Early Cartography: David Mitchell's "Ghostwritten"

Due to time constraints and an ever-growing, ever-fluctuating reading schedule, I had to set aside my goal of re-reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas before seeing the film version at the end of October. However, as much as I want/need to return to that work (and as much as I want to do second takes on multiple titles), I realized I'm getting closer to finishing Mitchell's complete bibliography. I recently used a window of time to read Ghostwritten, his 1999 debut, therefore leaving Number9Dream as my only unread novel by one of my favorite living writers. By doing this inadvertent, non-chronological reading, I've had a unique view of Mitchell's development over the years. Of course, I would likely have the same opinions had I started with Ghostwritten and explored his works in a chronological fashion. But by recalling the diversity of his novels, I'm also recalling the diversity of my growth as a reader, especially in hindsight. Cloud Atlas will always be one of my top five favorite novels; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet might very well be underrated, despite its acclaim upon release; and while Black Swan Green is an enjoyable, smaller work, I may have over-praised it upon my first reading, since I was still feeling the afterglow of Cloud Atlas. Ghostwritten, however, proves to be an impressive debut, and while it is more reminiscent of his masterpiece than his other works, it's an excellent piece of writing as well as an example of a talented artist getting a feel for how to explore a vast collection of themes, eras, and atmospheres.

My working title for this essay was "Pocket Atlas," but I was worried that would be misleading, since it could potentially insinuate Ghostwritten as a lesser version of Cloud Atlas, when, for all of the craft similarities, it should stand alone (even though Timothy Cavendish and Luisa Rey make cameos of sorts). In his debut, Mitchell explores the lives and problems of different people from different places, connected by happenstance, brief interactions, and mysterious entities. The characters include a member of a dangerous Japanese cult; a Japanese record store employee; a woman running a mountainside tea shack in China; a British adulterer/money-launderer working in Hong Kong; a wayward London drummer; a Russian art thief; an Irish physicist; a late-night New York DJ; and a spirit-like organism that transfers itself among living hosts. Their stories and lives are singular, yet the connections reveal themselves over the course of the book. However, for a first major novel, these revelations are not presented with any gimmicks or "ah ha!" moments; Mitchell lets the reader see how these lives are linked, but places the emphasis on the individual stories. Throughout, there's an equal mix of mystery, humor, and an international scope. Giving fuller synopses of the plot might be beneficial, but my recap above is enough for a general description. Therefore, it's better to explore the various aspects of craft employed by Mitchell. His opening chapter is wise--he sets the reader up to expect a standard (yet well-written) thriller. The story of a dangerous cult member shows how today's influx of mass market mysteries could be elevated with more emphasis on good writing instead of cheap thrills:

"The subway train in Tokyo was as crammed as a cattle wagon. Crammed with organs, wrapped in meat, wrapped in clothes. Silent and sweaty. I was half-afraid some fool would crush the phials prematurely. Our minister of science had explained to me exactly how the package worked. When I ripped open the seal and pressed the three buttons simultaneously, I would have one minute to get clear before the solenoids shattered the phials, and the great cleansing of the world would begin.
I put the package on the baggage rack and waited for the appointed minute. I focused my alpha telepathy, and sent messages of encouragement to my co-cleansers in various metro stations throughout Tokyo.
I studied the people around me. The honored unclean, the first to be cleansed. Dumb. Sorry. Tired. Mind-rotted. Mules, in a never-ending whirlpool of lies, pain, and ignorance. I was a few inches away from a baby, in a woolly cap, strapped to its mother's back. It was asleep and dribbling and smelt of toddlers' marshiness. A girl, I guessed from the pink Minnie Mouse sewn onto the cap. Pensioners who had nothing to look forward to but senility and wheelchairs in lonely magnolia 'homes.' Young salarymen, supposedly in their prime, their minds conditioned for greed and bullying (Mitchell 15-16)."


