There are so many people living in the world. We jostle up against each other in subway stations in Tokyo.We crowd into art galleries in Petersburg, vying for the best location to view the masterpieces on display.We take trains and planes around the world, with mountains, plains, rivers, valleys, and, above all, people rushing by us, in a blur. Holy Mountains, ChinaWhere is there a place for the individual in the midst of this overwhelming motion? Still from KoyaanisqatsiIn his first novel, Ghostwritten, David Mitchell innovatively explores our quest for understanding, for meaning, for connection, in the crowded isolation that makes up human life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This is a novel that explores big questions: is our life ruled by chance? Do the coincidences and parallels that help to connect people to one another have a deeper significance, or are they simply akin to the random effects of a ricocheting pinball? What is our connection to the planet -- is there a story that we can discover to explain our origins and, perhaps, point our way to the future? And in the end, are our lives and deaths marked by continuity and connection with others, or are we truly isolated, even when surrounded by so many others? Mitchell’s novel is remarkable, not only because he explores such crucial questions, but also because he provides such poignant depictions of individuals and their settings. He structures the novel as a series of interconnecting chapters, each taking place in a different location, and each centering on a specific individual, from a cult member in Japan, to an employee in a jazz music store in Tokyo, to a woman selling tea in the shadow of one of China’s holy mountains, to a ghost or spirit moving from human host to human host in search of understanding of its origins. Although I have heard others describe these chapters as linked short stories, Mitchell’s careful attention to connecting themes, characters, and episodes provides them with a sense of coherence that gets stronger the further the reader gets into the book. Making Your Place/Marking Your PlaceTokyoMitchell imbues the novel with a remarkable sense of place. He has a particular interest in representing city life in all its diversity. For example, in the Tokyo chapter, Satoru describes Tokyo as follows: “Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It’s so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It’s long since filled up the plain, and now it’s creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it’s already become out of date. It’s a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one. Things are always moving below you, and above your head. All these people, flyovers, cars, walkways, subways, offices, tower blocks, power cables, pipes, apartments, it all adds up to a lot of weight. You have to do something to stop yourself caving in, or you just become a piece of flotsam or an ant in a tunnel. In smaller cities people can use the space around them to insulate themselves, to remind themselves of who they are. Not in Tokyo. You just don’t have the space, not unless you’re a company president, a gangster, a politician or the Emperor. You’re pressed against people body to body in the trains, several hands gripping each strap on the metro trains. Apartment windows have no view but other apartment windows.No, in Tokyo you have to make your place inside your head.” (37)In this passage, Satoru conveys one of the central questions of Ghostwritten: how can humans carve out a place for themselves that provides them with a sense of identity and belonging, in the face of the postmodern weight which threatens to bury us? LondonMitchell’s sense of place is so strong within the novel that he often represents cities almost as human characters. For example, Marco notes, “The top of the hill. Breathe in, look at that view, and breathe out! Quite a picture, isn’t it! Old Man London, out for the day.... Italians give their cities sexes, and they all agree that the sex for a particular city is quite correct, but none of them can explain why. I love that. London’s middle-aged and male, respectably married but secretly gay. I know its overlapping towns like I know my own body. The red brick parts around Chelsea and Pimlico, Battersea Power Station like an upturned coffee table.... The grimy estates down Vauxhall way. Green Park. I map the city by trigonometrical shag points. Highbury is already Katy Forbes. Putney is Poppy, and India of course, not that I shag India, she’s only five. Camden is Baggins the