In my last blog, I wrote about how a copy of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet had fallen into my hands and I’d decided to stop everything I was doing and read it. And I had really high hopes because the reviews were good (especially the New York Times review by Dave Eggers) and I’d read the first chapter and IT was good, and anyway: it’s a fantastic book. I finished it. I loved it!
Honestly, I’m just not sure I have it in me to properly criticize a book by an author in possession of such a vast imagination/brain. I don’t think that with his latest book, Mitchell has created something perfect, but it sure is a beautiful (!!!), original, great story. I have tried my best to spread the word to customers in the store and now? now I have committed myself to reading all of David Mitchell’s other books: Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, Black Swan Green, and Ghostwritten. In a moment of weakness I just bought them all.
First of all, about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: it has not gotten glowing reviews across the board. In fact, the first review I read of it was in The Guardian (I love the Guardian online edition, and their culture/books section is great, not to mention I am always interested to see what is being reviewed [and how] in the UK vs what is getting attention in the US). The Guardian review said that, despite the fact that Mitchell has written five books now, it was still “hard to get a sense of his artistic personality.” And that’s really the theme of the review: Mitchell HAS no theme, and perhaps it’s time for him to establish one, but in the meantime it’s mostly ok that he keeps writing these wildly varying novels because at the end of the day they’re still very, very good.
Anyway, I read that review and still wanted to go and read Mitchell, in part because: he is described as a “postmodern visionary,” a “master of styles and genres,” “a genius”, capable of writing books described as “brilliantly original fiction.” His books are consistently nominated for significant literary awards. He has been compared to Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Melville, Salinger, Umberto Eco, Philip K. Dick.
But? I just haven’t noticed him that much before. I was working at a bookstore when Black Swan Green came out. I mean I guess I could have been truly oblivious, there’s a chance, but don’t recall there being much of a fuss about it, even though it got glowing reviews in the US and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by Time. Of all his titles, Cloud Atlas is the one that has sold the most copies here at Lemuria, but we haven’t sold LOADS. I’m not sure it was even released in hardcover in this country.
I don’t think Mitchell’s writing is too “British” for readers here. Why he seems capable only of garnering a cult following in the US while achieving literary superstar status in the UK eludes me, but I think that might change with The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – I hope so, anyway. And to go back to that Guardian review, and the New York Times one too- perhaps the difference between the two is significant of the fact the in the UK, readers might be a bit more used to Mitchell, whereas here for some reason many of us (me) are only just now catching on.
Well. Who knows. But what remains an indisputable fact is that Mitchell is an author whose works have been consistently impressive on a scale not many other current authors seem to be on.
And after all that: here is a lovely article from the NewYork Times that’s more about Mitchell himself. A snippet:
“When writing is great, Mitchell told me of the books he loved as a reader, ‘your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here. One, that someone thought of that world and people in the first place. And the second, that there’s this means of transmitting it. Just little ink marks on squashed wood fiber. Bloody amazing.'”
Susie
Comments are closed.