After this set up, the following segments feel radically different, but there's a consistent emphasis on both positive humanity and our species' more negative, deplorable traits. Again, for a debut novel, these divergent notions are generally well handled, but occasionally, Mitchell feels the need to explicitly inform the reader about what he's doing, especially when the non-human organism narrates its own chapter:

"I have no story of a blinding conversion to humanism. It just didn't happen that way. During the Cultural Revolution, and when I transmigrated into hosts in Tibet, in Vietnam, in Korea, in El Salvador, I experienced humans fighting, usually from the safety of the general's office. In the Falkland Islands I watched them fight over rocks. 'Two bald men fighting over a comb,,' an ex-host commented. In Rio I saw a tourist killed for a watch. Humans live in a pit of cheating, exploiting, hurting, incarcerating. Every time, the species wastes some part of what it could be. This waste is poisonous. That is why I no longer harm my hosts. There's already too much of this poison (Mitchell 163)."

There are several scenes of assault and violence in Ghostwritten, and all are handled with intense but understated detail. There's nothing gratuitous about the more tense scenes, but when Mitchell wants to explore the shameful sides of humanity, he does so with much precision, and therefore renders statements (like the one above) redundant and obvious. This isn't meant to be picky, but for someone as talented as Mitchell, these are examples of someone still finding his way around thematic nuances. At the same time, he still doesn't get credit for his comedic side. In every one of his novels (with the more obvious example being Black Swan Green), there are sometimes hilarious asides and scenarios. For example, Marco (the London drummer) awakes from a one-night stand. His partner is another character from elsewhere in the novel, but the emphasis here is on Mitchell's humor:

"'Hi.' I grimaced as pleasantly as I could, peering through the sheets of pain. Not a face I could imagine smiling easily. I hoped this wasn't going to be one of those GuiltLine wake-ups when she tells you about her boyfriend and her dead brother and her run-over-last-month dog Michael and you end up wondering how many people are in this bed (Mitchell 257)."

Mitchell mixes history and carefully detailed explorations of the various lands, which, along with the character descriptions, creates some very compelling asides. Nothing in Ghostwritten is unnecessary, since even the slightest detours become mini-stories in their own right. In the passage below, a character describes the various lines of the London train system:

"The Northern Line is black on the maps. It's the deepest. It has the most suicides, you're more likely to get mugged on it, and its art students are most likely to be future Bond Girls. There's something doom-laden about the Northern Line. Its station names: Morden, Brent Cross, Goodge Street, Archway, Elephant and Castle, the resurrected Mornington Crescent. It was closed for years: I remember imagining I was on a probe peering into the Titanic as the train passed through. Yep, the Northern Line is the psycho of the family. Those bare-walled stations south of the Thames that can't attract advertisers (Mitchell 268-269)."

Again, I haven't even come close to hinting at the various plots, let alone their true connections. This isn't laziness or an oversight--the beauty of Ghostwritten is its minutiae. It's not a novel that can be fully reviewed or explored through its various recaps. Again, my brief overview above tells everything and nothing. By sharing various passages and writings, I'm getting into Mitchell's eye for detail, but the bigger picture has to be felt through an actual reading. Said details remind the reader of where a given scene is taking place, yet the narration turns up small, consistent details. Whether a part of the book is taking place in Europe, Asia, or America, there's a constant battle between old and new, with history and contemporary details sometimes being at odds with each other. Sometimes this is more apparent in specific chapters. The shared humanity is also a shared view of an increasingly small world. "Petersburg," for example, yields this assessment:

"In the winter, I take the metro. Otherwise, I prefer to walk. If the weather's fine I walk up the Troisky Bridge, and then cross the Mars Field, where the women wait. But if it's raining I walk down Nevsky Prospect, a street of ghosts if there ever was one. Jerome says that every city has its street of ghosts. Past the Stroganov Palace and the Kazan Cathedral. Past the Aeroflot offices, and the scrubby Armenian Cafe. Past the flat where I made love to my Politburo member. It's been turned into an American Express office now. All these new shops, Benetton, the Haagen-Dazs shops, Nike, Burger King, a shop that sells nothing but camera film and key-rings, another that sells Swatches and Rolexes. High streets are becoming the same all over the world, I supposed (Mitchell 210-211)."

