Jerry Nussbaum wipes dewdrops of choco-Popsicle from his beard, leans back, and triggers a landslide of papers. "The cops are chasing their own asses on the St. Christopher case, so how about a 'Are You St. Christopher's Next Slaying?' piece? Profiles of all the snuffs to date and reconstructions of the victims' last minutes. Where they were going, who they were meeting, what thoughts were going through their heads …"

"When St. Chris's bullet went through their heads." Roland Jakes laughs.

"Yeah, Jakes, let's hope he's attracted to flashy Hawaiian colors. Then later I'm seeing the colored streetcar driver the cops had on the rack last week. He's suing the police department for wrongful arrest under the Civil Rights Act."

"Could be a cover story. Luisa?"

"I met an atomic engineer." Luisa ignores the indifference chilling the room. "An inspector at Seaboard Incorporated." Nancy O'Hagan is doing her fingernails, driving Luisa to present her suspicions as facts. "He believes the new HYDRA nuclear reactor at Swannekke Island isn't as safe as the official line. Isn't safe at all, in fact. Its launch ceremony is this afternoon, so I want to drive out and see if I can turn anything up."

"Hot s***, a technical launch ceremony," exclaims Nussbaum. "What's that rumbling sound, everyone? A Pulitzer Prize, rolling this way?"

"Oh, kiss my ass, Nussbaum."

Jerry Nussbaum sighs. "In my wettest dreams …"

Luisa is torn between retaliation—Yeah, and letting the worm know how much he riles you—and ignoring him—Yeah, and letting the worm get away with saying what the heck he wants.

Dom Grelsch breaks her impasse. "Marketeers prove"—he twirls a pencil— "every scientific term you use represents two thousand readers putting down the magazine and turning on a rerun of I Love Lucy."

"Okay," says Luisa. "How about 'Seaboard Atom Bomb to Blow Buenas Yerbas to Kingdom Come!'?"

"Terrific, but you'll need to prove it."

"Like Jakes can prove his story?"

"Hey." Grelsch's pencil stops twirling. "Fictitious people eaten by fictitious fish can't flay every last dollar off you in the courts or lean on your bank to pull the plug. A coast-to-coast operation like Seaboard Power Inc. has lawyers who can and, sweet Mother of God, you put a foot wrong, they will."

Basic set up:

The staff of Spyglass magazine is having one of its regular brainstorming sessions, throwing out ideas for possible stories. Luisa Rey may be the gossip columnist, but she's on the trail of a much more serious story—and she's determined to uncover the truth at all costs.

David Mitchell has talked openly about his love of pastiche—and it certainly shows in Cloud Atlas. Each chapter is its own pastiche of some kind of literature or movies, and the section from which this passage is taken ("Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery") is no exception.

If you've ever read or watched a conspiracy thriller, you'll recognize the plot that's being set up here: an intrepid journalist is tired of being assigned puff pieces and hears of a much more heavyweight story about some shadowy business that's being hushed-up. Luisa may be in dangerous waters, but she's not about to let the story slip away.

That this section is set in the 1970s is no accident, as these kinds of plots were super popular back in the day (we're looking at you, The Conversation). And get this: the story that Luisa is pursuing is about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant, right? Well, in 1979, there was both a real-life nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and a movie called The China Syndrome in which a journalist is sick of covering trivial stories and being judged on her looks and sets about reporting on a cover-up at a nuclear plant. And that's not all: in 1974, a chemical worker named Karen Silkwood died in a car crash before she could deliver evidence against the plutonium plant where she worked—an incident that many folk believe wasn't an accident.

Whew.

How's that for pastiche?

Discussing his use of pastiche in this section, Mitchell notes that "Luisa Rey is a mix of the 1970s TV detectives I enjoyed as a kid, All the President's Men and James Ellroy, whose plot-velocity always impresses me" (source).

And sure enough, some of the lines in Cloud Atlas could have come from a '70s conspiracy thriller: Luisa declares that the nuclear reactor "isn't safe at all" and wants to "drive out and see if I can turn anything up." Her colleagues, meanwhile, tell her, "you'll need to prove it" and that "Seaboard Power Inc. has lawyers who can and, sweet Mother of God, you put a foot wrong, they will."

Good stuff, right?

You'll also notice that this passage mimics the kind of banter that we might hear between some peeps working at a magazine. Dialogue like "Oh, kiss my ass, Nussbaum," brings us back to the friendly trash talking we'd be likely to find in a book or movie that's set in a magazine/newspaper office.

The whole passage works as a pastiche and, while you don't have to recognize the references to enjoy the story, if you know the sort of '70s books and movies that it's copying, it adds to the fun. And that's one of the things to remember about pastiche: it's not about mocking or taking a satirical swipe at the original—just about mimicking it in an affectionate way.