Tarantula. …” In spite of this personification, London still poses the danger of engulfing its residents: “A city is a sea that you lose things in. You only find things that other people have lost.” (282)Hong KongLondon is a LanguageThere are many ways that Mitchell’s characters attempt to make their place. One is through a quest to explain experience and existence through language, which extends beyond humans to include cities and places as well. In the London chapter, Marco notes, “London is a language. I guess all places are.” (269) Throughout Ghostwritten, Mitchell returns repeatedly to the theme of language -- and its limitations. As the spirit notes in the Mongolia chapter, “Once or twice I’ve tried to describe transmigration to the more imaginative of my human hosts. It’s impossible. I know eleven languages, but there are some tunes that language cannot play. When another human touches my host, I can transmigrate. The ease of the transfer depends on the mind I am transmigrating into, and whether negative emotions are blocking me. The fact that touch is a requisite provides a clue that I exist on some physical plane, however sub-cellular or bio-electrical. There are limits. For example, I cannot transmigrate into animals, even primates: if I try the animal dies. It is like an adult’s inability to climb into children’s clothes. I’ve never tried a whale. But how it feels, this transmigration, how to describe that! Imagine a trapeze artist in a circus, spinning in emptiness. Or a snooker ball lurching around the table. Arriving in a strange town after a journey through turbid weather.Sometimes language can’t even read the music of meaning.” (158-159)Given the limitations of language, some of Mitchell’s characters gravitate to music instead, which features prominently throughout the novel. Satoru notes, “My place comes into existence through jazz. Jazz makes a fine place. The colours and feelings there come not from the eye but from sounds. It’s like being blind but seeing more. This is why I work here in Takeshi’s shop. Not that I could ever put that into words.” (38) Marco is a drummer in a band called The Music of Chance, named after Paul Auster’s novel. And in the apocalyptic chapter “The Night Train,” DJ Bat Segundo’s choice of music provides a soundtrack for the critical questions that arise when New York is faced with the prospect of its destruction. Ghosts, Spirits, Doubles, and the Human SpiritThroughout the novel, Mitchell explores the limitations of physical boundaries. In spite of the walls and buildings and other physical barriers that separate us from each other, is there any indication that people transcend the physical? That physical boundaries are permeable, and that people can interact the most meaningfully with spiritual elements in their earthbound lives? In some cases, the ghosts appear in forms familiar to Western readers. In the Hong Kong section, Neal Brose describes the ghost that shared an apartment with him and his wife Katy:“Unless you’ve lived with a ghost, you can’t know the truth of it. You assume that morning, noon and night, you’re walking around obsessed, fearful and waiting for the exorcist to call. It’s not really like that. It’s more like living with a very particular cat. For the last few months I’ve been living with three women. One was a ghost, who is now a woman. One was a woman, who is now a ghost. One is a ghost, and always will be. But this isn’t a ghost story: the ghost is in the background, where she has to be. If she was in the foreground she’d be a person.” (93)In other cases, Mitchell describes spirits that he models from Eastern traditions, as seen in my two favorite sections of the novel, “The Holy Mountain” and “Mongolia.” In “The Holy Mountain”, the unnamed tea shack lady describes her living in the shadow of Mount Emei with ghosts and a spirit-laden tree as her companions over decades of hardship: “In the misty dusk an old woman came. She laboured slowly up the stairs to where I lay, wondering how I could defend myself if the Warlord’s Son called again on his way down.‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Tree will protect you. The Tree will tell you when to run, and when to hide.’ I knew she was a spirit because I only heard her words after her lips had finished moving, because the lamplight shone through her, and because she had no feet. I knew she was a good spirit because she sat on the chest at the end of the bed and sang a lullaby about a coracle, a cat, and the river running round.” (113)Mount Emei, ChinaTea shack, Mount Emei, ChinaIn the chapter on Mongolia, Mitchell memorably presents a noncorpum, or a spirit that travels from human host to human host, as his central character. This spirit clearly differentiates itself from its human hosts: “I have my gifts: I am apparently immune to age and forgetfulness. I possess freedom beyond any human understanding of the world. But my cage is all my own, too. I am trapped in one waking state of consciousness. I have never found any way to sleep, or dream. And the knowledge I most desire eludes me: I have never found the source of the story I was born with, and I have never discovered whether others of my kind exist.” (165)Trans-Mongolian RailroadAt the same time, the spirit does acknowledge some similarities between himself and some of the humans it encounters: “Backpackers are strange. I have a lot in common with them. We live nowhere, and we are strangers everywhere. We drift, often on a whim, searching for something to search for. We are both parasites: I live in my hosts’ minds, and sift through his or her memories to understand the world. Caspar’s breed live in a host country that is never their own, and use its culture and landscape to learn, or stave off boredom. To the world at large we are both immaterial and invisible. We chew the secretions of solitude. My incredulous Chinese hosts who saw the first backpackers regarded them as quite alien entities. Which is exactly how humans would regard me. All minds pulse in a unique way, just as every lighthouse in the world has a unique signature. Some minds pulse consistently, some erratically. Some are lukewarm, some are hot.Some flare out, some are very nearly not there. Some stay on the fringe, like quasars. For me, a roomful of animals and humans is like a roomful of suns, of differing magnitudes and colours, and gravities.” (153-154)As the noncorpum continues on its quest for its origin stories, it demonstrates another profound similarity with humans -- the need to anchor identity, and future, in one's beginnings. This parallel helps to provide this chapter with its strong resonance and significance -- in spite of the unfamiliar trappings of this story, the central theme within it is all too familiar to human readers. Central MongoliaQuantum Theory, Chain Reactions, Chance, and the Human ZooIn the concluding chapters of Ghostwritten, Mitchell develops the questions of the role of chance in governing people’s lives, as he describes the experiences of Mo Muntervary, a quantum physicist appalled by the apparent uses to which the US government is putting her work. She attempts to buy time to address her concerns by returning to her home, Clear Island, Ireland. Throughout this chapter, Mo intersperses details of her return to the island with her memories of her work on this project, and her reflections on the role of quantum physics in explaining human life and cauastion: “The strong force that stops the protons of a nucleus hurtling away from one another; the weak force that keeps the electrons from crashing into the protons; electromagnetism, which lights the planet and cooks dinner; and gravity, which is the most down to Earth. From before the time the universe was the size of a walnut to its present diameter, these four forces have been the statute book of matter, be it the core of Sirius or the electrochemical ducts of the brains of students in the lecture theatre at Belfast. Bored, intent, asleep, dreaming, in receding tiers. Chewing pencils or following me.Matter is thought, and thought is matter. Nothing exists that cannot be synthesised.” (335-336)Mo’s references to the modern world as a zoo relate to the novel’s penultimate section, in which Bat Segundo, a late night DJ and talk show host strikes up a prolonged conversation with an entity that refers to itself as the Zookeeper. The Zookeeper demonstrates an eerie omniscience into human life and devastation throughout the planet, while also discussing the profound limits of its omniscience in keeping human life in balance. I will leave it to you as a reader to discover how Mitchell develops these themes. Clear Island, IrelandThe BreathMitchell threads references to a breath throughout Ghostwritten . The breath provides a strong sense of continuity, as well as raising the question of which entities are threading through the novel, surrounding the human characters. Is there an impermeable boundary between them? Are these entities observers, or do they have a more crucial role to play in causing events to happen -- or preventing events? In the end, are they as human as any of us living in the zoo?