With this emphasis on cultural experiences becoming increasingly corporate, Mitchell's use of ghosts and other-worldly unification takes on an essential meaning. It doesn't make Ghostwritten a religious or new-age novel--it uses these mystical ideas to link the characters (and, by extension, humanity as a whole) by more noble facets. Despite the stress, violence, and problems faced by the characters, there's a common theme of all of us being in this world together, and basic hopes and dreams being universal. Again, there's a philosophical paradox that makes Ghostwritten successful--world citizens are more alike than we realize, but at the same time, we're becoming most distant and distracted. We're all touched by human experiences, for better and for worse. This may reek of a touchy-feely new age plot, but Ghostwritten, especially as someone's debut novel, uses grandly postmodern settings to evoke classic themes.

And while I hoped to distance it from Cloud Atlas, I stumbled upon an early review that is almost creepy in its prediction of a better effort by Mitchell to connect time and place. Writing for Salon in 2000, writer Laura Miller offered this statement in her closing paragraph:

"'Ghostwritten' injects pop attitude into what were once frustratingly cryptic or dauntingly cerebral postmodern experiments. But, unlike [Mark] Danielewski, who grafted Borgesian ontological puzzles onto a Stephen King plot, Mitchell doesn’t yet seem to have invented a cocktail that really packs a wallop — though perhaps someday he will."

Work Cited:
Mitchell, David. Ghostwritten. Copyright 1999 by David Mitchell.

An Atlas Of the East

Months ago, when I learned of its upcoming publication, I began an informal mental countdown to the release of David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. Virtually everyone with whom I've discussed books has had to listen to me rave about his 2004 masterpiece Cloud Atlas, and in what I felt was an otherwise decent look at his second-to-last work Black Swan Green, I couldn't help but include some fawning mentions of the previous work. This may be reminiscent of my consistent appraisals of Roberto Bolano, but even looking through rose-colored glasses, it's impossible to deny Mitchell's literary talents. That said, The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet fits into many categories, one of which is a genre that I have a tendency to avoid: historical fiction. I hesitate to disregard a genre without having read many examples, and I know that writers such as Philippa Gregory and the late Patrick O'Brian have followings that are just as ravenous as I am about my own favorite writers. However, I usually prefer non-fiction accounts of various historical eras, or, if applicable, novels written in those times, rather than contemporary imaginings (for example, I'd lean more towards Jane Austen than The Jane Austen Book Club). It's extraordinarily convenient that, even though I would read a David Mitchell novel set in any time period, it focuses on an era that I've always found fascinating: historical Japan.

The novel opens with Jacob De Zoet, an idealistic young clerk beginning a five year term with the Dutch East Indies Company in Edo-era Japan. The year is 1799, and Jacob is hoping to end the term with enough money to marry Anna, a young woman in Holland. However, Dejima, the island harbor off the coast of Japan, is rife with corruption and greed. Quickly, Jacob learns that his innocence and morals will face an uphill battle against the more worldly men in his company. His first meeting with Dr. Marinus, who will eventually become his ally, shows that nobody is immune to bad first impressions in Dejima.

"The clerk raises his voice: 'Dr. Marinus? I apologize for disturb--'
'From what mouse hole,' Marinus glares, 'did you spring?'
'I just arrived a quarter hour ago, from the Shenandoah. My name's--'
'Did I ask for your name? No: I asked for your fons et origio.'
'Domburg, sir: a coastal town on Walcheren Island, in Zeeland.'
'Walcheren, is it? I visited Middleburg once.'
'In point of fact, Doctor, I was educated in Middleburg.'
Marinus barks a laugh. 'Nobody is "educated" in that nest of slavers (Mitchell 27)."

Jacob eventually wins the respect of a few of the men, but this immediately backfires when he refuses to sign off on a corrupt deal, therefore losing a potential promotion and being ostracized by the majority of the company. To make matters worse, he begins to fall for Orito Aibagawa, an intelligent Japanese midwife who's considered to be poor marriage material for a Japanese man due to a burn on her face; even the hint of a relationship with Jacob is out of the question, since the larger relationship between the Dutch and the Japanese is strained, with the only acceptable "relationships" being between the traders and the prostitutes. Jacob understands this, but does everything in his power to interact with Orito. She's hesitant and distant with the young foreigner, and Mitchell sets up their interactions in a way that their eventual outcome could go either way. Their conversations are sweet, and Mitchell employs careful use of comedy to highlight Jacob's attraction to her.

