'Maybe the meaning of life lies in looking for it.'Like the song by John Lennon which inspired the title of this novel, David Mitchell plays with the fusion of dreams and reality as he sends the reader spiraling through the chimerical passages of Number9dream. This second novel is a departure from the multi-storied structure of Ghostwritten, instead closely following one character. However, it is anything but a simple linear plot and Mitchell shows once again that he can dazzle and dance through numerous facets of writing. Moving through a complicated coming-of-age tale that starts small with a quest for ones estranged father under control situations and further expands into a search for the meanings and acceptance of life while caught up in events beyond oneself, Mitchell questions reality and the nature of dreams all set to the soundtrack of the late, great John Lennon.From the very first page, it becomes obvious that Mitchell has grown as a writer in leaps and bounds from his previous novel, which was stunning in its own right. 'A galaxy of cream unribbons in my coffee cup, and the background chatter pulls into focus’ is one of the first of many ethereal descriptions employed to create the dreamy tone of Number9dream. Metaphors are used in abundance to create a fanciful nature that occasionally makes the reader wonder if it is even a metaphor at all or just a waking dream. 'How do you smuggle daydreams into reality?’ he questions, and this novel is the answer. Tokyo is described as ’rising from the floor of night’, and old cook is said to 'reanimate his corpse and sit up’, streets ‘fill up with evening’, and many other dreamlike, or nightmarish, images swirl from the page. There is always a question of the validity to what occurs within Mitchell’s novels (Ghostwritten has many characters wonder if what just transpired really happened, Frobisher questions the validity of the sea journal in Cloud Atlas, etc.) and this book takes that challenge head on. But is it the truth that really matters? ‘We are all of us writers,’ he writes, speaking through the character of Goatwriter in part 5, ‘busy writing our own fictions about how the world is and how it came to be this way. We concoct plots and ascribe motives that may, or may not, coincide with the truth’. This is a novel about the imagination and how we attribute meaning, so truth be damned as we follow Eiji down the rabbit hole. John Lennon was reportedly obsessed with the number 9 (a very interesting article about that can be read here), which may have taken its root from being born on Oct. 9th, and continued to present itself all through his career with songs like Revolution #9, #9 Dream, and strange coincidences such as meeting Yoko Ono on Nov. 9th and that the two of them have nine letter O’s shared between their names. Mitchell’s protagonist, Eiji, is a massive Lennon fan and seems to also be haunted by the number 9. Like Lennon’s birthplace of Liverpool, Eiji’s Kagoshima has nine letters in the name. Eiji was born on September 9th, and nine years have passed since the tragic episode with his sister. This novel is oversaturated with this mysterious 9, it appears in some form constantly. By the end of the novel, readers may find themselves also obsessed with this number, counting letters in names such as Eiji’s grandfather to find that there are nine letters in Tsukiyama and noticing that Eiji shows up an hour early for his 10a.m. meeting, or adding up the numbers on clock times that show up constantly revealing yet another instance of the number 9 (12:51, 13:32, 2:34, 13:23, etc.). Room numbers are 333 on the 9th floor, everything comes in nines such as the number of vehicles to arrive at the yakuza showdown, bars open at 9am, he shuffles a deck of cards ‘nine times for luck’ and thinks of Ai ‘ninety times per minute’. The book is even separated into 9 chapters, the last of which is blank because 'the meaning of the ninth dream begins after all meanings appear to be dead and gone’. There are seemingly countless other examples. This book is the greatest Easter egg hunt imaginable. Beyond the number 9, Mitchell has some fun incorporating Beatles lyrics into the novel, such as describing Ai as a girl with ’ kaleidoscope eyes’ or in a hilarious scene where Eiji gets stoned and the POV switched briefly into 3rd-person, Eiji