SURVIVOR: the long ships (frans g. bengtsson)*
CHALLENGER: the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet (david mitchell)

in conversation with canada's national post, my boyfriend david mitchell mentioned that his latest novel, the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet, was "the hardest book to write, and if [he] didn't think it was the best one then [he] couldn't have handed it in." the first half of that comment makes a lot of sense to me; as in other works of his i've read (number9dream and black swan green appeared in THUNDERTOME last year, and the latter did some serious damage before updike brought the pain), each paragraph is its own tide pool of miniature agendas. achieving that level of detail in a novel about near-future japan or the english countryside of one's youth is one thing; getting it right when you're writing about a microscopic dutch trading center on dejima, an artificial island outside ultra-isolationist nagasaki in 1799, is another circle of research hell (mitchell hit the books at leiden university in the netherlands and met with specialists on the edo period). it's abundantly clear that mitchell spent a lot of time getting comfortable with his subject. is jacob de zoet his best book, now? that argument's a bit more slippery.

the jacob of the title is a scrupulous, god-fearing young dutchman sent to audit the dutch east indies company's activities at its outpost in nagasaki harbor; if he acquits himself well, he'll sail back to domburg in five years and marry his betrothed. his faith is a bit of a problem, as christian tchotchkes are forbidden on dejima; the family bible he's concealed in his trunk is overlooked by the japanese authorities, but it causes quite a bit of trouble as his days on the island become months and years. his scruples are another problem, for his superiors have been cooking the books for quite some time. his (and mitchell's) biggest problem, alas, involves the ladies; de zoet falls in love with orito aibagawa, a young japanese woman who's been given permission to study midwifery with the westerners. his romantic problem is all kinds of interesting at first - while the dutchmen take japanese mistresses from the lowest classes, involvement with a comparatively well-born woman like miss aibagawa is unthinkable - and the tensions between what is expected of him, what he expects of himself, and how he actually feels (or thinks he feels) about her give the first half of the book a fine crackle of energy.

then - how to put this without spoiling the story? - things get more than a bit gothic. under pressure from a powerful local authority, miss aibagawa's family yanks her from her studies with the doctor on dejima and packs her off to a monastery where early-seasons-of-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-type tribulations await her. mitchell has said that he "ingested a lot of historical manga"** in his research for the novel; no shit. it's wildly entertaining, mind you, but it's awfully jarring in the context of his more realistic subplots. i'm no expert on japanese history, and lord knows some of the big baddies of, like, western civilization were awfully kinky; let's say that if i were to spend a few years researching and writing a novel about a young man's adventures on a sixteenth-century hungarian farm, i'd do a lot of soul-searching before sending his little sister to work for elizabeth bathory.

all of that said, i don't mind being jarred a bit every now and again; while i wouldn't say jacob de zoet is mitchell's best book (i still prefer black swan green, and it's [cough] possible i might fancy one of the others a bit more than that; check back in a few 'TOMES), its experiments are undertaken with gusto, and i won't ding him for building in the sort of suprises i like so well in his other books. also, i just let a bunch of vikings sail over one of the most emotionally realistic books in the western canon; i'd infuriate the ghost of anna karenina if i abandoned my appreciation for adventure now. also also, mitchell seasons his realism-and-melodrama scrapple with passages like this:
poetry is the best sort of ambush. jacob de zoet isn't the most elegant beast, but it's unquestionably alive.

VICTOR: red orm and his crew sail on, i think; while mitchell's hybrid has some interesting appendages, the long ships's straightforward bloodthirstiness serve it well in combat.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 speaking of my boyfriends, are any of you planning on seeing drive? in a somewhat spoilerrific review, my boyfriend anthony lane warns that it's brainy (literally, not figuratively), but lily approves.

02 if you've read more than one mitchell novel (including jacob de zoet), where does this one rank?

03 if you were to write up the adventures of some 16th-century hungarian guy, would you include the ol' blood countess?