”There is truth, and then there is Being Truthful.Being Truthful is just one more human activity, along with chatting up women, ghostwriting, selling drugs, running a country, designing radiotelescopes, parenting, drumming, and shoplifting. All are susceptible to adverbs. You can be truthful well or badly, frankly or slyly, and you can choose to do it and not to do it….Truth’s indifference is immutable.”Have you ever had anyone say to you...Just tell me the truth? So I ponder what someone wants when they ask that. Do they want the truth as it was last week, as it is today, or what I think it will be tomorrow? Truth mutates like a gecko lizard changing to fit each new environment, each new question. Truth evolves, devolves, with each added experience. The new hemorrhages into the old. Memories fade and are overlaid by new recollections of old events. The good or the bad are enhanced, magnified so large that they hide the very elements that kept a memory anchored near the site of “truth”. As long as we all agree that a memory is only a version of many truths we will get along just fine. ”The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting.”I don’t know if David Mitchell pulled the wool over a publisher’s eyes or he simply convinced them that they could publish these short stories and call them a novel. I was into the third section (short story) when I realized exactly what this young Brit had accomplished. Sure all the stories interweave by way of these sometimes very tenuous crossovers, they are the gossamer that drapes around the “truth” and can convince the reader that...yes, this truly is a novel. After all short story collections are what successful writers publish when their next novel is proving to be rather tricky. Generally, publishers don’t publish short story collections for a writer’s first book. There is a good reason for that because the taste of the public has moved away from short stories. Short story collections without a readership established by a writer’s novels tend to go unloved, unread, ignored, and are quickly pulped/remaindered. If the writer rallies back from the uppercut to the jaw and the flurry of punches to his stomach the public handed him on his first book and writes a novel to great acclaim, that orphaned short story collection becomes a much sought after collectible. ”The strong force that stops the protons of a nucleus hurtling away from one another; the weak force that keeps the electrons from crashing into the protons; electromagnetism, which lights the planet and cooks dinner; and gravity, which is the most down-to-earth. From before the time the universe was the size of a walnut to its present diameter, these four forces have been the statute book of matter, be it the core of Sirius or the electrochemical ducts of the brains of students in the lecture theater of Belfast. Bored, intent, asleep, dreaming, in receding tiers. Chewing pencils or following me. Matter is thought, and thought is matter. Nothing exists that cannot be synthesized.”So, really that is what Mitchell has done. He has combined these stories into a coherent whole. He has synthesized a short story collection into a novel. My tendency is to review this novel like I would a short story collection by talking about each tale separately or highlighting a few of my favorites, but then that would really be “letting the cat out of the bag” wouldn’t it? I liked all the sections of this novel, some I liked immediately, and some grew on me as Mitchell spun out the elements of manipulation. My favorite is the one set in Tokyo set around a tenor saxophonist named Satoru who works in a record store. We like it when a writer writes about us or more precisely about someone we identify with. We appreciate meeting characters that are very different from us, but if “truth” be known we like the characters that are most like us the best. I don’t think it is possible to work in a record store or a bookstore without being a romantic. How else could someone work for such low pay without believing what they are doing is larger than what it seems? These professions are redolent with mythology as they provide opportunity for something truly grand to happen at any moment. Like a girl, THE girl walking into the shop.”She was so real, the others were cardboard cutouts beside her. Real things had happened to her to make her how she was, and I wanted to know them, and read them, like a book.”But she left, evaporated, sucked back into the universe. ”I couldn’t remember accurately what she looked like. Smooth skin, highish cheekbones, narrowish eyes. Like a Chinese empress. I didn’t really think of her face when I thought of her. She was just there, a color that didn't have a name yet. The idea of her.”She becomes so mystical, so constructed out of straw, that his own existence becomes contingent on her returning. He can’t be who he is suppose to be