"Her wooden slippers crunch the friable earth as she walks along the path.
Act, implores the Ghost of Future Regret. I shan't give you another chance.
Jacob hurries past the tomatoes and catches her up near the gate.
'Miss Aibagawa? Miss Aibagawa. I must ask you to forgive me.'
She has turned and has one hand on the gate. 'Why forgive?'
'For what I now say.' The marigolds are molten. 'You are beautiful.'
Her mouth opens and closes. She takes a step back...
...into the wicket gate. It rattles. The guard swings it open.
Damned fool, groans the Demon of Present Regret. What have you done (Mitchell 128-129)?"

These may seem like basic initial summary outlines, but, to use an apt cliche, the plot does thicken. To pay off her father's debts, Orito is sent into a perverse slavery, a temple of deformed young women who are impregnated by mysterious men. A rescue is organized, and the adventure then turns into a standoff between the Dutch, Japanese, and the British, who wish to make their own trading contract with the Japanese. In these sections, Mitchell combines his literary acumen with a fondness for breathtaking, suspenseful action scenes, the likes of which are only hinted at in his previous works.

"Cutlip waits until the gap is closed to fifty yards. 'Fire, lads!'
Splinters fly off the guard's boat's stanchion; the sea shatters into spray. One inspector crouches; his colleague dives into the deckhouse. Two oarsmen jump to their positions and haul the boat out of the Phoebus's path--and not before time. The prow affords a fine view of the soldiers: they stare up at the Europeans, unflinching and unafraid, but make no move to attack with arrows or spears or to give chase. Their boat lists clumsily in the Phoebus's wake and is lost astern in little time (Mitchell 431)."



It's impossible, unless this essay was to run pages upon pages long, to recap every event and character in The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet. This isn't a sign of laziness on my part, since other, more respected reviewers have written fine reviews of this novel, giving readers a decent understanding of the outlines, without getting into a lot of the secondary characters and actions, some of which, as Dave Eggers has suggested, might have benefited from some editing and paring. After finishing the novel, I read two reviews: Eggers's glowing essay in The New York Times Book Review, and the opinions of a critic I've had some stylistic problems with: James Wood of The New Yorker. Both writers explore Mitchell's work in the context of postmodern studies, since Cloud Atlas is generally considered a classic example of postmodern fiction. I was very pleased with Dave Eggers in his assessment:

"That book [Cloud Atlas], like much of Mitchell's fiction, plays with narrative structure while never abandoning a traditional love of storytelling and an unmistakable affection for historical, and adventuresome, settings. Now comes The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet, which retains those narrative tendencies while abandoning the structural complexities often (and often wrongly) called postmodern. This new book is straight-up, linear, third-person historical novel, an achingly romantic story of forbidden love and something of a rescue tale--all taking place off the coast of Japan, circa 1799. Postmodern it's not....it's not an easy book, period. Its pacing can be challenging, and its idiosyncrasies are many. But it offers innumerable rewards for the patient reader and confirms Mitchell as one of the more fascinating and fearless writers alive."

My problem with James Wood came when he completely ripped into the works of Paul Auster. He's incredibly well-read and knows literature, but his reviews have an annoying tendency to become weighed down in random structural analysis that, while understandable, seem to come across as a salute to his own intelligence rather than a straightforward critique of a given writer. He offers mild criticisms of Mitchell, but eventually offers praise to the man's talents. In a much more detailed (albeit confusing) manner, he also goes where Eggers goes, attempting to place Mitchell's postmodern label in conjunction with an unabashedly historical novel.