04 speaking of wildly unrealistic subplots, do you follow salman rushdie on twitter?

05 does mitchell's wheeling-gulls mega-rhyme please you?

06 how obvious is it that i'm like 70% cold medicine by volume today?

*previous battle here.

**Lone Wolf and Cub, about an Edo-era mercenary and his infant son who travel up and down Japan with an improbable-looking pram. Not exactly PC, but imaginative, clever and finely researched."


Katherine Cortes said...

01: yeah. but unless they decide to show it as the moms' matinee, probably not in the theayter.

02: I've only read Cloud Atlas and  Thousand Autumns - I had the same issues as you with this one, but I remember having some with CA also, although ultimately I liked them each a lot (both a lot?).

05: I kept looking for everything to have a rhyme, but was pretty pleased that it didn't.

Kudos to overlapping book lists! I ordered The Magicians today (and got my flesh&blood book club to choose it for our 10/30 meeting - very sneaky).

kidchamp said...

i love that doubling up! i hope you (and jen, who's doing the same thing) will report here on your meatspace groups' feelings about the book. i also hope it's good, given how much noise i've been making about our reading it. 

megarhyme isn't the term i want, now that i think about it. megastanza? but somehow the unrhymed bits rhyme...a bit. it gallops along in a pleasing way, is what i'm saying.

Amanda Moo said...

I think I'm still recovering from Anna's demise.

kidchamp said...

so you're saying i should maybe hold off a bit on frankie/louie, the two-faced cat?

Amanda Moo said...

I'm ok so long as nobody puts him in a dumpster.

Rachel (heart of light) said...

01. If Lily approves, I'm probably in. Probably. Given that I can count the number of movies I've made it to in the last three years on ONE HAND, I cannot overstate the probably part enough. I cannot seem to motivate for movies. 

furiousmuse said...

i want to see drive, but my schedule thusfar is disinclined to allow such a thing. i am busybusy.

my book came today! yay! also, infinite jest...i hate spending money for shipping at amazon, but hells yeah i'll buy another book!

which brings to mind...where does one start if one wants to read pynchon?

kidchamp said...

funny you should mention that! i just re-started inherent vice last night after buying it in hardcover right after it came out and then abandoning it in exasperation like fifty pages in. 

i'm going to say vineland, because it's the novel which gave me the least trouble; it'll give you an idea of what he's about without bursting too many blood vessels. that said, i could be totally wrong there; i have almost no patience for pynchon, so i've avoided lots of his work. this is a question for paul, really; come back, paul! ooh, or steve marlowe. lemme get back to you on that.

kidchamp said...

marlowe sez, "Crying/Lt 49 = nice primer. 1 might send a noob to Inherent Vice, with a warning that it is atypical wrt style. Then to V or GR."

Amanda Moo said...

One could always decline to begin Pynchon.

MDF would tell you Slow Learner.

kidchamp said...

where is that dumb friend? i miss him. 

furiousmuse said...

That is a possibility. Or maybe I won't get to Pynchon until next year, what with all the George R. R. Martin, The Magicians, and David Fost Wallace (Oblivion & Infinite Jest) crowding my book-reading queue. Not to mention schoolbooks. Gah!

Hannah Mae said...

OoooOOOoooo is the other Mitchell Cloud Atlas?  I loved that one, though I read it an awfully long time ago, and I know Paul read it, not unconnected to my fervent recommendation therefor (?), and disliked it, which I felt bad about in a way I have trouble describing.

Also, it may be time for you and me to head down to the New Yorker offices in high dudgeon and demand to know Just What Is Going On Here, because Anthony Lane is my boyfriend too.

kidchamp said...

it is indeed, dear hannah mae. paul and i and pleasure and books don't always match up so well; i made him assign me reading a few years ago and ended up spraining my feelings on tristram shandy. this is good motivation for me to get caught up; cloud atlas feelings should be explored, and soon.

lane! never trust a big book and a smile.