David Mitchell Universe

[IdleRich]

That's the author not the guy out of Peep Show.
Anyone read his books? I've read a few over the years and basically I've always enjoyed them to the extent that I will pick them up from a charity shop and like them but never been totally blown away by them. Anyway, this week I read Bone Clocks which is one of his later ones I guess and it suddenly hit me (or was revealed to me) that all the books are in the same universe, characters recur or you realise suddenly that someone is the grandchild of someone from a previous book... or, in fact, in Bone Clocks you realise that this character or that is the reincarnation of the immortal soul of another. I don't think I was being stupid not noticing this before in that many of the recurring characters are minor and I read the books years apart, but in Bone Clocks it's all made much more explicit. But anyway, OK, so far, so normal, that's all been done before I guess (Neal Stephenson to name one proponent), but what's fascinating about this is that now meeting an old character (or a relative of an old character) gives huge insights into the books you read before and in fact makes you realise that what you thought happened, what you took from the book - let's be honest here in fact - what did happen, is now not what happened. You have a new perspective, he's changed what happened. And in a sense it feels like a trick or like when they sort of re-write the canon in Star Wars or something but it's not quite that cos it all makes sense and it doesn't contradict what happened before, it changes it but consistently in ways that are hard to explain. I want to know if he really planned it from the first book he wrote however many years ago or if he devised it afterwords and how he managed to bring it all together - did he have loads of charts with timelines of all these people and where their grandparents would have been in 1684 from the first book? It's a huge technical achievement if nothing else, but more than that, this bending of the past without actual breaking is something I've never seen before, has anyone else done it?

 

[vershy versh]

Pynchon does it. There are multiple generations of families and recurring characters in his stuff. I can't think of an example of it changing the events of a previous novel though, just expanding on them and adding more depth to the universe.

 

[IdleRich]

Pynchon does it. There are multiple generations of families and recurring characters in his stuff. I can't think of an example of it changing the events of a previous novel though, just expanding on them and adding more depth to the universe.

I'm maybe not explaining it will but what Mitchell does is different from Pynchon or Stephenson in the way it recasts previous events in a different light, it's hard to describe if you haven't read 'em though.

 

[sufi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alexandria_Quartet does that

 

[IdleRich]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alexandria_Quartet does that

interesting, that's something I've never read. It's still different though in that it's explicit whereas here if you don't pay attention you won't even notice it.

 

[vershy versh]

Apparently there's stuff in Gene Wolfe which changes the story if you notice it:

Wolfe wrote in a letter, "My definition of a great story has nothing to do with 'a varied and interesting background.' It is: One that can be read with pleasure by a cultivated reader and reread with increasing pleasure." In that spirit, Wolfe also left subtle hints and lacunae that may never be explicitly referred to in the text. For example, a backyard full of morning glories is an intentional foreshadowing of events in Free Live Free, but is only apparent to a reader with a horticultural background, and a story-within-the-story provides a clue to understanding Peace.

In the early part of the first novel, “The Shadow of the Torturer,” Severian is given more responsibility in the guild and finds himself in chambers he was once denied access to. In one, he sees a dusty and faded picture he describes as “an armored figure standing in a desolate landscape. It had no weapon, but held a staff bearing a strange, stiff banner.” Careful readers will realize this as a photograph of the first moon landing, but to Severian it merely evokes a deep nostalgia, as well as a desire to steal the picture and bring it outside, away from the stifling interior of the guild’s Citadel.

 

[IdleRich]

Interesting. But isn't that second one just an easter egg type thing?

 

[vershy versh]

Funny to see this pop up just as we're discussing '60s dad canon psychedelia'.

David Mitchell announces Utopia Avenue, his first novel in five years - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...s-utopia-avenue-his-first-novel-in-five-years

Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell is to tackle the story of “the strangest British band you’ve never heard of” in his first novel for five years, Utopia Avenue.

Announcing the book, which will be released next June, Mitchell quoted the maxim that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, saying that Utopia Avenue stemmed from it.

“Songs (mostly) use language, but music plugs directly into something below or above language. Can a novel made of words (and not fitted with built-in speakers or Bluetooth) explore the wordless mysteries of music, and music’s impact on people and the world? How?” Mitchell asked. “Is it possible to dance about architecture after all? Utopia Avenue is my rather hefty stab at an answer.”

Utopia Avenue will tell the “unexpurgated story” of a British band of the same name, who emerged from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and was “fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet and blues bassist Dean Moss”, said publisher Sceptre.

“Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief and blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and draughty ballrooms, to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968,” said the publisher, adding that the book would tell of “riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder”.

The publicity asks: “Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us? Utopia means ‘nowhere’ but could a shinier world be within grasp, if only we had a map?”

 

[IdleRich]

Funny to see this pop up just as we're discussing '60s dad canon psychedelia'.

David Mitchell announces Utopia Avenue, his first novel in five years - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...s-utopia-avenue-his-first-novel-in-five-years

Ha, I guess Jasper de Zoet is a descendant of the protagonist of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - which is maybe his best, and (coincidentally?) most formally conventional and least fantastical (at least as you read it) novel. It reminds me of something like Shogun by James Clavell in fact.

 

[IdleRich]

Just watching Dr Sleep on telly and noticing the extraordinary similarity between the plot of Dr Sleep and The Bonie Clocks. In the Bone Clocks there are two warring groups of immortals, the bad guys called Anchorites achieve immortality by hunting down children with psychic abilities and kidnapping them, they then torture them, kill them and make them into "black wine" which contains their essence and is consumed to make the Anchorites live forever. They are at war with good immortals who seek to protect the psychic children before they can be consumed.

Dr Sleep - the sequel to The Shining - is about a group of evil psychic vampires called the True Knot who extend their lifespans by consuming "steam", a psychic essence released by torturing and killing children who have the shining.

Quite interesting cos Dr Sleep was 2013 and Bone Clocks was 2014.... but Bone Clocks is the sequel to a load of books that set the scene and came before it. I reckon both authors genuinely had the idea independently cos Mitchell must have had it when he was writing the books before the Bone Clocks, but it's never made explicit in those so King can't have copied it from them. It's a bit like Liebnitz and Newton both inventing differentiation.

 

[IdleRich]

Just reading this article where someone says exactly what I said at the start...

But as I read The Bone Clocks, and his latest novel Slade House, I realized that Mitchell now was after something grander and even more ambitious than any of his individual novels: this guy is going to connect all his books. For real. All of his books. And, it seems to me, he’s doing it unlike any other author before him. In his review of Slade House in the New York Times, Dwight Garner writes that, “Mr. Mitchell’s intertextual gamesmanship—the recurring characters and so on—began to seem, as a friend said to me, ‘less like Yoknapatawpha and more like Marvel.’”

The Ever-Expanding World of David Mitchell

David Mitchell, even to his few detractors, is impressive. Cloud Atlas impresses with the scope of its imagination and ambition. Black Swan Green, at the opposite end of the spectrum, impresses wit…

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