opens his mouth to speak ‘but his words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup…’. Pure genius.While this novel does not have as dramatic of breaks in form as some of his others, each chapter has a structure unique from all the rest, each with its own purpose. There is the high action fantasies of the first chapter, the reflections of the past in the second, and even an entire collection of stories and letters read later on in the novel, both with a highly original voice from the rest. Mitchell is always eager to show his versatility, and fans of this will not be disappointed. The fifth chapter, Study of Tales, is particularly interesting as it gives Mitchell an opportunity to interject his opinions on the novel itself into the plot. Goatwriter (perhaps a nod to the idea of ghostwriters presented in Ghostwriten?), is a stuttering goat (David Mitchell has a stammer) whose stories often fail since his words literally get stuck in his throat when he eats the pages. He shows how many authors must eat their words, or even be chased down by the word hounds who force them to be always on the run from their past works. The plight of the novelist is cleverly on display. This section is especially poignant today with the rise of electronic readers when the computer witch tells Goatwriter ‘Paper is dead, haven’t you heard? You shall compose your untold tales in a virtual heaven’. The witch argues that ‘writing is not about ‘fulfillment.’ Writing is about adoration! Glamour! Awards!’. Here is where the true message of this books high-octane scenes comes to light. Mitchell argues against writing purely for glamour and this novel is a slap in the face to all those who write purely for a widespread audience enjoyment by becoming one of them. As in Cloud Atlas, Mitchell employs a ’literary pulp’ style of writing to bridge the gap between literature and pulp novels by injecting pure literary depth and meaning into the pulp plots and violent scenes (the yakuza bowling scene will haunt me forever) to infect the minds of those who read pulp and show them that they can look deeper into a novel. ‘I searched for the truly untold tale in sealed caves and lost books of learning’ he says, ’could it be that, instead, profundity is concealed in the obvious? Does the truest originality hide itself within the d-dullest cliché?’. Mitchell could write long dry novels full of depth, but it would seem that his mission is to rescue readers from their sugar-pop novels, so he writes books full of action clichés and compelling violent plots to pull them from the depths and into the wonderful world of literature. Goatwriter’s dive into the lake and his death show Mitchell shedding the worldly fears of writing, giving the finger to critics and the concept of fame, and becoming the abstraction of words and works. Mitchell lives up to this and has become one of the finest modern author. Later in the novel, Mitchell continues to poke fun at simple-minded action plots when he has Buntaro give his theory that ‘a title ending in -ator is guaranteed to be drivel….and the quality of any movie is inverse proportion to the number of helicopters it features.’The metafiction doesn’t stop with Goatwriter. Mitchell has a knack for incorporating others works into his own to highlight his themes. There is a constant comparison of him to the equally excellent Haruki Murakami, both for their metaphysical and surreal styles and for their ‘literary pulp’ novels. David Mitchell is on equal footing with this highly regarded master of modern Japanese literature, and his novels should be more than enough to quench the thirst of any Murakami fan, this novel in particular. Mitchell has Eiji read Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which serves for more than just a nod to his contemporary. The novels share many features, such as a simple quest becoming much more broad in scope and threatening, the surrealistic quality, and both novels have two women that seem to be able to enter and feed off of dreams. Another novel read by Eiji is Le Grand Meaulnes (this book plays a small role in Black Swan Green as well), which is also a coming-of-age of sorts that employs fantastical elements. The term coming-of-age tale does not quite fit this novel properly. Perhaps coming-to-an-adult-understanding-and-acceptance