until the moment she walks back into the shop. ”The her that lived in her looked out through my eyes, through my eyes, and at the me that lives in me.”His clock winds back up. There is a terrorist in this book, a man that hates the world, wants to change it, but in reality he is so angry, so disassociated, that he really wants to crack it in half and let the sun eat the pieces. There is a ghost that haunts a stockbroker, a man proud of his ability to compartmentalize, but as his life destabilizes he discovers that logic is illogical. There is a woman living on the Holy Mountain in China who watches her life diverge because of the cowardice of people who should be mandated to protect her. In Mongolia we spend time seeing the world through the eyes of a disembodied spirit with no memories of it’s own to help guide the present or the future. ”Why am I the way I am? I have no genetic blueprint. I have had no parents to teach me right from wrong. I have had no teachers. I had no nurture, and I possess no nature. But I am discreet and conscientious, a nonhuman humanist.”A spirit that becomes more human than the humans he inhabits when it is faced with the ultimate sacrifice. In St. Petersburg we get to hang out with an art curator at the Hermitage Museum. A concubine, a manipulator of men:”Margarita Latunsky plays men like a master violinist. When I want something from a woman I get angry. When I want something from a man I pout.”Despite those natural god given abilities or maybe because of them she falls in love and hangs her dreams on the wrong man. In London we meet a womanizer named Marco who is a ghostwriter or whatever he needs to be if it will get a woman to fall in bed with him. He is the member of a band called The Music of Chance, a nod to the New York author Paul Auster. He is in love with a woman named Poppy, but he can’t give up the randomness of his life to form an even number with her. He wants the roulette wheel to spin every day giving him a chance for something bigger. We meet a physicist who has escaped to her homeland on Cape Clear Island. She finds it ironic that like a criminal she can’t help but go where she will be found. She quit being a member of a think tank when she discovered her research was being used to make weapons. She hopes they will let her go after all she is in her forties. ”Nobody’s going to kidnap me. Look at me. I’m middle-aged. Only Einstein, Dirac and Feynman made major contributions in their forties.” And now Muntervary.There is also The Zookeeper, an artificial intelligence who escaped his military caretakers, and instead of trying to destroy the world as we have been lead to believe any rogue IA will attempt to do by the blockbuster movies out of Hollywood, is actually determined to do the opposite. The Zookeeper is trying to live up to his name by keeping the animals with animus separated. The stones they wish to throw must never be allowed to launch. So if each story is a pearl we could fashion them into earrings, bracelets or rings and they will be beautiful, but if we want them to dazzle we should string them on a necklace where each will enhance the rest. Maybe, if that is the case, we should call this a novel. In the future when some linguist/scientist/reader is trying to piece together who we were before we evolved into more perfect beings, the histories will give them a body, but it will be the novels that will put blood in our veins, send electrical impulses to our nerves, and bring air in to our lungs. Our “lies” will tell our story the best. ”Who is blowing on the nape of my neck?”
What do You think about Ghostwritten (2001)?
So Kill me. I really like David Mitchell, and reading this knowing it was his first novel is one of those things you can only really believe if you've read his other novels. This seems like an embryonic version of Cloud Atlas, with a lot of the same ideas, themes, and even a borrowed character or two. But that seems unfair, because most floret-novels never actually seem beautiful before their time. This one seems both a shinny fetus and world-ready. This baby was my JAM. Yes, there are/were times (each of his books have several TIMES) when Mitchell's transcendent/jazzy/flash*flash/UnitedColorsofBeneton schtick gets a little tired, but he still pulls it off. Kind of like when I'm watching the Winter Olympics and I get a little overwhelmed by the flamboyance of the whole we-are-the-world-in-tights routine, but I still end up watching most of the crazy programing. Anyway, it was fun to read and to already know the future. I read this already knowing that Mitchell wasn't going to be a one-hit-wonder, that his best books were ahead of him, that he would always have an Asian thing, that the Wachowskis/Tom Hanks would almost RUIN Cloud Atlas for me, that I would read every book he ever publishes, and usually buy several copies in many formats for several friends.
