The author for whom we dance

I'd been planning to dig into David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet when I ventured down east for a family visit in December. I'd been waiting because I like to ration Mitchell's new stuff out, though I'm rarely able to do so for long; also, I kept hearing that it wasn't as good as his previous novels and that frightened me a little.

Last week, I became entirely unable to wait any longer, partly because I suddenly dismissed all the doubters' warnings, wondering to myself how many who were disappointed with this new novel have read only Cloud Atlas? The narrative and structural pyrotechnics of Cloud Atlas make it stand apart from almost everything else going, and rightly so. But one of the many things that makes Mitchell a genius, and probably the English-speaking world's greatest living author, is that not only does it make no sense to compare him to other writers - he can't even be compared to himself! Every book is too radically different from the last for such comparisons to make sense. The only thing one can really say is, as my friend Vee did the other day: Even if a David Mitchell book isn't the best David Mitchell book, it's still better than everything else.

Cloud Atlas is the high literary equivalent of explosions and jazz hands; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a quiet, subtle study of longing and desire with some spooky fantasy thrown in for good measure. It's a romance that defies everything that romance does, while still containing echoes of Romeo and Juliet, of all things! Well, perhaps I shouldn't use that surprised exclamation point - Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy in large part because its lovers are so stupidly, adolescently naive. Jacob is similarly afflicted with the great heaving sighs of the young at the beginning of his tale but experience quickly teaches him that there are boundaries between individuals that really cannot be crossed. Not just that the price to be paid trying to do so will be death; but that there is really no way over.

I don't claim that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is perfect; it probably isn't, but I personally can't say how. I know that there are sections of it that I liked better than others; I am not as fond of the space devoted to Captain Penhaligon as I am of the rest of the novel. Cloud Atlas, I believe to be perfect - not perfect in the fun but ultimately rather sterile way Tom Jones is, but in that way literature should be - it exceeds and defies all expectations and is ridiculously gorgeously written to boot. In this way, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is also perfect, or very close, in my opinion. Every move Mitchell made in this novel surprised me, but it always worked. And I have an extremely annoying inability to be surprised by books much anymore, so this is saying something. And the writing...if I were given to keeping a commonplace book of beautiful quotations, which I am not, because that is much too Victorian, it would be half-filled just with lines from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

Yes, this post was the bloggish equivalent of a shrieking fangirl shrieking a lot. I never claimed to be impartial about David Mitchell. Which author(s) are you unable to be impartial about?

David Mitchell and William Gibson dance-fight to win my heart

Last night, I went to an event at Toronto's annual International Festival of Authors - David Mitchell and William Gibson in conversation with someone else who I hadn't heard of, and who persisted in mispronouncing the name of the titular hero of Mitchell's latest novel, even after being corrected. Let's pretend that he wasn't there. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, William Gibson read from his new novel, Zero History. I have yet to read any of Gibson's work, but what I heard was very engaging, so I'll make a point of checking him out. He does have a very unique voice, as Jason mentioned a long time ago now.  It kind of made everything sound like a slightly stoned and somewhat funny hard-boiled detective novel; very enjoyable to listen to.

As Jason is a big fan of Gibson's, I picked him up a copy of the new novel and got it signed. In between "Jason" and "William Gibson" I got the author to write that now famous blurb about the internet being a series of tubes...which increased the value of the book in my mind, but maybe not in either Gibson's or Jason's. Sigh.

Right before I met Gibson (so much for my attempt at strict linearity here!), I witnessed a fan-Gibson interaction that filled me with some hope about the yout' of today. Hope, mind, not unshakable confidence. Here's what happened: A girl-fan of approximately 16 years got Gibson to sign all her copies of all of his books. There was a limit on each person - only four books each - so she had a friend in tow to get the others signed on her behalf.

She got all her books signed. She got her friend to take a photo of her and Gibson. And then she fled, shrieking in a very teenage girl sort of way. Hope: she was a teenaged reader absolutely stricken, not by Stephanie Meyer and not by whoever wrote those damned Gossip Girl books, but by William Gibson, who was writing what I'm told is the bestest of Sci-Fi long before she was even a high-pitched gleam in either of her parents' eyes. Incomplete confidence: She did still shriek like a harpy wielding a mystical sword to cut your face off with.