"We might settle for 'late postmodernism, a term that suggests the peculiar statelessness of contemporary fiction, which finds itself wandering--not unhappily--between tradition and novelty, realism and anti-realism....thus David Mitchell can follow a 'postmodern' novel with a 'traditional' comic bildungsroman, and then follow that with a conventional historical novel...meanwhile, the historical novel, typically the province of genre gardeners and conservative populists, has become an unlikely laboratory for serious writers, some of them distinctly untraditional in emphasis and concern."

So if we cut away even the most intelligent hypotheses, it's not far off to assume that Mitchell was intending to write a standard, historical novel. The research that went into The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet is impressive, and even for readers like me who avoid historical fiction, it's a classic example that great writing can illuminate even the typically standard plot outlines. It's not a mistake that the secondary headline of Wood's essay is "What can't the novelist David Mitchell do?" All of his typical pieces are there: research, comedy, rich descriptions, and multiple, unfolding plots. And, while this might seem like a spoiler, he genuinely knows his audience and their expectations of hints to his previous works. He does this in one sentence towards the end of the novel, and while it may seem obvious, there's little doubt that he wrote this sentence as a wink to his readers.

"West to east, the sky unrolls and rolls its atlas of clouds."

Works Cited:
Eggers, Dave. "Empire Of Desire." The New York Times Book Review. June 24, 2010.

Mitchell, David. The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet. Copyright 2010 by David Mitchell.

Wood, James. "The Floating Library." The New Yorker. July 5, 2010.

The Age of Reasons

(WARNING: One of the cited passages is Not Safe For Work)

In most cases, I have a tendency to avoid books or films that are described as "coming-of-age" stories. If they cannot be avoided outright, then I go into them with a hefty grain of salt. In recent years, this description has been more pronounced in the films I've seen as opposed to the books I've read, and my opposition to the genre stems from a pretty simple reason--the lack of originality. The coming-of-age story usually follows this formula: a young protagonist (usually male) breaks out of the shell of innocence, thanks to a combination of dismantled family relationships, alcohol, cigarettes, weed, foreplay, or sex. In the end, even if he's still at a young age, said protagonist is wiser or more hardened by life in general. Despite these occasional faults and tedious forms, there are excellent examples of this subgenre. The 2002 film Y Tu Mama Tambien created an original story despite being culled together from often used plot devices, and one could point towards the late J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In the Rye, even though Holden begins the novel wise and bitter beyond his years. After being absolutely stunned by David Mitchell's 2004 novel Cloud Atlas, I recently read his latest book Black Swan Green (2006) with great enthusiasm, completely disregarding my aforementioned critiques. I went into the novel with confidence in Mitchell's intelligence and writing style, along with remembering the old quote: "It's not what you say, but how you say it."

Black Swan Green sketches the life of thirteen-year old Jason Taylor, living in a section of Worcestershire, England of that name. The novel takes place over the course of a year, and matter-of-factly details the problems and issues that Jason faces, ones that aren't outlandish, but can be overwhelming to someone that age. He has a stuttering problem, which makes his social life in school a living hell. His relationship with his older sister is strained, and his father has a tendency to be cold and distant, which is partly to blame for his parent's crumbling marriage. Combine these issues with the onset of puberty, and a reader cannot blame Jason for being caught up in even the most minute details. He's a bright, keen young man with the occasional tendency to overanalyze, even if his age forsakes him from fully understanding his observational skills. The town of Black Swan Green is, to Jason and his friends, completely boring, but his descriptions highlight more than a few dashes of beauty that can be found even in the smallest areas.

"In the copse, the bridle path joined up with a moon-cratered track. Trees knitted overhead, so only knots and loops of sky showed. Dark and cool, it was, and I wondered if I should've brought my coat. Down a hollow, round the bend, I came across a thatched cottage made of sooty bricks and crooked timber. Martins were busy under its eaves. PRIVATE said a sign hung on the slatted gate, where the name should go. Newborn flowers in the garden were licorice allsorts blue, pink, and yellow. Maybe I heard scissors. Maybe I heard a poem, seeping from its cracks. So I stood and listened, just for a minute, like a hungry robin listening for worms (Mitchell 70)."

