In showing us Piranesi’s approach to the world Clarke is also showing us a portal outside of capitalism. Feelings of isolation, being cut off from the wider world, being unable to go out most of the time. In the ongoing pandemic, people who can afford to work from home are discovering, many for the first time, what chronically ill people have always experienced.
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Piranesi’s approach consists of open wonder – he has a sacred relationship with his world, full of respect and no desire to harm. The Other’s approach is to place himself as the powerful centre of the universe, which must be manipulated to amass power. These are, fundamentally, two ways to live. In Piranesi and the Other’s contrasting attitudes to the House, a binary is immediately obvious. To continue to simply survive in a world that measures everything in terms of output, the chronically ill person is compelled to use their inventiveness simply to survive. Because I started out by talking about chronic illness, let’s consider that as an example. This world puts a lot of stock in productivity, where your worth and value is tied to what you produce, how much you produce, and how much you can sell it for. Piranesi’s inventiveness speaks to the inventiveness that most of us must exercise, to greater and lesser degrees. By degrees Piranesi finds out how this is directly tied to his own fate. Clarke masterfully pieces together a narrative involving an anthropologist with controversial views, who turns out to be as violent and vicious as any cult leader, especially to a circle of students who are devoted to him. Through his eyes the House is a source of constant wonder and awe.Īlthough simply being with Piranesi and seeing the House with him is a pleasure, the mystery that unravels as the story moves forward is also deeply affecting. Partly it is that he is an immensely likeable character, generous and curious and gentle. Partly this is because the House is really another character in the book, and Piranesi is constantly in dialogue with it. This is a testament to Clarke’s genius, because although so much of the book features Piranesi by himself, it never reads like navel gazing. Piranesi is a singularly compelling protagonist. Later on the journals also become significant clues to what the House is, and who Piranesi himself might be.
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He writes these down in a series of numbered journals, which therefore become a record of his life and findings. Piranesi measures time assiduously, and by significant events that have happened in the halls.
The only other person who exists, whom Piranesi meets at regular intervals, is called “the Other.” These halls are full of staircases and striking statues, and below, the constantly changing tides of the sea. Piranesi describes halls that are kilometres away and take him hours to get to, beyond which are halls he has not yet seen. The House is labyrinthine, made of endless halls. Time as we know it does not matter in Piranesi. Much like the House – the world in which most of Piranesi is set – it creates its own rhythms, its own rules, its own sense of time. Illness cares nothing for the publishing world’s calendars and catalogues, or the literary world’s expectations. In the interim Clarke has been living with an undiagnosed chronic illness. Sixteen years after the rich, complex and darkly magical Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s ground-breaking debut, comes Piranesi. It is one of the most anticipated second novels in contemporary publishing. ‘You get one life, you enjoy it responsibly, then you die’: A cancer patient’s farewell essay.Consideration, education, adjustment: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s three elements for nation-building.Birmingham diaries: From cricket to hockey and the little things in between, my week at CWG 2022.Scroll Ideas: Why has India's powerful judiciary failed to check Modi?.The India Fix: Why does such a small number of Indians pay income tax?.After Maharashtra, is Jharkhand next? ED action steps up pressure as ruling coalition shows cracks.Beyond Har Ghar Tiranga: Why Indians must plant Tagore’s vision of nationalism in every home.Podcast: What explains rising global authoritarianism? The history of constitutions has some answers.
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