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Intertextuality


Reading Cloud Atlas, what did I read into it?

Cloud Atlas is a very clever, very entertaining nest of short stories that are all interlinked.  Reading it reminded me of something;
 
The first novel it reminded me of was Italo Calvino's 'If on a winter’s night a traveller', and the parts that seemingly take place in the South Pacific and on island states reminded me of the anthropogeography  of Guns, Germs and Steel, (Jared Diamond).  Then the post-apocalyptic chapters made me think of Brave New World, Logan’s Run, Blade Runner, but mostly the Machine Stops (EM Forster).  The crime novel – James Ellwood or Raymond Chandler or some such American crime noir writer.  Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After - the dialogue reminded me of Riddley Walker (Russell Hoban), and lastly, the character Timothy Cavendish reminded me of Dr Blackbeard from Ian McEwan’s ‘Solar’.

There is an astonishing amount of intertextuality, or literary references or inspirations or what you will.  Shakespeare (or was it the Bible) said: 'there is nothing new under the sun'..., and writers must get the inspiration from somewhere, so perhaps it wasn't so strange that after writing the above paragraph, I found this article by David Mitchell, who wrote Cloud Atlas:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/12/book-club-mitchell-cloud-atlas

 and reading it felt like I'd been an unwitting participant in a 'spot the literary reference' game, for which there were no prizes...  Some of the books I thought of are mentioned by Mitchell in the article, and so I wonder, does this mean that I've passed the test? 



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