—Darwin8u
’The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed.’ David Mitchell’s ambitious debut, Ghostwritten, is a world of stories that migrates across the globe like a cloud across the sky, shifting and refiguring between various narrator voices and style. These voices send out ripples into the fabric of reality, which start off small but compound to forever reshape the course of humanity as the reader delves deeper into the novel, placing each puzzle piece together to form a clear, all-encompassing vision of coincidence and chance coming together to turn the cogs of the world as if it were a well oiled, finely tuned machine. Similar to the television show LOST, this novel delivers that same feel of everything having an importance and every life having a meaning in the grand scale of things. Mitchell preforms astounding feats of language manipulation as he takes us along a ride of interconnectivity and chance meetings, crossing many genres and barriers, to show us just how important we all are to one another and the course of history.Mitchell sets the bar for a debut novel very high. This novel is stunningly inventive and adventurous both with its form and language. Broken up into short passages, each in a different location with a different narrator, Mitchell is able to convincingly alter his voice to create a wide variety of characters unique to the situation almost as if he were a literary ventriloquist. He possesses a keen eye for detail, and each segment is lush with situation-specific vocabulary and flair. However, it is Stories that run this novel. Each character has their own story and history to tell, and as the novel progresses, the reader will watch how each story brushes off onto the others. One characters actions are shown to affect others continents away, repositioning the course of their lives, which in turn affects the lives of those around them. Those familiar to the idea of the ‘butterfly effect’ will see this in action with the harmony of these various stories. Something as minor as a phone call picked up by a stranger can change everything. Some of these collisions will jump out at you and shock your senses, while others are very subtle. This novel benefits greatly from a careful attention to detail while reading.There is a slight unevenness to some these ‘chapters’, and some felt to me like they trudged on a bit, but then again, not every instrument in a symphony is there to show off and it is the synthesis of all the sounds together that create the magic. For a first novel, much of this unevenness can be forgiven as it surpasses many of his contemporaries and it was interesting to see in his later novels how he grew as an author. There are a few bland moments, but there is so much poetry and blinding beauty in this novel that the stumbles are quickly overlooked.’For a moment I had an odd sensation of being in a story that someone was writing,’ thinks Satoru in the Tokyo story, as small events seem to combine to place him at an exact time and place for a chance encounter. Mitchell examines the ideas of chance and fate often in this novel, which is seemingly propelled by these forces. ’Does chance of fate control our lives,’ wonders Marco, ’If you’re in you life, chance. Viewed from the outside, like a book your reading, it’s fate all the way.’ Mitchell provides various opinions for both, often leaving it up to the reader to decide whether fate or chance is the ghostwriter of our lives. He also proposes the idea of quantum cognition, which I would recommend looking into. If all thoughts are matter, then stemming from the quantum theories that all choices open up an every branching, endless array of universes each with their own path of choices, are we fated to follow one reality while infinite others exist beyond the barriers of our own? This novel will leave you with much to ponder. Various metaphors for this query inhabit the novel, from a noncorpum ghost which can inhabit the minds of hosts, an actual ghostwriter, and even the novel itself all show this movement of chance/fate across the map.There is a strong sense of humanitarianism running through Mitchell’s works. From perspectives such as the Tea Lady, the reader is forced to watch the atrocities of man upon his fellow man. Regimes change, reforms come and go, yet still man continues to oppress those who fall below him. ’Fuck ‘em, they’re all the same. Only the badges and medals change,’ the Tea Lady is told by her father. Margarita shares a similar sentiment in the Russia story saying ’You used to pay off your local Party thug, now you pay off your local mafia thug’. There is a bleak outlook on the state of man, made more and more frightening as time ticks on. Eventually science may attempt to let technology watch and regulate itself, yet, how can we expect technology to do what we humans have failed at? Our own children, the ones we are supposed to keep the most careful watch over, seem to be the ones who suffer the most from the actions of their caregivers in this novel. Fate/chance has the largest say in their lives, as it places them into the world under situations beyond their control. There is some form of a child helpless to the winds of chance in every story, be it the ghost in Neil’s apartment who had to die simply for being a girl born in China, the unborn children that may be aborted, the child taken away out of shame, and even a young girl who must die in a train attack simply because her life lead her to that time and place. The most