Diary of a Somebody

It was nice to see (a clean-shaven) Hugh “Pooter” Bonneville reading the bedtime story on CBeebies yesterday. The BBC must have something their actor’s contract which says that the Children’s TV producers can bags any actor they like as they come and go about the BBC studios, dress them up in causal clothes and sit them down to read the stories. It might also be a sly way of putting the programmes that the actors are in later in the minds of any adult minders who might happen to watch as well. Mr Bonneville was indeed on BBC 4 later in the last episode of Diary of a Nobody which had a satisfying and poignant ending – much more poignant than I remember from reading the book. The main problem with watching it is that Mr Pooter looks uncannily like my dad though that might just be the beard.

I have to say that I was worried that I wouldn’t get into the central story of Cloud Atlas after reading that some people skimmed it because of the strong dialect form but it’s actually quite intriguing – I was fearing it would be like A Clockwork Orange but it’s quite easy to follow most of it. It also has a strong ability to lead you forward to wanting the next bit. As this story is the central one in has no split – at least one story would have to be left unsplit in order for the book to finish – but I wonder if there is a point somewhere in the middle where the split would go. I already know the link between this and the previous story so I have an idea where the split could be.

There were fewer correspondences between Cloud Atlas and yesterday’s tranche of I am a Strange Loop. I think I dreamed something connected with it the other day though – it was very vivid at the time though of course without writing the details down at the time it is now just a fuzzy memory. There was a book of poetry in it somewhere – an icon of something – I could see the cover in great details though I didn’t get to see any of the actual words. This was probably triggered by the poetry I was reading at the Viking demonstration at the weekend. I did also think of something which I thought really quite staggeringly interesting while I was getting the boy to sleep yesterday – something regarding structure of systems – but the detail of that has vanished as well.

Stepping Over Non-existent Barbed Wire

I suppose I am currently much more aware of links and loops because of current reading matter and also I suppose that Cloud Atlas and I am a Strange Loop share some themes but some of the correspondences are quite strong. The first chapter of I am a Strange Loop, which I read yesterday, talks about units of measuring what Hofstadter calls ‘soul’ though he does allow what he calls the old standby of ‘being conscious’. He gives the name Hunekers to these units after an American music critic who said of one particular Chopin etude, that it should not be attempted by “small-souled men”. Hofstadter also points out that the measurement of soul does not have an upper ceiling rather like IQ and maybe we should say that people tend to a level of 100 Hunekers.

In Cloud Atlas, one section deals with the experiences of a genetically engineered ‘fabricant’ one of many produced to do the dirty work in human society; a central theme of this being the ascendancy of these fabricants from ‘genomed’ stupidity and obedience to genius level – a sort of increase in soul – of Hunekers I suppose. Indeed, the humans or ‘purebloods’ in the story can choose to give fabricants a soul ring which allows them access to areas normally forbidden to them.

In general Cloud Atlas fits together very neatly; each section having several links with the previous one, though some are concrete, rational things such as the existence of material evidence of something from the past while others are mystical Jungian coincidences which as you know always put me on my guard. However, what has struck me is that the links between the sections are entirely arbitrary – from the same starting section you might well choose a completely different set of tales still linked but now in a different way. I suppose that had the links between the sections been stronger I might have been a little dismissive of them but because they just suggest a random path through life, they are much more believable. It all reminds me of Connections where James Burke made seemingly random links through the history of science and technology which always made me slightly uncomfortable with the arbitrariness of his selections. Looking at it now, that is the fuzzy way the world actually is and proof of the interconnectedness of everything. Apologies for the long constructions but they all spell-check happily.