Back to linearity. Right after Gibson read from his book, David Mitchell came out to read - not, as expected, from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, but from the new book he's currently writing! And it was really good, although he very humourously called himself out on some sentences he wasn't satisfied with.

Afterward, they sat down with unknown fellow mentioned above and proceeded to show just what a bloody damned smart and cagey choice it was to put them together. They're both brilliant and funny and compelling, but even more so together, I think. A lot of the best parts - like when Gibson said people were "now-centric" and Mitchell said, "Oh, that's good!" and as he was writing it down asked in a very precocious way, "Can I have that?" - have been likely already been tweeted (hashtag #IFOA).

But what likely won't make it to the Twitter - because it simply defies being put into words by everyone but me, for whom it happened - is how once the conversation ended, Mitchell and Gibson engaged in a complicated and highly ritualistic dance-fight, in which they attempted to win ascendancy in my heart. David Mitchell entered the competition with a huge handicap in his favour, for Cloud Atlas remains my favourite novel of all time (even if Hilary Mantel ought to be making him very nervous). Gibson, however, had the advantage of being a hippie draft dodger AND wearing cool sneakers AND owning a Twitter account called GAYDOLPHIN2.

First they circled one another, executing flawless pirouettes, Gibson in his kicks and Mitchell in his signature steel-toes. Neither appeared to gain an advantage at this point, so they quickly changed tactics and re-enacted the dance-knife fight scene from Michael Jackson's "Beat It" but both quickly learned that if the pen isn't as mighty as the switchblade, it does cause some fearful stains on favourite shirts, and so altered their respective strategies again.

While David Mitchell performed a modern, interpretive routine to Iron & Wine's "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" (a song which, for reasons I can't entirely explain, always makes me think of Black Swan Green), Gibson countered by performing the Robot to Run DMC's "It's Like That". At this point, it seemed as though Gibson would triumph for the Robot is the Michael Jordan slam dunk of dance-fight moves - it wins the game 99% of the time.

But Mitchell had the advantage of greater variety, and countered with a transcendent pas de deux in which he performed both parts simultaneously. In the end, Mitchell won the pitched battle for my heart, but Gibson will certainly not be banished...

Meanwhile, Hilary Mantel lurks in the background, waiting for her moment...

That's all true - except for what I just said.

Bookphilia meets David Mitchell and lives to tell the tale

This past Wednesday, hubby and I went to see author David Mitchell give a talk & read at the Toronto Reference Library. We got there well early and grabbed good seats and enjoyed the air conditioning. Brook calmly read the Guy Gavriel Kay novel he had on the go (but which he abandoned the next day as it was so badly written); I tried to read my book, Gogol's short fiction, but simply couldn't concentrate even though it's very compelling. I felt, perhaps, like what crazed Michael Jackson fans used to feel at the prospect of going to one of the King of Pop's concerts. I am joking, but only a little.

If you've been reading Bookphilia for awhile, you'll know that Mitchell is my favourite writer, and Cloud Atlas my favourite novel. I love novels generally and many in particular, but for me nothing comes close to this one. I generally kick earnestness dead in the face here but find myself being earnest and even sometimes quite emotional about this book. It's totally illogical, as was my starstruck near-hyperventilating at the event on Wednesday, but knowing I was being/am irrational about Mitchell's work doesn't seem to enable me not to be so. I have seen many movie stars and met a few and they leave me cold; authors I really like make me go a little funny in the head it seems; several years ago, I met Rohinton Mistry and was totally tongue-tied.

He read, we listened
Now, while I was feeling really quite shockingly illogical and weird even before he came in, I don't think I made an irredeemable fool of myself when I eventually met him and talked with him for a few moments. But before that happened, Mitchell read a few pages from new the book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and they were entirely engaging - in part because they were written by David Mitchell, but also because of the way he kept interrupting himself to tell amusing anecdotes or give a little background on something the characters say or, in one notable example of his increasingly famous and charming humility, he criticized some of his word choices ("guard" and "garden" being in too close proximity in one passage) and then jokingly lamented how there'd have to be a global recall of the book so he could fix that.

He talked with someone on stage, we continued to listen
Next, Mitchell treated the crowd to a conversation with a local novelist and professor whose name I can't recall. Most of the interviewer's questions were about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which makes sense but he didn't try hard enough not to give away plot spoilers so I felt a little like punching him in the neck. His questions were good though, and Mitchell's answers, of course, great - by now it'd become clear that his reputation for being charming and funny and seemingly very nice was well earned and it was all extremely entertaining and comfortable.