The problems in Jason's world stretch from three distinct areas. The smallest one is his own world, both with the troublesome family issues and the school bullies like Ross Wilcox, who, even with his British colloquialisms, is carefully painted to resemble every jerk one has known in childhood. The second area involves the community, and the fear of the gypsies who roam the fields, worrying the adults more in terms of property values and theft. The third area is the British war in the Falkland Islands, which scares Jason immensely, as would any war details being presented to someone who's still a child. This could be seen as a mere plot device to put the time frame of the novel into context (along with repeated mentions of the likes of Pink Floyd and Elvis Costello), but Mitchell shapes the Falkland War as a way for Jason to see the faults and bombastic ways of adulthood instead of just through his parents.

"In Argentina riots're being reported in the major cities, with lootings and shootings, and some people're saying it's just a matter of time before the junta's toppled. The Daily Mail's full of how Great British guts and Great British leadership won the war. No prime minister's ever been more popular than Premier Margaret Thatcher in the entire history of opinion polls.
I should be really happy (Mitchell 115)."

The adult dialogue in the book isn't given much unnecessary explanations, but left to stand on its own as filtered through Jason's mind. By reading what he's hearing, we can easily pick out the inherent lies, bullshitting, and forced niceness of various conversations. The best examples come from the conversations between Jason's parents and his aunt and uncle. Jason sees the shallowness of the interactions, and the reader feels just as awkward.

"Before starting the starters, Uncle Brian opened the wine he'd brought. Julia and Alex got a whole glass, Hugo and me just half, 'and a whistle wetter for you, Nigel.'
Aunt Alice did her usual toast: 'To the Taylor and Lamb dynasties!'
Uncle Brian did his usual: 'Here's looking at you, kid!'
Dad pretended to find that rather amusing.
We all clinked glasses (except Alex) and took a sip.
Dad is guaranteed to hold his wine glass up to the light and say 'Very easy to drink!' He didn't let us down today. Mum shot him a look, but Dad never notices. 'I'll say this for you, Brian. You can't half-choose a decent plonk.'
'Fabulous to earn your stamp of approval, Michael. Treated myself to a crate of the stuff. Comes from a vineyard near that charming cottage we rented in the lakes last year' (Mitchell 47)."

As was the case with Cloud Atlas, one of Mitchell's best skills is the ability to balance both the dramatic moments in life along with the comedic. Neither emotion is dominant, therefore giving Black Swan Green the possibility to be classified as either. At times, these two sides are combined. Given the fact that nothing is written to come across as more than a detail of someone's life, the feelings depicted are wholly realistic. A fight scene between two of Jason's schoolmates is one of many examples of this mix of reality, comedy, and drama.

"At the foot of the embankment, Ross Wilcox'd already got to his feet. Grant Burch was half-sitting up, cradling his right hand in his left and squinting with agony. Shit, I thought. Blood and soil clotted Grant Burch's face.
'Aw,' mocked Ross Wilcox. 'Had enough, now, have we?'
'My wrist's bust,' Grant Burch grimaced. 'Yer fuckin' wanker!'
Ross Wilcox flobbed, dead casual. 'Looks to me like you lost then, ain't yer?'
'I've not fuckin' lost, yer fuckin' wanker, it's a fuckin' draw!' (Mitchell 75)."

A friend of mine recommended the works of David Mitchell to me, and in doing so mentioned Mitchell's penchant for various characters making appearances in his otherwise unconnected novels. In Cloud Atlas, my favorite chapters were devoted to the writings and life of composer Robert Frobisher, and I was delighted when his life made a brief appearance in Black Swan Green. The daughter of Frobisher's mentor who was his forbidden love is now an elderly grifter, giving Jason secret lessons in poetry and French. Her relationship with Frobisher is hinted, but would not be immediately understood to someone who hasn't read the 2004 work. Even so, Mitchell writes the passages as a compelling mystery that appeals to the senses, even without the context of Cloud Atlas.

"'Yes, [Frobisher] is the one who wrote that incredible music. Robert revered my father. Like a disciple, a son. They shared a musical empathy, who is an empathy more intimate than the sexual.' (She said 'sexual' like it was any other word.) 'It is thanks to Robert, my father could compose his final masterpiece, Die Todtenvogel. In Warsaw, in Paris, in Vienna, for a brief summer, the name of Vyvyan Ayrs was restored to glory. Oh, I was a jealous demoiselle!' (Mitchell 159)."

