual hero - a term rather meaninglessly applied to his father at his funeral.
I loved Zeno too feeling that he had a tragic life before the most tragic ending in the story. I remember his story the most. Konstance didn't really appeal to me.
Anna and Omeir were favorites of mine, especially Anna. I liked the entire arc of her story and the peace she found. Zeno’s story was heartbreaking. The ups and downs, with terrible downs. His work with CCL and the children at the library seemed to be blessings in his life. I looked forward to reading about him to. I enjoyed reading about the futuristic library but that segment didn’t have the same emotional appeal.
After fifty pages, I was ready to quit, but I pressed on and by page 100, I found it intriguing. The writing is wonderful, and while I am not interested in all the characters, I expect to finish. I really liked Four Seasons In Rome; but not so much All the Light We Cannot See. I love his appreciation of books and libraries in CCL..
And I enjoyed how Doerr expressed his appreciation for libraries through the various libraries, and librarians, he created for this novel.
Did you all catch his sneaky little joke in calling the librarian Marian?https://youtu.be/gZpl47SaMCo
Sue wrote: "And I enjoyed how Doerr expressed his appreciation for libraries through the various libraries, and librarians, he created for this novel."It is amazing how close we are getting to having the Library and the Atlas as described on the Argos. I am a frequent user of Scribd and Perlego for books. The second one ONLY has about 750,000 books (with the selection best described as academic or "serious") ... the former has more. And when it comes to wondering around cities, I sometimes do just that with YouTube or Google Street View
For looking at art galleries, there are some with some amazing virtual tours, where you can move from room to room and move up toward a paining or work of sculpture for a closeup.
I want to add that that a real problem by having an almost infinite number of books that are accessible through something like the Library is trying to answer the question "What is the next book that I should read? The problem is compounded when listening and viewing are added in. The Argos's Library has one thousand symphonies. I counted Beethoven Symphonies on Spotify and stopped when I hit 300 ... some of these were boxed sets of all the symphonies. And then there is viewing. Start with Netflix, add in Amazon Prime, Hulu, Acorn, Britbox, Disney+ Apple TV, Mubi, Criterion, ...
It all gets down to answering the question "What is the best use of my time right now?" Collaborative filtering helps more than a little. An AI friend (? is Sybil a friend, a friendly teacher, or just a non-murderous version of HAL) probably could help a lot. Just in the context of books, lists help ... lists that come in many forms ... even recommendations by friends.
I know. We are inundated with too many choices. I can't read everything, but I want to.
Gina wrote: "I know. We are inundated with too many choices. I can't read everything, but I want to."Gina, even if we don't want to read literally all ... the great books that are out there are still just too many to read!
Larry, I had never head of Scribd and Perlego. That is interesting. Are the same books available on both SCRIBD and Kindle?
I love libraries, but the one on the Argos, with so much scrubbed content, gave me the chills.
Ruth,
Yes I did think of the song Marion the Librarian from THE MUSIC MAN. It gave me a chuckle too.
Several readers have mentioned that they found the science fiction story with Konstance less engaging. Me too. I am a visual person and I had trouble envisioning some of the science fiction features of her environment. How did you all feel about the big reveal towards the end of her story? I never saw it coming, but I liked it.
Ann D wrote: "Several readers have mentioned that they found the science fiction story with Konstance less engaging. Me too. I am a visual person and I had trouble envisioning some of the science fiction feature..."Agree on both points.
Gina wrote: "I know. We are inundated with too many choices. I can't read everything, but I want to."Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.
Ann D wrote: "Larry, I had never head of Scribd and Perlego. That is interesting. Are the same books available on both SCRIBD and Kindle?
I love libraries, but the one on the Argos, with so much scrubbed conte..."
Ann, Scribd bills itself as the Netflix of books. And that's sort of right. It also has audiobooks, magazines, and documents (with documents cotaining more books). It's $9.99/month.
Perlego collects the books from about 1,100 university, academic, and other publishing house. Ones like Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Princeton, and Cambridge, and you'll find thousands of books available for each of those. (The Oxford University Press is the one major publisher that's missing.)
