David Mitchell

Why I Collect Real Books III

August 23, 2012 - Jason Rice - 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been partial to American realism, specifically Richard Yates, John Cheever and John Updike. I don’t have any first editions from this gang, but different editions of their paperbacks. I keep the Rabbit trilogy handy, as it really keeps my creative juices flowing while writing my own book. In the picture I have here, the four books are watched over by a shadowy Paul Auster. My collection is my own, sort of unique, based in nothing more than my tastes, which I think is how all collections should be.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

June 29, 2010 - 3G1B - 0 Comment

This is a historical novel that takes place in an “exotic” locale. The turn of the century from 18th to 19th at Dejima, an artificial island off the harbor of Nagasaki. This fortress of commerce is designed so that the Shogun’s government can keep its Dutch traders in their own ghetto but still have the advantage of doing business with them. You get the idea if you can imagine that we put Goldman Sachs employees on Governor’s Island in NY harbor and told them that they weren’t allowed to leave.

On David Mitchell

June 23, 2010 - 3G1B - 0 Comment

Since I won’t be able to finish The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet in time to join the conversation, I thought I’d warm up the seat by offering a few thoughts on Mitchell, whose narrative audacity and mischievous verbal energy have been an inspiration to me over the course of his first four novels, particularly the big beautiful mess called Cloud Atlas. Cloud Atlas is a mess like Moby Dick is a mess—a performance scarcely able to contain its own force of invention. You can argue about the cohesion. The construction. The mode. Even the conception. But you can’t argue about sheer narrative verve of the work, and you can’t argue about the ambition.