The dialogue carries the novel, and Mitchell creates a (as much as I dislike this term) slice of life that's both believable and laced with moments of everyday suspense. The details are crafted especially well, but as a whole, Mitchell didn't seem to have the intention to create a story that focuses on the unique or unpredictable. The plot points (Jason's parent's divorce, the comeuppances of his tormentors, the depictions of the gypsies versus Black Swan Green's assumptions of them), do contain elements of surprise, but in reality (or more in hindsight) seem typical. But describing them as typical is not meant to be an insult. With Cloud Atlas, Mitchell proved his immense skills in both storytelling, literary history, and originality, creating a work that I would currently include in a list of my top ten favorite novels. With Black Swan Green, he opts for excellent writing on a smaller scale. Perhaps it's semi-autobiographical, and perhaps he wanted to go for writing a more standard, tidier work. While I wouldn't classify it anywhere near the awesomeness of his 2004 masterpiece, I definitely found it to be extremely worthy, and a great pick for anyone wanting to read a novel that's a fast read, but with some thought-provoking relevance. In June, Mitchell will publish his latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and from what I've heard, it could be his most complex work to date. With that in mind, it seems natural that a smaller, more intimate work would be sandwiched between one established masterpiece and one potentially looming one.

Work Cited:
Mitchell, David. Black Swan Green. Copyright 2006 by David Mitchell.

Partly, Beautifully Cloudy

This is probably the most cliched title that I could have come up with for this essay, but no matter. Given the complexities of the novel Cloud Atlas, it's probably fitting that a sub par title can join with a serious essay. David Mitchell's 2004 epic is one of those rare novels that has the potential to appeal to both academic circles as well as specific genre enthusiasts. Pick a style, pick a genre, and chances are that the book touches upon it in some capacity. Historical fiction readers will enjoy the narratives of Adam Ewing and Robert Frobisher. Mystery lovers will be enthralled by the modern conspiracy tale involving journalist Luisa Rey. BBC comedy fans will likely eat up the comic, horrific misadventures of publisher Timothy Cavendish. Also, but not finally, science fiction readers will appreciate the dystopian visions in the chapter "An Orison of Somni-451."

Or not. There's also the very real possibility that readers of these genre niches would not want anything to do with Cloud Atlas, especially since it's a sin to even think about reading the varied chapters apart from the other ones. Despite my earnest claim that the novel has wide-ranging appeal (I still hold this to be true), it's a complex work that cannot be digested by flipping to and fro. The chapters (which actually work as novellas) need to be read together, despite the fact that they get separated into halves, thanks to some creative, painstaking connections between the various characters and eras. Even the most studious reader will, on first reading, miss at least a few of the plot points, not to mention finding the occasional one challenging. No matter how long this essay turns out to be, I will undoubtedly miss some of the major ideas and passages, but I'm hoping that what I do cover will stir up interest in this book, especially for people who are not familiar with it; I was one of those people up until a month or so ago.

"The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet--not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too."- Michael Chabon, from a quote on the back of the paperback edition.

As much as I admire Mr. Chabon, his blurb tells nothing about the novel, not that this is entirely his fault. However, it tells almost everything that's to be expected, too. Such is the mystique of Cloud Atlas. It bounces from time to time, from style to style, matching anything as good as Thomas Pynchon, as well as the intentional melodrama of Romantic-era fiction. Every change and jump in style is calculated and timed perfectly. The first halves of the tales tell enough to leave the reader aching for more; the second halves close out perfectly, whether their endings are jarring or peaceful.

"The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing" opens the novel, and it's probably the greatest example of Mitchell's fluency in the history of literary styles. This journal of everyday life, intrigue, and culture clashes in the sixteenth century is said to be influenced by the works of Herman Melville. Personally, I found the pacing, language, and even the punctuation reminiscent of Aphra Behn's Okonokos.