People asked questions, he answered
I'm afraid I couldn't gather the scattered bits of my brain sufficiently to come up with anything to ask him although I did, of course, think of something later; I wish I'd had the wherewithal to ask him which part of Cloud Atlas was "born" first in his brain and how everything else grew out of it. There were the usual questions about how to write, but a few interesting ones including what he thought of creative writing programs (way to put someone on the spot!) and what his future writing plans are.

The latter question invoked a very interesting and thoughtful meditation on why great writers seem to reach their peak in middle age and then degrade until the end of their careers; I confess I couldn't think of an exception to this, only examples that confirmed it (Gabriel Garcia Marquez being the example that jumped out most in my brain). His theory was basically a better articulated and more deeply considered version of what I've historically called The Haruki Murakami Syndrome, the result of which is the degradation described above and the causes being: 1) Re-writing the same book over and over again*; 2) Believing the hype about yourself and ceasing to try hard enough to write really good stuff; 3) Having one's editor also get complacent and not taking the hatchet to the new stuff, knowing that it'll sell based on the author's name and fame alone. Mitchell had clearly thought a great deal about this; that this is so gives me hope that he won't fall into the same trap.

I think one of the things that likely makes him such a good writer, and so thoughtful about his writing future, is that he is a really good reader. I've been to a number of author talks in my lifetime but I've never heard an author talk so much about what he reads and crucially, about the emotional, gut-level importance it has to him. Perhaps because he's such an incorrigible bibliophile he'll be able to maintain enough readerly perspective on his own work enough to not start allowing shit with his name on it to get out there.

He signed books, while I and many others stood in line and waited
The line-up took forever because Mitchell took the time to talk to every single person, which I think was a very fine thing to do. In the meantime, hubby and I inched forward slowly and eavesdropped on this loud-ish pair behind us. The following hilarious anecdote was dropped not for our secret edification. I can't do it justice; suffice to say that I was laughing so hard that I was crying in an effort to keep from roaring very loudly with the laughs in a Roddy Doyle-esque way.

"So, we're driving along in New Brunswick and I saw the sign for the Potato Museum and totally made my friend pull off the highway so we could go. But when we got there, it was like TEN BUCKS to get in...just to see, like, a frigging plow in a field! So I didn't go in. I bought an apple juice and sat in the cafeteria and drank it. But I kind of wish I'd gone in after all because I heard later that you get fries at the end."

I mean, what? These two kept us quite entertained until it was our turn to get our books signed and then I blurted out questions all over the place, about what he's reading now (A Confederacy of Dunces - awesome!), what he thinks of Hilary Mantel (he loves her work, good man), and I forget what else but he graciously said yes when I asked if I could get a photo of us for this here bloggy. So here it is:

I know, my smile looks fake and crazy but by this point, I was no longer feeling weird; it just takes our cheap digital camera approximately half a lifetime to take photos, so I was trying not to blink or otherwise make myself look like a gimp. Mitchell handled it with much more style and verve than I did, clearly.

As for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, I've decided to wait till Fall to read it. It's really much too hot and horrible for such a title right now.

AND I just found video of the event on the YouTube. The interviewer's name is Randy Boyagoda, which amusingly keeps showing up on screen in front of...David Mitchell. Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five.


*I think only two writers have been able entirely to get away with this - Shakespeare and Wodehouse. Shakespeare, obviously, because his language was so very compelling on its own and Wodehouse because he's for fun and mental frolicking and not for deep thoughts. Frolicking is often more frolicsome when it's a repeat frolic rather than a new one; why else would people go to Cuba every year, year after year, or watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show ad infinitum? Frolicking at its best bears repeating and no one frolics on the page like Wodehouse does; but more on that anon.

A game beyond the game

I've just finished reading David Mitchell's crazy, brilliant, beautiful novel Cloud Atlas for the second time. My god, it was even better the second time around, which I would not have thought possible. I saw many more of the connections between each section this time and appreciated the brilliant writing - and the shocking fact of Mitchell's ability to write in many (at least 6) different styles brilliantly was constantly brought home to me as I made my way through Adam's, Robert's, Luisa's, Timothy's, Sonmi's, and Zach'ry's tales.

