You know, I knew you'd be the first to comment on this! In fact, I thought you might well be the only one to comment on this but comment you would.
:-)
Have you read any of the books? Cloud Atlas: starts slow and then is one of the most rivetting and moving things I have ever read. Ghostwritten: exquisite. Dream Number 9: the first one by him I read; not the best one but fabulous enough for me to seek out the other ones. The man is a genius with prose and plot. And, as may be seen from pic, a dish, too.
Funnily enough, I came across Cloud Atlas on a search for something else, was intrigued but then kind of forgot about it. Having followed your links though, I think I'll definietly have to read it. It strikes me as just the sort of book I'm in need of just at the moment.
Cloud Atlas should have won the Booker! I read The Line of Beauty which is also very nice, lush baroque prose and a good dose of unflinching mansex but nothing, nothing on Cloud Atlas which soars.
I (guiltily) haven't yet read a line of David Mitchell, and was amused to be reminded that Mr Cool-and-Experimental lives in Clonakilty near where I grew up, a small town which is quite the reverse... (Though it did, in the 70s have a mad transvestite shopkeeper who walked around wearing skirts with jam on the back, presumably to simulate periods.) I was talking about him with someone who was editorial assistant on, I think, Ghostwritten, but who was far less keen on Cloud Atlas. I'm not at all keen on the sound of his work (says she sounding relentlessly traditionalist), but I suppose one should give him a shot.
Although I have recently grimly munched through the first half of Trollope's The Way We Live Now and found it just as one dimensional and un-George Eliot-like as I'd always suspected. Like eating huge doorstep sandwiches of bland white bread. This has sod all to do with DM, I realise, but have you ever thought that it's worth crediting one's own instinct that there are novels one will never like? Trollope in my case, and anything by Zadie Smith.
The wonderful thing about David Mitchell is that he is so 'normal'. And you know Clonakilty!! He's married to a Japanese woman so that's a bit more exotic. (I have been stalking the man on t'internet...)
I don't know what your literary tastes run to -- have we ever talked about that?? My top ten evah are, just to put you in the picture:
- Ann-Marie McDonald - David Mitchell - Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveller - Jane Austen, everything except Sense and Sensibility - Vikram Seth, A suitable boy - Elsa Morante, La storia - Andrea Di Carlo, Cream train
So that's not exactly ten but that's wot i luv.
I once tried reading an Anthony Trollope (or is it Joanna you're talking about?) and fell dead with boredom after 2 1/2 chapters. Zadie? Tried her, too, and again, the book fell from my hands and straight into the charity shop after maybe 25 pages: it was the excess of 'quirky' and 'colourful' Londoners that did me in.
I have always thought that one should credit one's instincts. There are people I can never read. Then there are the novels I know I will love from the first sentence. Then there are the ones that grow on me after 15 chapters. Then there are ones that suck me in on page 1 and spew me out again on page 102, alas (Michel Faber's Crimson and Petal blah was like that).
I find the kind of experimental novel of HIgh Modernism hard going: even Virginia Woolf, although I can appreciate it and be impressed by individual sentences, I find hard going. And I keep meaning to read Ulysses but somehow haven't so far. I hit the novel scene of the 20th scene with post-modernism. Calvino imprinted me. I love plot. And Mitchell and McDonald have plot in abundance. So in a way they are 'traditional'. (Note the way I twist and turn to lure you in. *g*)
i had five minutes to buy a book the other a day, and when i saw cloud atlas on the shelf i remembered that i saw david mitchell appearing in your journal, and so i bought it. haven't finished it yet (one and a half episodes to go), but really enjoy it a lot. thanks!
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-06 02:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-06 03:20 pm (UTC):-)
Have you read any of the books? Cloud Atlas: starts slow and then is one of the most rivetting and moving things I have ever read. Ghostwritten: exquisite. Dream Number 9: the first one by him I read; not the best one but fabulous enough for me to seek out the other ones. The man is a genius with prose and plot. And, as may be seen from pic, a dish, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-06 03:40 pm (UTC)Funnily enough, I came across Cloud Atlas on a search for something else, was intrigued but then kind of forgot about it. Having followed your links though, I think I'll definietly have to read it. It strikes me as just the sort of book I'm in need of just at the moment.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-06 03:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-06 05:47 pm (UTC)Although I have recently grimly munched through the first half of Trollope's The Way We Live Now and found it just as one dimensional and un-George Eliot-like as I'd always suspected. Like eating huge doorstep sandwiches of bland white bread. This has sod all to do with DM, I realise, but have you ever thought that it's worth crediting one's own instinct that there are novels one will never like? Trollope in my case, and anything by Zadie Smith.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-06 07:59 pm (UTC)I don't know what your literary tastes run to -- have we ever talked about that?? My top ten evah are, just to put you in the picture:
- Ann-Marie McDonald
- David Mitchell
- Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveller
- Jane Austen, everything except Sense and Sensibility
- Vikram Seth, A suitable boy
- Elsa Morante, La storia
- Andrea Di Carlo, Cream train
So that's not exactly ten but that's wot i luv.
I once tried reading an Anthony Trollope (or is it Joanna you're talking about?) and fell dead with boredom after 2 1/2 chapters. Zadie? Tried her, too, and again, the book fell from my hands and straight into the charity shop after maybe 25 pages: it was the excess of 'quirky' and 'colourful' Londoners that did me in.
I have always thought that one should credit one's instincts. There are people I can never read. Then there are the novels I know I will love from the first sentence. Then there are the ones that grow on me after 15 chapters. Then there are ones that suck me in on page 1 and spew me out again on page 102, alas (Michel Faber's Crimson and Petal blah was like that).
I find the kind of experimental novel of HIgh Modernism hard going: even Virginia Woolf, although I can appreciate it and be impressed by individual sentences, I find hard going. And I keep meaning to read Ulysses but somehow haven't so far. I hit the novel scene of the 20th scene with post-modernism. Calvino imprinted me. I love plot. And Mitchell and McDonald have plot in abundance. So in a way they are 'traditional'. (Note the way I twist and turn to lure you in. *g*)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-24 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-25 09:19 pm (UTC)