would be more appropriate, but rather cumbersome and wordy. This novel’s humble beginnings are a quest for Eiji’s father, who he has never met, and this seems to him to be the whole reason for his day-to-day life. Through the course of the novel, Eiji encounters a wide variety of people, all with goals that drive their meaning. Some are looking for their son, which presents a sort of irony, and there is some looking to get the right job, or right school, to die in glory for their country, or to bring a child into this world. However, as Eiji learns, eventually there must be some end to every quest, yet life continues after. ‘When you win, the rules change, and you find you’ve lost’ he is told. To move forward in looking for your meaning, we often have to look backwards as well. ’Endings are simple, but every beginning is made by the beginning before.’. Through the novel, Eiji often brings up a tragic event involving his sister nine years before the novels present. While he discusses it from time to time, he always beats around the bush so to speak and it isn’t until the very end that he confronts it head on. He mentions how guitar had been a method of helping him get past the pain, but his life had just been a Band-Aid to cover up, not actual healing. This is his true coming-of-age, when he finally learns to accept and move forward. It is interesting how Mitchell uses landscapes to exemplify this. First, there is much emphasis of people being a part of their environment, ‘I am not made by me, or my parents, but my the Japan that did come into being’,, or 'Tokyo builds people’. Also, it seems that your present location is important to who you are as he is told 'knowing where you are is a requisite of self-knowledge'. Most of the novel takes place in Tokyo, which is described in beautiful ethereal depictions, often moving up and out towards the sky and clouds. This is his escape, and his escape has now built him much like how Lennon tells Eiji that ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ wrote him. When he returns home, the descriptions become more grounded and earthy, discussing the colors of nature, the grains of grass, and the dirt. The prose becomes overwhelmingly lush and the smells and sounds of being out in the country effluviate from his words. He is now down to earth, removed from the dream and is able to easily distinguish what is real and what are his dreams, which are easily separated for the reader. He has returned to the land, the Japan where 'all the myths slithered, galloped and swam from.’ Once he has come to grips with his reality and past, his dreamlike Tokyo is literally shaken up and ripped apart, the dream shattered. This novel is incredible. It is a thrill ride through the life of the mind, through bloody Yakuza fights, hilarious first sexual encounters (he calls his erection ‘Godzilla’!), childhood memories and first loves. All the while, Mitchell pumps the pulp fiction with layers upon layers of meaning and then questions the idea of meaning and reality itself. ‘The world is an ordered flowchart of subplots after all’ he says, and this novel will make you question your own reality, much like how Eiji often wonders if he is still some child weeping in the woods and his whole life is a dream. You will also find yourself haunted by the number 9 forever after (is it only a coincidence this review is 9 paragraphs longs….?). Find this book and read it, and examine your meaning. Because maybe 'the meaning of life lies in looking for it’.9/9 böwakawa poussé, poussé 'The body is the outermost layer of the mind.'
Hay libros que suponen un auténtico reto. Cada uno de los lectores es víctima del suyo propio. Hay libros como Lolita que no están hechos para todo el mundo. Autores que se resisten por mucho que uno lo intente pero también otro tipo de barreras. El de Number9dream es el idioma. Pero no os asustéis antes de tiempo, David Mitchell asusta pero no tanto. Simplemente hay que tener cierto nivel y paciencia, paciencia para entender qué está pasando. Paciencia para avanzar mucho más lento que de costumbre con un libro en inglés que normalmente no te cuesta leer tanto. Superado ese reto Number9dream es todo vuestro. O casi. Si la memoria no me falla, creo recordar que este es el segundo libro del autor, publicado por primera vez