[EDITOR’S NOTE: The discussion with Megan continues. Previous installments: #1 and #2.]

Megan:

Good morning! And thanks very much for the response. It suddenly occurs to me that it’s a bit ironic that we’re discussing BSG at the tail end of January, which is when, after all, this book begins. Mild California weather or true blue Bostonian snow notwithstanding, I’m ready to boogey yet again.

I felt exactly the same way you did about waiting for the Mitchell-esque quality to kick in. In the previous email, I described this sensation as “reading a naked David Mitchell.” But on further
consideration, I’m wondering if there is some major flaw to Mitchell’s work that, in our admiration for the man, we’re simply not addressing. Yes, even with this book, he’s a beautiful stylist. Yes, he grips you and he doesn’t let go. Yes, his plots are as perfectly engineered as Gaussian curves. And yes, this new Mitchell was extremely fascinating and often quite moving to read.

To take the phone calls we were talking about, now that you mention it, it is now perfectly obvious that it was a girlfriend calling. But it wasn’t when I was reading it. And I’m wondering if this was because of my own expectations of Mitchell or whether Mitchell’s subtlety has, in some way, interred the narrative a mite. Based on all the yakuzas and conspiracies and parasitical aliens and crazed service sector industries we’ve seen in previous books, for some dumb reason, I kept expecting Jason’s father to be involved with some government plot or something similarly extraordinary. And I am wondering if, in this case, Mitchell’s high octane plotting was justified in this case, given that it resulted in something of a red herring. Do you think we’re giving Mitchell too much of a fair pass here, Megan?

Now that we’re on the subject, all of Mitchell’s other books, for the most part, have been devoid of red herrings. One of the things I’ve appreciated about Mitchell is that, up until now, one rarely finds a story arc that doesn’t tie into another. It’s as if Mitchell is offering the reader a conscious effort to deconstruct, to see patterns, or to simply see the parallels and differences within multiple narratives.

And that’s the thing: Here we find no clues, no references that play off later, no real sense of
cohesion or thematic overlap other than the crumbling marriage of Jason’s parents.

I am not certain if the new Mitchell entirely sits with me, because it seems to me that these subtleties play against Mitchell’s natural strengths as a writer. Think of the way that he offers remarkable story developments (think of the Luisa Rey segments in Cloud Atlas) and throws a kind of casual existential nuance to it. That’s what gives Mitchell such a distinctive voice. Mitchell is Frobisher dangling out of a hotel window while contemplating precisely where he’s heading in life. Mitchell is the tender voice of the old lady in Ghostwritten running the noodle shop on the side of the mountain. These are all comic beats of a light Kafkaesque timbre and yet with Mitchell, you’re never really conscious of how preposterous this all is – in large part, because the man’s keeping you dazzled with about seventeen balls in the air. What I’m suggesting here is that Mitchell’s fire is ignited in some sense by the fantastic. He has an uncanny way of taking a somewhat preternatural situation and making it crackle on the page with a strange sort of normalcy. (Again, I’m pretty sure this is the Murakami influence talking, but Mitchell’s humor is often more subtle, because it never totally envelops a scene.) But in BSG, I didn’t really feel, aside from the bizarre poultice episode at the beginning, that Mitchell permitted himself the kindling. While I was greatly stirred by the pain and awkwardness of Jason Taylor’s adolescence, other parts, such as the disco scene in the end, really didn’t sit with me.

Of course, I should also point out that when Mitchell came here to the States for the Cloud Atlas tour, the man was feverishly jotting as many observations that he could fit into his notebook. So if BSG is a transition point, then perhaps it’s a way for him to find that fantastic impulse within the ordinary. I can understand the desire to become a subtler writer, but do you think Mitchell want to become more of a realist?

I’m in a café. And right now, there is an extremely intense and very large man clad in a green Army-Navy surplus jacket who can’t stop staring at me. So I’m going to try and address your points really quickly here. Because I may have to disarm him a knock-knock joke or something.

1. Yes, the ending was too neat. And I’d add that the relationship between Jason and Julia also felt too neatly wrapped up.

2. I too loved the “Relatives” chapter. One thing that also comes out quite beautifully is the obsession with the good life and having a steady middle-class home (complete with the flatware and cookery that you haul out for special occasions). It’s not an entirely original observation, but I think Mitchell’s subtext worked quite well here. In this chapter and others, Mitchell demonstrates that he understands just how money can destroy a relationship. (Also laudable: The secret financial arrangements.) I’m also curious, Megan. What were your thoughts on the rocks/garden incident?

3. Maybe I’m objecting to Madame C because she felt too much like a cartoon for me. Or perhaps she came across as a cartoon when juxtaposed against the other, more realist characters in this book. But I did buy the situation from Jason’s perspective.