What I love about this novel is - well, one thing I love about this novel - how the line between what seems real and unreal is constantly destabilized and shifted, so that everything ends up seeming hyper-real and shimmery, like a dream or a strong memory, at the same time. Good god, I can't talk about this book! I won't even try to write a "proper" review of it. It makes me feel like my brain and heart are both going to explode, in the way only perfect, once in a lifetime books can. Instead, here's an interchange between my cyberspatial friend Kevin and me. I think what we say raises as many, if not more, questions than it can possibly begin to answer about Cloud Atlas. This is apropos, I think; Mitchell's work opens things up in a way literature should.

As you will see, all the good stuff below is Kevin's.

KEVIN:
Dear C, know how you form a hunch about a book, its structure, theme, and purpose, only to have your hunch change as you read, or even after you finish the book entire, months or years later?

Well, here's my hunch about Cloud Atlas. Tentative as it may be.

It's largely plotless by art and design because that's the best way for Mitchell to establish his primary theme, which I take— my idea's tentative! — to be this: Something there is that eternally recurs.

In the fullness of time, language, culture, and even the biosphere change, like so many ever-shifting, white-to-gray-to-pink cumulus, cirrus, and stratus clouds, yada yada yada.

But something there is that stays the same, namely, a desire for autonomy, identity, and self-understanding. Think Somni ascending!

Because we're weak, paltry yearning wills, we cleave to the experiences of others, their letters (Frobisher), stories (Cavendish), interviews (Somni-451), and oral yarnin' (Sloshin').

What better way to show eternal recurrence at play than by creating mighty gaps in the temporal and narrative arc of a plotless novel?

Without these negative spaces, how could one yarn about that which doesn't change?

That's Mitchell's genius in Cloud Atlas, I think.

Anyhow, I'm not entirely satisfied with what I've said. After all, there is a plot of sorts, in the very loose sense that the motives and actions of characters in one story influence the motives and actions of characters in another.

Without Sixsmith and Bill Smoke, there's no Fall.

Without Sonmi-451, there's no Zach'ry the goatherd invoking a mythology to puzzle over it all.

K


COLLEEN:
I like what you've said, a lot.

I've been trying to get at something similar but I keep being distracted by/inspired by Mitchell's references, flagged and otherwise, to other books. He mentions, for example, Orwell and Huxley in Sonmi but Bradbury and Zamyatin and Miller, Jr. and Wyndham are there too. And I'm sure he wants us to see them! For me, this is somehow connected to how every narrative that seems "real" is questioned, overtly or otherwise - Ewing's journal seems inauthentic to Frobisher; Frobisher's letters change Luisa's view of Sixsmith; Luisa's narrative seems like hackwork to Timothy; Timothy's life is a film for Sonmi; and Sonmi is Zach'ry's sacred text!

I didn't notice the first time I read this novel how very similar Adam's diary is to Zach'ry's tale - just from different perspectives - the pacifist tribe at the mercy of their martial and ruthless brothers, and what's at stake.

I think we're both right, in other words, and that you articulated what I was seeing through textuality what you're seeing through the metaphysical - but the thing is - they're not separate!

C


KEVIN:
By the by, your point about inter-textuality and the "real" and "authentic" just now reminded me of a lovely expression that Zach'ry uses in a conversation with Meronym about the Hole World and our place in it, something like the "true true is diff'rent to the seemin' true."

CA is quickly becoming one of my all time favorite novels...

Cheers,
K

God, I love this book and I love what happens to people the first time they read it. It's like we're reminded of how perfectly magical literature can be...No, I have no perspective on this novel. It is probably my favourite novel of all time; no, it is. I suspected so, but this re-read has simply confirmed.

What does one read after Cloud Atlas? I can't even imagine, right now.

David Mitchell is so dreamy

One of the questions my Reading Lamp subjects are able to choose from addresses who their literary boyfriend or girlfriend is - this person can be either real or a character - and if real, either dead or alive.

Renaissance playwright, poet, and general bad boy Christopher Marlowe used to be my boyfriend. When I was introduced to David Mitchell, however, I let Marlowe down as gently as I could and immediately shacked up with Mitchell. So far, he's been a model partner, unlike Marlowe who was in the bad habit of getting into bar brawls which culminated in his knife being sheathed in his own eye.