Not surprisingly, a lot of books that have just been published aren't available. What is most surprisingly is that on three occasions this past year, three books that I searched for after reading new reviews were actually available before their formal publication date.
It was started to appeal to students who could use it for their textbooks, bu I think that the most popular textbooks are ones that often aren't available. For doing serious research on a subject, it can be invaluable. I found it so, when my wife was diagnosed stage 4 cancer in 2020 to look at different treatments in recent oncology texts. She's cancer free now, but that's because we found a great oncologist and listened to him. However, the books helped us understand all about one of the parts of the treatment plan (PARP inhibitors). There's a free two week trial that I recommend. (I think that Scribd has a one week free trial.) It's subscription cost is $18/month or $144/year. You can search by author, title, subject or publisher, and I often just go through new releases from particular publishers.
The one thing I don't like about Scribd and Perlego is that they work great oncomputers and iPads but not on e-ink readers (Kindles, Nooks, and Kobos) ... and those e-ink readers are better for extended reading. But you can't have everything ... although I already have too much.
I find that I have so much book content available to me between my location library consortium, which ultimately covers most of Eastern Massachusetts, and the Boston Public Library that I don’t feel the need to have a subscription. Maybe that would stop my occasional ebook purchases for my kindle though.I have physically and electronically access to more books than I can possibly read. I do take comfort in the knowledge that I will never run out of books that I want to read. I’m more likely to run out of the concentration needed to read them.
As for films…. I am so far behind I will never catch up.
Ruth wrote: "Did you all catch his sneaky little joke in calling the librarian Marian?https://youtu.be/gZpl47SaMCo"
Great catch Ruth! I love it!
Sue wrote: "I find that I have so much book content available to me between my location library consortium, which ultimately covers most of Eastern Massachusetts, and the Boston Public Library that I don’t fee..."Sue, the real value of Perlego is its library of 750,000 academic texts. So if you need to do your own background research on cancer or the effects of globalization on Latin America or rule of law in China or virtually anything else, it's possible to do that. But I do know exactly what you mean. We live in an age where the cornucopiae of books, music, videos spill out into our abodes.
I would have loved that resource at other times in my life, but of course it didn’t exist then. I was still using card catalogues, etc when I was in college.But I do understand what you mean, Larry, and I can understand where it could be invaluable.
One thing is certain: take a good book about books and libraries, and put it in front of people who love books and libraries, and you are guaranteed to generate a robust discussion. I’m not questioning Doerr, but rather I’m enjoying the variety of comments here.
Returning to the novel, I do love how the love of this one book, the codex, keeps moving things forward. And the huge act of generosity of Omeir in getting it to where it would be valued the most. He asked for so little in return.
Sue wrote: "I would have loved that resource at other times in my life, but of course it didn’t exist then. I was still using card catalogues, etc when I was in college.But I do understand what you mean, Lar..."
Sue, finding anything that pertains to what you're really interested can be a challenge even if you know it's there. The search engines for book "libraries" seem to be pretty good. Overdrive/Libby works well ... Kindle libraries is okay ... GooglePlay Books is sort of strange. This isn't about finding a particular a book by a particular author. That's easy. But try finding books about the Standing Committee of the China's CCP. You'll get some books, but which ones are the best. I've found that first just doing Google searches to find what experts have suggested is often the most helpful. And then armed with particular titles, searching on those titles works.
But for other stuff, the Washington Post archive has a terrible search engine. Going into EBSCO and ProQuest, both provided as online periodical libraries can also be difficult. Even if I have a title of an article, it can sometimes be hit or miss finding the actual article.
Trying to find a particular classical album on the music streaming sources (ones like Spotify, Amazon Music Unlimited, YouTube Music) can be extremely difficult ... as opposed to finding an album by a popular artist.
Larry, Perlego is a very interesting resource. I can see now how it is such a valuable research tool. I was sorry to hear about your wife's cancer diagnosis, but so glad to hear that she is cancer free now.Mary Anne, you are so right about the appeal of CCL to readers and library lovers.