en 2001 (o así), y diría que un segundo "acto" lo suficientemente impresionante para gustar hasta a los lectores más exigentes. Eso sí, haters de Haruki Murakami, es mejor dejar pasar este, pues no en vano en la ficha de Goodreads del autor figura el nombre del autor nipón. Y es que David Mitchell supo plasmar algunos de los elementos que más le caracterizan y adaptarlo a su estilo. Aquí no hay chicas con orejas perfectas, pero sí cuellos perfectos. Los momentos de realismo mágico quizás puedan chocar demasiado al principio, y confundir al lector hasta el punto de no entender qué está pasando, (algunas cosas sigo sin entenderlas incluso ahora) pero en su conjunto Number9dream es una novela que pese a sus defectos sigue siendo maravillosamente construida, escrita y, sobre todo, ambientada.Eiji Miyake es un joven de 19 años que está dispuesto a todo para encontrar a alguien. Para ello decide dejar todo atrás y mudarse a Tokio donde está la única pista que tiene para encontrar algún rastro más sobre el paradero de su padre. Sobre quién es él. Necesita respuestas aunque por ahora ni siquiera tenga claras las preguntas. Buscar a alguien sin saber si quiera su nombre en una ciudad como es Tokio puede ser un completo suicidio y Eiji lo sabe bien, sabe que esto le llevará su tiempo. Busca trabajo en diferentes lugares de la ciudad, alquila una pequeña habitación en un hotel cápsula en el cual se hace amigo de su propietario pero también hace una serie de curiosas amistades, cada cual más extraña que la anterior. Number9dream es en ese aspecto una caja de personajes extravagantes. La primera, una camarera que trabaja en una cafetería a la que Eiji va muy a menudo y que aparecerá en más de una ocasión a lo largo de la novela. La hermana de Eiji, a la que conocemos poco a poco, a medida que él se va acordando de historias de cuando eran pequeños y vivían los dos con su abuela. Yuzu Daimon, al cual conoce de casualidad y quien le arrastrará a una de las noches más locas de toda su vida. Buntaro, su mujer y su madre, un trío al que Eiji cogerá muchísimo cariño. Todos ellos tendrá algo que aportar en la vida de Eiji. El patrón que usa David Mitchell recuerda muchísimo a Murakami. El abandono de un ser que se busca desesperadamente. Una chica de la que uno acaba prendado de un modo u otro, ya sea por su oreja o su cuello perfecto. Pero sobre todo una corriente invisible que aunque a primera vista parece que no nos esté llevando a ningún lado, en realidad nos hace avanzar continuamente.Pese a sus extravagancias, situaciones inverosímiles que a ratos cuesta pillar y una cantidad de situaciones cotidianas enorme, la historia de Number9dream es más bien simple; Eiji hace todo lo posible para encontrar a su padre, aunque las consecuencias pueden ser catastróficas. A su vez su madre busca su perdón, por eso, por medio de una serie de cartas lograremos entender un poco mejor por qué está haciendo todo esto. Cuál es el sentido de este viaje. Para qué sirve aguantar ciertas cosas y poner su vida en peligro. Y es que una de las cosas más extrañas que he leído en este libro (y eso que he leído cosas extrañas aquí) pero a la vez más tópica si lo pienso bien, es que uno de los hilos argumentales de la novela tiene que ver con los yakuzas. No sé si la idea inicial era incluir ese arco ya desde que David Mitchell pensó en la novela o si simplemente la quería hacer lo más asequible posible a sus lectores. Y es que al igual que pasa con Murakami, Number9dream es un libro bastante "occidentalizado", de tal modo, que perfectamente podría haber pasado en Nueva York y el protagonista llamarse Alex, aunque no sería lo mismo. Pues lejos de la importancia de la historia en sí, la ambientación general de Number9dream resulta ser una experiencia exquisita para el lector.Algunos lectores puede que queden un tanto desencantados con el conjunto. Un todo-esto-para-qué pero realmente aquí lo que importa es el camino y no el resultado final. A veces puede parecer un poco repetitivo, a veces, parece que las cosas se quedan estancadas pero el arco argumental llega a su fin. Todo se acaba. La historia se cierra. Y tú te preguntas si hubieras hecho lo mismo que él al final. Si hubieras formulado las preguntas. Si hubieras hecho todo esto. Si valía la pena. Yo digo que sí.
What do You think about Number9dream (2003)?
