NUMBER9DREAM, BY DAVID MITCHELL

I loved Cloud Atlas so much I had to pick this one up. So far so great. Japanese country boy seeks his father in Tokyo, runs afoul of lawyers, Yakuza, etc., but in really cool ways! Excellent run-on descriptions of cockroaches, video games, coffee shops. Ugh, not sure why I write these. More later, if I can stomach myself.

Done

I think I love David Mitchell books. Just the right mix of flowing, first-person prose studded with made-up words and wonderfully unexpected similes, crazy action and genre elements, appealing characters, moments of hilarity. Tone and style shift a lot as in Cloud Atlas, from fantasized thriller sequences to sweaty-palmed scrutiny of a waitress’ neck to horrifically real thriller sequences to surreal children’s fantasy to WWII diaries and on and on. Great stuff. Here’s a passage I marked:

The oil in the frying pan spits. I botch the second egg, crush shell fragments between my fingers, and the spermy mess drops in. I love the way the clear part skins over white. I rescue the toast, nearly in time, and scrape the charcoal into the sink. The pile on my futon stirs – ‘Uuuoooeeeaaaiii.’ Suga – this unclodded lungfish – winches his head and surveys my capsule. I stub out my Phillip Morris in an eggshell, draw the curtains, and the unwashed morning streams in over three days dishes and a major spillage of socks and papers. Suga is not pretty. His neck is boiled-octopus pink and a volcanic island chain of mosquito bites trails over his face. He blinks. ‘Miyake? What are you doing here?’

And another:

‘Aha! The thief sits in residence! Unhand m-my m-manuscript forthwith!’

‘Take a hike, ya sewerchewer JoeSmoe!’

‘Soap and water!’ gasped Mrs. Comb.

Goatwriter lowered his horns. ‘Fiend! Ladies are present!’

A tiny hand appeared and flashed the finger. ‘If dat scrawny bird is a lady I am Frank Sinatra’s gallstone, ya hear? Dis is yer last warning! If ya ain’t skedaddled by da time I count to five I’ll slap harassment suits so fast – ‘

‘Legality! Indeed! A point m-most m-moot! You are the breaker, enterer, and theiver of Zanzibar kippers and m-my truly untold tale! We d-demand justice and by Gideon we d-don’t intend to leave empty-handed!’

‘Magnificent, sir,’ whispered Mrs. Comb.

‘Oooh, a threat!’ the thief responded. ‘Ain’t I wetting my didgeridungarees!’

I have this theory about David Mitchell, and that is that he writes books about absurdly large topics like the Abuse of Power or the Meaning of Life, but wraps them up in these fantastic confectionary masterpieces so they don’t seem so overwrought and didactic as they might. Cloud Atlas could be summarized in the sentence, “Humans abuse power, and they always will.” Number9Dream could be summarized with, “Life is a series of meanings and goals, that once realized and achieved, reveal new meanings and goals.” Just writing it out seems kind of adolescent, and maybe that’s just my adolescent interpretation, but each book does seem to have some kind of “point.”

I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Are serious literate novels supposed to be declarative like that? Are these serious, literate novels that incorporate genre elements for verve and audacity, or are they genre novels that are so well-written they pass in literate circles? Why do I always feel the need to draw these distinctions. Ugh.