Larry I hadn’t thought about looking for music though I should have. I have occasionally tried to look into folk music or classical music and have found it is difficult as you say. This was before some of the newer resources but I have no doubt they skew toward pop music.
And Larry I’m glad that things have improved for your wife and that these resources helped when you needed them.
Sue wrote: "Larry I hadn’t thought about looking for music though I should have. I have occasionally tried to look into folk music or classical music and have found it is difficult as you say. This was before ..."The search for a particular classical album has actually got worse over the years ... if it's for one of the popular composers. For Spotify, I think I mentioned that a search on Beethoven symphonies would result in over 300 albums & box sets. But I just searched a moment ago, and they seem to have improved their search engine so that if you search on Beethoven symphonies Rattle, it will yield the five albums or Box sets for those symphonies with Simon Rattle as the conductor. Even last year, this wasn't the case. So things do get better.
Sue wrote: "And Larry I’m glad that things have improved for your wife and that these resources helped when you needed them."What was really great was to be able to search some very expensive oncology books without buying them for the few pages that were pertinent. One thing that I put together after doing this can be found on my own GoodReads Book Group, Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best. And that's the Best Books on Cancer. This link will take you to that: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Working back to the book at hand, one of the things that I did with Perlego was to search on Diogenes to see if there was a real codex that corresponded to the one in the novel in any way, because I had read that Cloud Cuckoo Land was fictional.I don't think there was, but one of the books on Perlego that I found was this interesting one: Herakleitos and Diogenes
Translated from the Greek by Guy Davenport
"About This Book
All the extant fragments of Herakleitos and a collection of Diogenes' words from various sources.Herakleitos' words, 2500 years old, usually appear in English translated by philosophers as makeshift clusters of nouns and verbs which can then be inspected at length. Here they are translated into plain English and allowed to stand naked and unchaperoned in their native archaic Mediterranean light.The practical words of the Athenian street philosopher Diogenes have never before been extracted from the apocryphal anecdotes in which they have come down to us. They are addressed to humanity at large, and are as sharp and pertinent today as when they were admired by Alexander the Great and Saint Paul."
I wondered about that, too, Larry. And I also suspect there are many such plums hidden in this book, ranging from Marian the Librarian, to Zeno founder of Stoicism. Cross-reference piling on cross reference.
I just finished last night. Like everyone else, I didn't adapt to the shift in perspectives well initially. I literally couldn't remember who they were for a while but then it became clear. Gina, you did a terrific job of summarizing in your first note. I wish I had read that before I started the book.I caught "Marian the librarian" but I didn't know anything about Zeno as the founder of Stoicism. So glad you pointed that out, Ruth.
Frequently, I think that authors fail with their endings. The characters and/or plot get developed and then it all kind of peters out or doesn't make sense in the end. However, I felt that it was actually the strength of this book. The puzzle pieces all fit together and made sense to me. Given the complexity of what Doerr was trying to do, I am impressed with that.
Reminder that our discussions here include SPOILERS. Don't read on if you haven't finished the book.
Did anyone guess the situation with the interstellar ship Argos and Konstance in the end, that it was still on earth? I was sitting by myself reading at my son's house while his 2 year old was napping and I said out loud, "Oh!" It took me completely by surprise.
Barbara wrote: "Did anyone guess the situation with the interstellar ship Argos and Konstance in the end, that it was still on earth? I was sitting by myself reading at my son's house while his 2 year old was napping and I said out loud, "Oh!" It took me completely by surprise. "Surprised me, too. But then it seemed just perfect, and I wondered why I hadn't caught on sooner. Mankind at the mercy of its own invented technology.
Constant Reader
Books mentioned in this topic
The Lincoln Highway (other topics)A Gentleman in Moscow (other topics)
All the Light We Cannot See (other topics)
There are three stories interwoven in this book:
Thirteen-year-old Anna who lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.
Five hundred years later, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno, who learned Greek as a prisoner of war, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.
And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. She has never set foot on our planet.
There's so much to talk about concerning this book. Let's get started.