number9dream is a story about 20-year old Miyake set in modern Tokyo with its coffee shops and pizzerias, its subways, mafia and video parlors. Miyake goes there to find his father, whom he’s never met, and to ease the tight cord that binds him to his twin sister, whose death he feels responsible for. It is a hectic book, which is a bit much at the beginning with its false starts, but it finds its groove. I admit I went back and forth on the book, finding it sometimes too busy, sometimes tedious, sometimes lyric and endearing, often very imaginative, and sometimes of questionable aesthetic. It isn’t perfect. In the end I decided I liked it. Above par, certainly. 3 and half or so, not quite 4.As a coming-of-age story, there’s plenty of youthful exuberance, which in language terms means exaggerating/using superlatives. I found this funny but sometimes also a bit affected. For example:"It is the hottest afternoon in the history of September." p. 132"A sigh as long as the end of the world." p. 136"I am running a temperature as high as this bridge." p. 149"These places have longer waiting lists than Grateful Dead guitar solos." p. 152. "Genji’s joint is a poky joint … and last painted when Japan surrendered." p. 224."At three am Sachiko brings me a mug of the thickest coffee known to chemistry." p. 308.Ah well, hyperbole belongs to the young.One thing I like about David Mitchell is how he weaves disparate elements and approaches into his storytelling, his cross-referencing and cultural allusions. Some of #9, for example, is journal entries. Some of it is story segments by a writer character who never actually appears in the book. There are many dreams, authentically told, and John Lennon songs, of course. And there’s plenty of echoes of Haruki Murakami.I am left wondering what Ai Imajo saw in Eiji Miyake, but I am admittedly small-hearted.#9 was entertaining and engaging, but for all its flash and imagination I don’t think it was a particularly challenging book, and that was what left me at times lukewarm. Still, as ee cummings told me as a child, may my heart always be open to little birds and if there ever was a little bird this is it.
—S.
This novel has an open ending, but there are clues regarding the possible developments of the story all over the last chapter. Although it has eight chapters and each has a name, the author ends the book with the ninth chapter which is simply called "Nine" and left empty. "The ninth dream begins after every ending", says David Mitchell, continuing the subtle insinuation that the story is to be continued in our imagination, but taking into account several clues from the last chapter: "Time may be what prevents everything from happening at the same time in waking reality, but the rules are different in dreams." In dreams everything is possible, characters from different moments of our lives gather to recreate parallel realities, to embody different personalities. Dreams play with reality like kids with plasticine and create alternative meanings which having been auditioned by the present or the past, had been rejected in order to give way to other story-threads (the actual reality). The energy generated by our dreams constitute the nourishment of the witches who are still among us, but because our "world is lit by television, threaded by satellites, cemented by science" admitting their existence seems far-fetched for "the nowadays us". "Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk amid the still-are."The alternance between dreams and reality is fascinating in this story and the main character ends up wondering if he is a dream of the real Eiji Miyake and when he goes to sleep and dreams, the real Eiji Miyake wakes up and remembers his waking life as a dream. Mitchell succeeds in writing a great final chapter for a book which at some points seems unfocused, with details that could be easily skipped without altering the story.It's obvious all the way through the book that he is a great fan of Murakami's: not only does he say that the main character, Eiji, is reading "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", but he seems to even adopt Murakami's style and adapt it to his own way of creating literature. Moreover, Eiji is alike in many ways with Kafka Tamura from "Kafka on the Shore" by Murakami, and all the other characters seem to borrow something from the oddity and charm of Murakami's characters. Maybe it is just my impression, but the author himself declares openly to hold Murakami as a great source of inspiration.Although I kept wondering while reading this book whether I was really enjoying it or not, the ending somehow brought all the loose ends together and I ended up thinking that it was really worth reading it. Moreover, although the story might not seem very catchy: a young boy starts a quest for his father whom he has never met, Mitchell's very plastic phrases and original use of words, his very creative, unique way of expressing his ideas and his humor create a special reading rhythm which is very entertaining. Therefore, although it seems a light read at a superficial level, once the hidden meanings and metaphors begin to unravel, they just pop out in your head continuously...like a bag of popcorn in the oven which seems unable to ever stop.
—Deea
Ah! böwakawa poussé, pousséAnother book I'm going to have to chew on for a bit to really bend my mental tongue around. At first, I was a little disappointed in it. This is my last Mitchell book left to read (I am now a Mitchell completist) and I was hoping for just a little more PoMo juice to squeeze out of his second novel. Three dreams into it and I was afraid Mitchell was aping Murakami (Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase) and Joyce (Finnegans Wake) a bit too much in his persuit of a dreamy father-quest novel. By the end, however, Mitchell salvaged the novel. It still seemed a little too packaged, too sterile, too neat and measured. Don't get me wrong, I liked it and obviously (I've now read all of Mitchell) I like how Mitchell writes, but I'm not sure #9Dream is even close to being top shelf for me of Mitchell's novels.
—Darwin8u
