Powerful prose: Author Anthony Doerr explores the magic of storytelling PDF Free Download
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OCTOBER 2021 Costco Connection 77
FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT
Costco’s suggested Book Club read provides
insight into a selected book, as well as
additional information to deepen your
own book club’s discussion.
Anthony Doerr, the Pulitzer
Prize–winning author of All
the Light We Cannot See, trans-
ports readers from 15th-century
Constantinople to contemporary Idaho to
a spaceship bound for a habitable planet
in his epic novel Cloud Cuckoo Land. The
characters—children coming of age in a
time of peril and trying to understand the
world around them—become stewards of
a ctive manuscript from ancient Greece.
Seven years ago, Doerr had the idea
for a story taking place on a spaceship,
and another idea for a story set during the
15th-century siege of Constantinople. He
was intrigued by the technology behind
the city’s walls—and became fascinated
by the thousands of ancient Greek and
Roman texts that survived for a millen-
nium because they were protected in the
libraries of the walled city.
Doerr thought one way to dramatize
the success of those walls and libraries
would be to tell the story of a book that
survives to touch lives in the past, present
and future. “What if I have a protagonist
in a spaceship reading a text that survived
because the protagonists in the Constant-
inople story protected that book?” Doerr
recalls asking. “That’s when I decided to
try to tell an intergenerational story and
build resonances between time periods
and characters.”
Cloud Cuckoo Land is a tribute to the
transformative power of literature—and
libraries. As a child, Doerr discovered
Calvin & Hobbes compilations and
Stephen King’s novels in a local library,
along with “novels from deep in the
literary stacks” such as The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles. “It’s not that I understood
every weird and scary thing that was hap-
pening in this novel I read when I was
only 11 or 12,” says Doerr, “but the pride
I felt at being trusted to try is a feeling I’ve
never forgotten.”
Doerr hopes his new novel reminds
readers of the role libraries play as guard-
ians of culture over the centuries.
“For millions of people lucky enough
to access them, libraries serve as magical
gateways to a million dierent worlds,” he
says. “Cloud Cuckoo Land is my homage
to them, and to all the people who sustain
them. Primarily this is a book about our
planet—in itself a vast library—and the
stories that connect us. I hope it can help
readers feel connectedness: to the people
who came before us and those who will
come after.”
Judy Gelman is the creator of the website
bookclubcookbook.com.
Anthony Doerr
Powerful
prose
Author Anthony Doerr
explores the magic of
storytelling
by JUDY GELMAN
For further
discussion
Author Anthony Doerr
says that “cloud-cuckoo-
land” is a 2,400-year-old
phrase that means both
a beautiful utopia where
there is no suering and
an absurd and overopti-
mistic fantasyland. When
people are said to live in
cloud-cuckoo-land, it
means they have their
head in the clouds; they
are being impractical
and unrealistic.
“In a culture that brims
with so many dystopian
stories, I don’t think it’s a
bad idea to spend some
time now and then dream-
ing of better places,” says
Doerr. “What does your
utopia look like? How
would you connect with
people and places in your
own cloud-cuckoo-land,
and what realistic steps
can you take to move a
step or two toward that
better, kinder, more
beautiful place?”—JG
COSTCO
CONNECTION
Cloud Cuckoo Land
(Item 1564136, 9/28)
is available in most
Costco warehouses.
ULF ANDERSEN