innocent often must face the harshest realities, all because those who should protect them are often looking after themselves instead of their helpless charges.People concern themselves only with what they know around them that directly affects them. Mitchell shows how this shortsightedness can lead to apocalyptical proportions of failure as many of the brushes between stories occur due to thinking only of ones immediate surroundings. Neil’s personal crisis lead down a path that touches nearly every character throughout the novel. Margarita was looking out only for herself and Rudi, not knowing how her actions would affect a couple in London. Mitchell begs people to look beyond their own personal borders (much like how this novel crosses many borders) and at the larger picture of a universal society. If one could be more conscious of how their actions affected strangers lives thousands of miles away, maybe, just maybe, the world could be a brighter place.My favorite aspect of David Mitchell is his nods to other literature and it’s metafictional capabilities. In the Tokyo story, a story that seems lush with Haruki Murakami inspiration beyond just the setting, Mitchell quotes directly from Madame Bovary, ’One should be wary of touching one’s idols, for the gilt comes off on one’s fingers.’ Mitchell, who has a strong college backing in literature, seems to enjoy letting this gilt on his fingers show. He makes a few blunt references to authors who influence this novel, such as Vladimir Nabokov, of whom Tim Cavendish (fans of Cloud Atlas rejoice, that foul mouthed son of a bitch you loved has a nice cameo) warns ’anyone who’s trying to get a book finished – steer clear of Nabokov. Nabokov makes anyone feel like a clodhopper.’ It has been told to me that Mitchell based the jaw-dropping ending of this novel off of Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility series, whom he calls out as a great author in the Tokyo story. The Petersburg story seemed to give a nod to The Master and Margarita, with the character name, the cat and all the talk about the devil. Perhaps the most critical moment of displaying his inspiration comes in the Tokyo story when Satoru receives Murakami’s translation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories because he loved The Great Gatsby so much. Fitzgerald, especially in Gatsby has a fixation on the past and trying to rectify it. Interestingly enough, a vast majority of the narrators spend most of their sections looking backwards and the choices and chances that brought them to where they are at the present. Margarita has a hope for the future, yet a large part is to rectify her somber past. Only Quasar seems to look toward the future, which is mainly from a complete rejection of his past, yet he spends half his segment telling how he came to be as well. Music also plays a large roll in this novel, which in a way gives it a bit of a soundtrack. I must say that Bat Segundo has an excellent taste in music.The Mongolia segment displays some wonderful use of metafiction. This segment has the narrator, a ‘ghost’ who inhabits the minds of others and reads their life stories, travel from person to person in search of stories, much like what the novel itself is doing. There are several wonderful, authentic Mongolian folk tales within this segment. The most striking of these involves a young boy who is fated to roam the world blind telling stories. Getting the picture? Mitchell is incredible with his playfulness of literature. Much of the negative remarks about him stem from this playfulness, criticizing him of just writing ‘masturbatory novels’ and showing off his literary muscle like one of those creepy guys at a beach. I, however, find that to be a great charm of his, although I like writers who write about writing. Ghostwritten is a powerful novel, and a powerful display of writing. This would be a perfect introduction into the world of Mitchell, although I did not find it to be as strong as Cloud Atlas. The two are good companion novels however, as major narrators in Cloud Atlas make minor appearances here, and they are both composed of seemingly unrelated, yet harmonizing stories. This novel rewards a careful reading. Almost nothing in this poignant novel is superfluous and there are countless connections and parallels to be found. The world will never be the same after reading this, I found myself analyzing every action of mine wondering how it would echo across the globe, which makes you feel even more guilty when you accidentally cut someone off in morning traffic. The horrors of humanity are all on display here, yet somehow we are all connected and the world keeps turning. Is it because of fate or chance? Is it for power or want? Or, maybe, is it because of love? 4/5
—s.penkevich
