I wasn’t familiar with David Mitchell’s books, but there was an interesting article about him in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:
Since the appearance of his debut novel, “Ghostwritten,†in 1999 — a fifth, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet,†is being published this week — Mitchell’s writing has been compared with that of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Salinger, Chandler, DeLillo, Murakami, William Gibson and Ursula K. LeGuin — a baker’s dozen that begins to suggest both the heights of hyperbole scaled by Mitchell’s admirers and the Hydra-headed nature of his novelistic output. Mitchell’s novels have featured a global and historical sweep unusual for writers of his generation.They are set everywhere from contemporary Japan and London to the 19th-century South Seas to California in the 1970s to dystopic distant futures — sometimes all in the same novel.
I definitely want to check out his books now (especially The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which just got a great review from Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times), but what I’d really like to see are his notebooks, from which these images are taken:
While on the other hand, David Mitchell is probably my favorite living author (and I guess it helps that I like most of that baker’s dozen, too). Most of his books are quite different from the ones before, which I really like, as well.
Haven’t read Thousand Autumns yet though; I bought it as soon as it came out, but then was more or less spoilered by a radio review. I’m letting it rest in my book larder for a while, so that I can read it with slightly fresher eyes in a couple of months.
,†in 1999 — a fifth, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
,†is being published this week — Mitchell’s writing has been compared with that of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Sterne, Joyce, Nabokov, Pynchon, Salinger, Chandler, DeLillo, Murakami, William Gibson and Ursula K. LeGuin — a baker’s dozen that begins to suggest both the heights of hyperbole scaled by Mitchell’s admirers and the Hydra-headed nature of his novelistic output. Mitchell’s novels have featured a global and historical sweep unusual for writers of his generation.They are set everywhere from contemporary Japan and London to the 19th-century South Seas to California in the 1970s to dystopic distant futures — sometimes all in the same novel.
I’ve read a couple of Michell’s books, but they weren’t really my cup of tea. (They were good, just not my thing.) More here: http://melydia.zoiks.org/tag/david-mitchell/
While on the other hand, David Mitchell is probably my favorite living author (and I guess it helps that I like most of that baker’s dozen, too).
Most of his books are quite different from the ones before, which I really like, as well.
Haven’t read Thousand Autumns yet though; I bought it as soon as it came out, but then was more or less spoilered by a radio review.
I’m letting it rest in my book larder for a while, so that I can read it with slightly fresher eyes in a couple of months.