Before I send this off, I want to respond to the idea of critics rejecting this book for being imperfect. I’m reading Eliott Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity right now. It’s this big social novel in the Wolfe/Franzen/Dreiser vein that is often completely wrong in its generalizations and sometimes outright preposterous. But the fact that it dares to make its point and that it at least tries to come up with some reasons and connections for why humanity is so fucked up is ambitious, particularly since the storytelling is gripping. And yet it was, in some cases, savagely reviewed both here and in Australia because people could not accept the idea of a novelist being wrong in spurts, while also promoting a worldview which causes the reader to reconsider her own notions.

Could it be, Megan, that BSG falls in the same category? In other words, should we try and answer the question of whether a flawed but ambitious novel from a very special writer deserves to be ripped a new one because of a few impatient book reviewers?

Your serve.

All best,

Ed

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This continues the discussion between Megan Sullivan and me. The first installment can be found here. I have tagged potential spoilers in white, but you should be able to follow the discussion.]

Hello Ed,

Yes, it’s cold here, but at least the sun is shining, melting the several inches of snow that fell on Sunday evening. I’ve been thinking long and hard about Black Swan Green and am finally ready to respond to your email.

I kept waiting for something Mitchell-esque to happen while reading BSG — and it didn’t. I was surprised at first, but then grew to appreciate his new, more subtle writing. I think he was subtly trying to play with the form of the book again. This book follows the traditional Bildungsroman form. You could say that his stutter and his poetic aspiration sets him apart from his family and peers and starts his journey towards adulthood. Perhaps I am over analyzing. As for the mysterious phone calls, I thought Jason’s dad had a girlfriend, who kept calling. Julia also mentions picking up the phone to silence, so I chalked it up to another woman.

I found reading this book very painful indeed. Granted I’ve never been a teenage boy, but I thought Mitchell wrote admirably in that spirit. With regards to Jason’s parents’ deteriorating relationship, I thought Mitchell captured how it feels when your parents fight, that angsty feeling of wanting to intervene, but at the same time, wanting to run and hide. The only unrealistic part I felt, was the end, where Jason comes to terms with his parents’ split. People handle things differently, sure, but Jason seemed a little too adult about it. What do I know about the adolescent boy’s mind though?

I enjoyed the “Relatives” chapter, when Jason’s aunt, uncle, and cousins visit. The observations on adult behavior is sharp, particularly with his uncle’s bombastic behavior. And I loved how he wanted to impress his cousin Hugo, but at the same time grew uncomfortable when Hugo steals the cigarettes and candy at the store. I think he realizes his cousin’s a prat, but he’s still cool and that’s what Jason wants.

I didn’t mind the connection between Frobisher from Cloud Atlas and Madame Crommelynck in BSG. I didn’t find the connection relevant to Madame C’s character in the “Solarium” chapter. This was one of my favorite pieces by the way. I loved how she forced Jason to explain the subtleties of being a teenager, such as when she pries the name Dawn Madden out of him and suggests he write her a poem. I loved the way Mitchell had her speak — I can hear the accent and picture her with her purple shawl and large jewelry. His disappoint when he arrives for a lesson and she’s been forced to leave is palpable.

The biggest disappointment for me was the ending or last tale. All of a sudden, Jason seems wise and grown up. It’s all a little too pat for me. His parents have split apart, he’s moving to a new town, his dad’s got a new girlfriend, even Philip Phelps has broken with Grant Burch. What ‘s your take on the end of the book, Ed?

Overall I’d say that I enjoyed this book, though it’s not without its flaws. I read it the same way you did, Ed, in sips rather than in one big gulp. Like any story collection, BSG has its strong points and weak points. I find it admirable that Mitchell wants to break free of the role he’s created for himself (with the help of critics of course). I think people will either pan the book because it’s not perfect enough or for veering away from his previous style. I also think that whatever he wrote after Cloud Atlas would have to stand up to a great deal of criticism. But like you, I’ll still read anything he produces.

Back to you,

Regards,
Megan

[EDITOR’S NOTE: A few weeks ago, the absolutely delightful Megan Sullivan and I emailed each other about David Mitchell’s forthcoming novel, Black Swan Green. What follows is the first of four exchanges between us that I’ll be posting in installments.]

Megan:

Okay, it’s a somewhat chilly California morning (lukewarm by East Coast standards), but I’m drinking my first cuppa coffee and I’m ready to boogie. Now’s as good a time as any to begin our email volley about David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green.