Four stars, or even four and a half stars cannot adequately define this novel, yet five stars appears overgenerous. Though Ghostwritten is a brilliantly ambitious novel it is also a tangled and convoluted novel. If you as a reader disliked Cloud Atlas it is unlikely that you would find this novel any better. Where Cloud Atlas seemed a more whole and structured novel this felt a little more twisted and in sections muddled knots of prose appeared to form. That said it shall receive five stars as a standing indication of the type of novel this was revealed as in the end.My perception of the author's workDavid Mitchell appears to be, like most authors and readers, interested in stories. He appears particularly interested in the stories that bind together cultures, identities, individuals and events. He is also fascinated in challenging and analysing the various perceived realities of the world. In many ways this makes him a relatable author to myself, appealing to me through his novel's thematic values and his metalinguistic approach to writing. He reminds me, in how his characters reappear in various novels of Brandon Sanderson. However where Sanderson in Mistborn: The Final Empire and other books is interested in creating a shared fantasy universe of different worlds and magic systems David Mitchell seems to throw his characters into different books simply as part of playing around. He seems to genuinely enjoy playing with words and seeing what can be done. His work is experimental literary pulp and often comes across as too sterilistically* pristine or in some ways smug. However I view this perceived smugness as more the personal fancy of an author playing about with ideas and words slightly beyond him in some measures. Certainly this novel lacks the same linking ability and refinement I enjoyed in Cloud Atlas but the big ideas and interesting ideas are still present in this novel.RealityGhostwritten had two main themes which I particularly found interesting. In following nine characters across nine stories with links between each Mitchell I believe attempts to discuss the idea of how realities intersect between individuals. By this I mean the ways in which my reality might interact and cut across the reality of another person. Mitchell links together each story in a way that while less structured than Cloud Atlas ends up forming a unique loop of continuity. Lovers witnessed by one character may become key characters in the next story, an artificial intelligence may be seen as the god figure of a death cult and so on the links continue until you end the story in a manner not dissimilar to the film Memento (though I believe that film is far more fascinating than this book's plotted course). What I mean to say is that Mitchell starts with one line and almost ends virtually on the same line. In this way he questions how various characters intersect in life and how there is some kind of continuity despite differences in continuity. I believe that what Mitchell tries to do is challenge his readers to question their realities. As one of his characters notes: "Disbelieving the reality beneath your feet gives you licence to print your own."** StoriesThe interesting thing that I reflected upon while reading this book was how many stories had gone into creating this one work. Originality in literature is a hotly debated topic*** particularly in genres which depend upon originality to develop such as fantasy and science fiction. My view on the subject is that originality develops through a unique mixture of the stories that have gone before. It is impossible for someone to have a story completely free of other stories. If those stories are mixed correctly there will be a unique narrative. That is what I love about childhood favourites such as The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia or even Peter Pan as I come back to them in young adulthood. I see that they build upon stories gone before in their own special way.In the same way Ghostwritten is a novel created out of the various stories Mitchell has no doubt devoured. I felt hints of Douglas Adams, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Franz Kafka to name a persona few and caught references to other writers such as Nabokov****, Tolstoy*****, Graham Greene******, Samuel Becket******* and perhaps even Dostoyevsky********. In this way the book serves as an argument in many ways as to the power of literature and the novel. Non-fiction teaches us many truths but so too can fiction by cognitive estrangement, taking those things, those realities we accept into a strange environment and forcing us to consider the truth of it all.The characters of this novel (arcane terrorists, seductress art thieves, body snatching spirits, men struggling to get by, radio jockeys, vilified women, travellers, young lovers...) may not be typical. I for one am yet to find a parasitic body jumping spirit for instance. However in their atypicality there is an example of humanity, elements which by taking them out of the normal environment serves to reflect upon the seething mass of people who exist. They remind the reader that every person, no matter where they come from, is an individual amidst a crowd of different individuals, individuals whose stories are often lost - as ghostwriters are lost behind the story of another individual. ConclusionAs the book states: "The act of memory is an act of ghostwriting." Mitchell's overall unsubtle exaggeration in this book is that we are all ghostwriters for the world around us. However despite Mitchell's tendency to often 'lay it on thick' this is well worth reading. I highly recommend this novel particularly if you liked Cloud Atlas and could navigate that book easily enough. David Mitchell may appear more profound than he is at times but its in the things he hints at for the reader personally that the beauty and magic of his writing exists.*this should be a proper adjective**p.401 for anyone who cares (i.e maybe me)***I'm very glad everyone is so different since it means there are people to debate with****Okay I promise to get around to reading him some time soon, suggestions?*****Him too!******And him!*******Him too!********And yeah I have books to read :)
—Jonathan