"Amidst nebulous quilts & summery pillows I lay, in a bedroom in San Francisco similar to my own. A dwarfish servant said, 'You're a very silly boy, Adam.' Tilda & Jackson entered, but when I voiced my jubilation, not English but the guttural barkings of an Indian race burst from my mouth! My wife & son were shamed by me & mounted a carriage. I gave chase, striving to rectify this misunderstanding, but the carriage dwindled into the fleeing distance until I awoke in bosky twilight & a silence, booming & eternal. My bruises, cuts, muscles & extremities groaned like a courtroom of malcontent litigants (Mitchell 19)."

Later on, Mitchell depicts the relationship between white colonists and Natives, spanning from flat-out racism to acts of bravery and charity that break down racial barriers. The reader has to take the bad with the good, and Mitchell crafts this section with indications that the ending will turn out either happily or poorly for Ewing. This balance is nearly perfect, since either ending is a very real possibility heading into the final pages.

The letters of composer Robert Frobisher to one Rufus Sixsmith compose "Letters From Zedelghem," and ultimately my favorite passages among many in Cloud Atlas. The letters stem from the early 1930s, and it's almost a shame that they weren't actually written by a novelist from that era. If Cloud Atlas had been written seventy years earlier, I'm fully convinced that Robert Frobisher would be included with some of the most well regarded heroes in international literature. At first glance, he's a gifted composer, seeking an apprenticeship with an eccentric master composter. However, as his letters take shape, we see his independent spirit, his lack of patience for stupidity, and a wonderful twist of humor, especially given his background and social surroundings.

"At the van De Veldes' town house, the girls were arranged on the stairway to greet me in ascending order of age--half-expected 'em to burst into song, and stone the crows. Sixsmith, that's what they did. 'Greensleeves,' in English. Syrupy as humbugs. Then Mme. v.d. V. pinched my cheek as if I were a homecoming runaway and said, owlishly, 'How do you do-ooo?'....all girls posses a thoroughly unjustified self-confidence. A v. long sofa sagged beneath this family of porkers...She asked this: 'Mr. Frobisher, are you well acquainted with Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street?' Well, thought I, the day might not be a complete wreck. A girl with a taste for irony most conceal some depths. But Marie-Louise was serious! A congenital dunce (448)."

The ending of his segment is unsettling, especially given that, underneath his intelligence and bravado, his needs and desires were no different than anyone else's. However, the writing style employed by Mitchell would, as its own novella, compose one of the best epistolary works ever. Even though we're only reading one side of this correspondence, the mix of emotions, details, and black humor are captivating. Mitchell's characters have a tendency to reappear in his other novels.I can only hope that Robert Frobisher has appeared before, or will appear in a future work.

I found the sectionsset in the future ("An Orison of Somni-451" and "Sloosha's Crossin' An' Ev'rythin' After") the most challenging of the novel, and part of me wanted to blame my own lack of reading in this genre. However, another part of me wonders whether or not these chapters were supposed to be somewhat vague in order to leave (in the context of the novel) some of the plot points open for various interpretations. These sections are worth multiple readings (as is the rest of the work as a whole), but despite my confusion, not having every event in these chapters explained in my mind did not detract from my overall understanding and appreciation. And, even with leaving two of the key chapters virtually unmentioned, what should be the "overall understanding" of Cloud Atlas? The events are connected via names, relationships, manuscripts, and a recurring comet-shaped birthmark. These connections are constantly hinted at and mentioned, linking everything despite the invidivuality of the tales. Perhaps this does warrant Chabon's use of the nested doll metaphor. The text is a whole, yet is begging to be broken down. The segments are vastly unique, but unequivocally more than just the sum of its parts. Mitchell didn't create a mystery or an intentional labyrinth of a novel, yet the blending of genres might hint to that on the surface. His talents as a writer are staggering, yet there's no subliminal winking or acknowledgement of this, a la Dave Eggers, for example. Mitchell simply tells the stories as best he can, and in the process created one of the best novels of this young century.

See also: Terrance Terich's brief introduction to David Mitchell at Blogsmos.

Work Cited:
Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas. Copyright 2004 by David Mitchell.