What are your thoughts? My immediate hunch here is that this is definitely the right step forward for Mitchell, an effort to finally shake off the Murakami yoke and write something straightforward on his own terms. Indeed, this is the most plotless book than Mitchell has written — even more divagating than Number9Dream. (Part of me wonders if we can begin applying an every other novel rule for Mitchell. Much like Richard Powers writes personal-political-personal, will we see Mitchell writing plot-heavy/character-heavy/plot-heavy?) I particularly liked how you could see Mitchell trying to resist resorting to playful prose. A sentence like, “Bluebells swarmed in pools of light where the sun got through the trees” is exactly the kind of awkward phrasing a thirteen year old would say, and I can imagine Mitchell pulling his hair out, forcing himself to keep things a little unclean. (I really liked all the interesting contractions and the “me and Morans” throughout the book.) I think he’s done a brave thing here by confining his perspective to a thirteen year old’s. And it doesn’t seem to be an accident that the protagonist (Jason Taylor) shares a similar-sounding four-syllable name to David Mitchell, and, like Mitchell, has a speech impediment. (And as I learned from monologist Kurt Fitzpatrick, a very nice guy I met while handing out flyers for my Fringe show a few years ago and who was in town performing a one-man show about speech therapy, this is really an underreported problem.)

I felt very much like I was reading a naked David Mitchell and it was an extremely fascinating experience. No tight herringbone plot pattern, no stylistic hijinks, no intricate structure at all. At times, it felt somewhat liberating to be reading this without a guide. But in other ways, it felt disconcerting and particularly frustrating, such as the mysterious phone calls near the beginning, which didn’t really pay off at all.

The book really worked for me when Mitchell’s inherent sweetness came to the surface. I know that we’ve all been discussing this issue of how one can be sincere in an age of irony and how there seems to be a stigma against it. So Mitchell’s sincerity is no small task. Mitchell’s tone here is the kind of rich positive voice that, to me at least, doesn’t seem phony, in large part because Mitchell doesn’t shy away from the pain of adolescence. (That one chapter where Jason is ridiculed all day, complete with the hardass gym teacher, brings back some really unpleasant memories.) I particularly enjoyed the dart game, the episode with Dawn Madden, and the way that the marriage between his mother and father gradually falls apart, complete with the whole garden and finances argument. On the latter point, Mitchell does a very nice job of keeping it in the distance, with Jason almost covering his eyes about it in relaying his story.

But I didn’t really buy the Falkland Islands tie-in, which is when I felt that things started to fall apart. Or perhaps lacking an island motif this time around, Mitchell needed to throw SOME kind of island in there. It was almost as if Mitchell, in deliberately writing against his instincts, didn’t entirely trust himself and felt the need to throw in a substantial current events angle. The Mr. Nixon announcement struck me as unremittingly treacly, even by Mitchell standards. And I felt the Frobisher love child tie-in to Cloud Atlas was too much of a character stunt — again, a case of Mitchell unable to say no. In fact, there seemed moments in the book, where Mitchell almost wanted to sabotage his own progress and draw attention to the fact that he was trying something different, such as that notebook sample at the beginning of the “Goose Fair” chapter. And I was saying to myself, “David! Fuck! Don’t do that! Don’t spoil the illusion! Have faith in yourself as a writer! You were doing so well!”

The other criticism I have, and this brings up something that Scott was good enough to challenge me on in person, is whether any of what’s expressed in this book actually expands our understanding of what it’s like to grow up. Are Mitchell’s observations here original or too rote? In conveying to us such common behaviors as being a nervous 13 year old asking girls to dance in a disco or getting crazy about 1980s cultural obsessions, is Mitchell evolving the adolescent novel or playing to much to the form? The Mitchell fan in me is willing to let him slide a bit on this, because of the stylistic progress he’s made. But in entirely extirpating his usual heavy plotting, I felt that Mitchell may have unintentionally exposed one of his weaknesses: a slight diffidence in pursuing the truth. Such stock characters as Norman Bates the bus driver (who reminded me very much of Moe the driver on The Simpsons) didn’t help things here.

The other thing: I was completely fascinated by Jason’s sister, Julia, but I was a bit disappointed that, after such an initially strong presence, for the most part, she disappeared. This was, I think, one of the most potentially distinct elements to the book. The relationship between Jason and Julia, with its ironies and contrasting elements, was one of the most real parts of the book to me, and yet I was sad to see it largely unpursued. What did you think of this?

Don’t get me wrong, Megan. I didn’t hate this book. Although I should note that the novel’s vignette structure had me reading it in spurts rather than in one go. There were sections of it that I greatly enjoyed and, again, it was fascinating to see Mitchell doing his damnedest to break out of the box. But I felt that Mitchell didn’t really push himself as hard as he could have. It was almost as if the damaged Omega watch that Jason was terrified of revealing to his parents was actually the daring novel that Mitchell was terrified of revealing to the public. Of course, what author wouldn’t be self-conscious after the considerable media attention given to Cloud Atlas? But you have to give Mitchell props for turning out an ambitious if flawed novel in spite of all this. I’m truly wondering, however, if the critics are going to throw him to the wolves because he’s dared to be gentle here.

None of my criticisms, of course, prevents me from reading everything that Mitchell turns out. He still remains a solid writer and a very fascinating stylist and a far greater risk-taker than, say, David Foster Wallace.

Okay, your turn!

All best,

Ed