Ch-ch-changes

I think this little quote about change and transformation (by Jason, the main character in David Mitchell's novel, Black Swan Green), will tickle and titillate your thought processes, if not provoke them profoundly:

In the second mirror was a Gelatinous Cube. All face, no body, just twiggy limbs waving at its corners. By puffing out my cheeks I nearly doubled its size. No, answered the Cube. You can only change superficial features. An Inside-You must stay unaltered to change the Outside-You. To change Inside-You you'd need an Even-More-Inside-You, who'd need an Inside-the-Even-More-Inside-You to change it. And on and on.

(249)

Besides being just a novelist, British writer David Mitchell is something else. I can't put a label on it, and if I do, I fear that something will lose its aura. I find it amazing how Mitchell smuggles philosophical language (not just ideas, mind you) into his story in a way that just works perfectly but completely alters the way the genre has been achieved heretofore. A great number of the accolades for this latest book Black Swan Green rant and rave about how wonderful it is and how it doesn't use gimmicks like Cloud Atlas did.
Gimmicks? How much sophistication do you need? Cloud Atlas was highly accessible. I think that these people are afraid of its political potency. If I had my way, I would use huge chunks of Cloud Atlas for manifesto material at political rallies.
As wonderful as it is, Black Swan Green is only a coming-of-age or bildungsroman. Cloud Atlas is much more than what it is. Which is what every book should be. I would say what it is is tranformative, in the way that that the Cube mirror in the carnival wants Jason to be inside himself.