And Reading "Number9Dream" is Done, an Engaging Novel

Everybody's talking about "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet." Good for them. Good for David Mitchell, what's more. I hope he finally wins a much deserved Man Booker Prize. I've got my copy, happy to say. But now I haven't read it as of yet. I did, however, just finish reading the last of the novels I had left to read of David Mitchell's compendium that precede "Jacob de Zoet." (Does that make sense?) Well, it's called "Number9Dream." It was good. I liked it. But we'll get to that.

I think since "Inception" hit the scene and has been one of the top movies of the summer (and certainly a movie I enjoyed quite a lot) "Number9Dream" proved to be a fairly nice follow up to that. Mitchell's not quite as concerned with literal traversal through one's subconsciousness (By the way: is it possible for that to truly be literal? I guess . . .), but the notion of dreams, as the title certainly expresses, does play its own part. Mitchell, more or less, overtly expresses his influence by direct reference to Philip K. Dick in "Number9Dream," and his novel -- as much as any of Mitchell's others -- demonstrates this affinity for the much ballyhooed cult sci-fi writer with its surrealist plot turns and ambiguity, all of which have an advanced-technology bend to them, so that even though the setting is ostensibly present day Japan it still feels as if it is actually a place far more futuristic (as is sort of my impression of Tokyo, anyway) than our contemporary world, capiche?

(Ed. Matt's Note: It certainly doesn't hurt that I was reading "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" in concert with "Number9Dream" -- as specifically goes divining parallels between the two authors.)

The novel primarily concerns Eiji Miyake, the illegitimate son of a prominent Tokyo citizen whom the story centers on, to the extent that Miyake is trying to discover who, then, precisely this citizen, i.e. his father, is. What's somewhat interesting to me is how little, in the end, I felt the notion of numbers mattered to the story. They appear constantly, seemingly betokening any twist of fate, positive, negative, or neuter, that Miyake encounters, but even at that still do not -- from what I gleaned -- illuminate any greater truth of the story by their significance. 9 might as well have been 1568. But maybe that was the point. What do I mean? Just that we can find numbers everywhere and they can seem to follow us if we are looking for them to do so, and we can contrive meaning to attach to them for that.

It's probably in existential terms what amounts to an attempt at making sense of the absurd. (Camus help me out here.) The only meaning is that which we attach with our own personal consciousness (or the influence of others and theirs), if I'm correctly taking the existentialist tack, which I suppose I am. It's just that the novel is awash with references to the number 9, some seemingly important others less so, and I can only derive from this then that they are subsequently meant to mute each other's significance with their over-saturation. Of course I might just be a little too lazy in scrutinizing its significance, also. There's my little caveat copout, of which any reader who reads me blog consistently knows I am so fond of dropping at the end of these expositions-0-mine. So sue me.

What remains true in my opinion is that David Mitchell is a world-class story teller, who is among my favorite, possibly all time, in fact. There's still something Nabokovian to his writing, although my attitude about this being the case has diminished some from my originally asserting it in my post about "Black Swan Green." Moreover, he can take narratives and archetypes that may feel stale or false in the hands of someone less gifted and keep you engaged and enraptured till the story reaches its terminus. How Mitchell spins a story line that involves Yakuza mobsters, Miyake's romance with a talented-to-the-point-of-precocity young musician, his estrangement from his mother, factotum-lifestyle in the big city, and the overarching hunt for his father is beyond me, but he does.

So while "Number9Dream" is probably my least favorite of David Mitchell's works I've read to date, it was by no means bad, and is certainly worth your time. Absolutely it is worth your time, actually.

Coming of Age Stuff: "Black Swan Green"

David Mitchell rules. There, I said it. Seriously, he is one of the most pleasantly readable authors writing at this present time in world history, which may sound a bit hyperbolic, because it is, but not because Mitchell isn't great, because he is. I first encountered him with "Cloud Atlas" -- a vivid tapestry of several stories cohering to tell something uniformly significant (but I won't give any more of that away; simply put, it's a highly recommended read).

I love his ability to meld eastern culture with west, which is a feature of much of his work to this point. But if that was the semi-gimmicky and singular attribute of his writing worth mentioning I'd consider him merely a very talented author. "Black Swan Green," his most recently published work (2006), (although his latest "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet" is forthcoming this year) is a notable departure from his previous novels, and one that definitely showcases his versatility. It's the coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman -- if you prefer a more pretentious-sounding turn of phrase -- of Jason Taylor. The novel follows him through a year of his life, spanning from January 1982 to January 1983, from age thirteen to fourteen.

I don't think it's fair to assume the story is in any way autobiographical. However, the odd similarities of timeframe -- David Mitchell is a 1969 birth year -- name -- Jason Taylor is a name as similarly commonplace as David Mitchell -- and interests -- Taylor is a talented young writer, specifically in the way of poetry, a fact he hides from his peers for fear that he will be judged "gay" or another emasculating label (aside: I don't consider it emasculating to be gay, simply a fact of life for the characters in "Black Swan Green"). Ultimately, I would not be terribly surprised to learn that Mitchell drew the character Jason Taylor from some of his own life experiences.

If Taylor is not at all related to a young, real-life David Mitchell, it's really no matter, just further testimony of what Mitchell does so well: create fully-realized characters, characters that might as well be living and breathing. His deftness with language, words having their logical place in every sentence he writes, is something akin to Nabokov, in my mind. I'd also say Mitchell's ability to get the reader to identify with the motivations, or passions, of his characters is similar to Michael Chabon's.

Mitchell captures the anxiety of youth completely -- the fear of rejection, of being an outcast, of falling to the lowest stratum of the social tiers, of struggling to find yourself and behave as whatever it is that is. Taylor also possesses a stammer, which becomes an awkward problem for him, on the occasions of his needing to read in front of the rest of his class. He doesn't want to be labeled a "stutterer" -- knowing full well the boys will smell blood in the water and come thrashing.

And as much as you might hope for some transcendent moment of apotheosis for Taylor, the story doesn't stretch the boundaries of what's believable with respect to the subject matter. At the risk of sounding trite, living occurs. Things happen and Taylor is forced to deal with them in whatever way he can manage, however it seems appropriate at the time to proceed. He's a smart kid, a fact he acknowledges at the outset, but a fact he attempts to conceal to whatever degree he's able. He has clear problems at home -- he butts heads with his sister (though they ultimately find common ground), and he watches as his mother and father do the same without end. I don't think it's giving very much away to say that Mitchell seems to intimate that Taylor's parent's marriage is on the doomed side of imminent failure, while simultaneously keeping Taylor hopeful and naive about what is clearly inevitable. Mitchell does reality so-called very well, keeps you wanting to know what happens to his characters.

It's masterful story-telling, kept me gripped from start to finish. I highly recommend "Black Swan Green" to you, too. Especially if you enjoy stories of children like "The Catcher in the Rye " or "Project X."