I think Mitchell is by far one of the best writers working in English right now and it's a bloody crime that he hasn't won the Booker yet. I might respect the Booker a little more if it was capable of appreciating and rewarding Mitchell's genius. (I also want him to get the money so he can keep writing like crazy, and go on research trips to Japan, or wherever else he might need to go.)

But about number9dream. I've had this book for quite some time but was rationing it. I'd already read Mitchell's three other novels and know his new one won't be out until 2009 sometime. I was trying to keep it in reserve so that I wouldn't have to wait too long between Mitchell reads - even though now, having read number9dream, I'll be waiting 2-3 years between Mitchell reads. Le gigantic sigh.

number9dream is Mitchell's second novel and I've gotten two clashing reviews from two other Mitchell freaks I know. V. said she wasn't as wowed by number9dream as she was by his other novels, while K. forcefully and wistfully (because, having read it already, she no longer has it to look forward to) asserted that number9dream was Mitchell's best.

I'm not sure I can make such judgments. Mitchell's genius manifests so differently in each book that I feel unable to compare them. Cloud Atlas may be my favourite only because it was the first of his works I read. Part of why Mitchell is my literary boyfriend is that he shocks and awes me every time I read his stuff.

I find myself wondering how the person who wrote Cloud Atlas could possibly have written number9dream AND Black Swan Green. Mitchell is the master of creating wildly different narrative voices both within and across his novels, and if he weren't too good for it by far I'd say he should have written World War Z.

I think I won't give a plot summary of number9dream for two reasons. 1) I won't do it justice. It seems on the surface (or, more accurately, in the back cover copy) like a pretty straightforward coming of age story but it's so, so much more than that. 2) Just read it, dammit, and find out what happens! How Mitchell writes what happens is as important as what happens. Unlike so many writers, he provides the complete package - substance and style (or "sentence and solaas", in venerable Chaucer's words).

35. Ghostwritten

I love David Mitchell. I think I might scream and faint like a 50s teeny-bopper seeing Elvis swing his hips if I were to meet David Mitchell. It's not that he's a hotpants, although he might be for all I know - it's that he's such a ridiculous genius.

My introduction to Mitchell lies in one of my better book discovery tales. Two years ago or so (?) I was on the train going from Kingston to Toronto. I was reading some crappy book for my studies and wasn't very absorbed - which enabled me to notice that the guy in the seat next to me was discretely looking over my shoulder.

I realized he was doing something I always do on the subway - he was trying to figure out what I was reading. This made me feel kindly towards him, so I angled the book so he'd get a better look. He responded kindly towards my kindly gesture and we ended up talking about books for the next two hours.

This fella was in his late forties, I'm guessing. (I should have gotten his email address so that I could get more book recommendations later; I'm a fool!) He'd read everything. He loved books with a passion I'd lost sight of in my soul-crushing years in the academy.

Near the end of our conversation, he said (it must have been in response to my gushing about what a book nerd he was) "You know, I'm not a professor." I responded "Oh I know!" - here, he started to look as though he wondered if he ought to be offended - "You love books too much to be a professor!!!" He seemed relieved. And again I asked myself why I ever thought a PhD in English was a good idea.

So, he loved books, but he was especially enthusiastic about a book he'd just read - twice in a row - and so recommended it to me. That book was David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, the third of his growing oeuvre, which is currently sitting at four.

This train-bound book-lover made Cloud Atlas sound so incredibly compelling that I got it as soon as possible and read it - and I've been recommending it in rather rabid fashion ever since. I've also, slowly, been catching up on Mitchell's other books in advance of the new one he's writing right now.

Ghostwritten is his first novel, published when he was only 30 (yes, this too makes me wonder what the hell I've been doing with my life). I started it this afternoon, at some friends' cottage on a lovely lake near Parry Sound. It was delightful to sit on the porch and in one of many hammocks and just get absorbed in this book. Like the other two Mitchell books I've read (besides Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green), Ghostwritten is a fractured narrative (although he fractures his narratives differently each time) in which seemingly disparate threads are revealed to be connected in surprising and evocative ways.

It's actually almost impossible to tell people what Mitchell's books are about. I wouldn't know how to do it without revealing either everything or nothing (see above for "nothing"). All I can say is: read his stuff. You won't regret it. And if you do, maybe I don't want to be friends with you. Just joking. Maybe.