The David Mitchell Pan in New Statesman

I’m mentioning Leo Robson’s pan of David Mitchell’s new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, since I’m guessing Mitchell’s new book won’t be getting that many of them. (That’s what The Complete Review’s review overview shows so far.)

[And I should say right here that I think David Mitchell is vastly overrated. Though I've found his books interesting, and I always enjoy reading them, I've never found the one that sticks with me, or, in other words, quite equals the type of fawning Mitchell tends to receive.]

Robson’s pan is an intelligent piece, though the critique of Mitchell ultimately fails for not having enough space. For instance:

Mitchell shows impatience with “grammatical” ingredients such as scene-setting, which is despatched with cursory briskness: “Night insects trill, tick, bore, ring; drill, prick, saw, sting”; “Long and curving rice paddies stripe the low and laddered mountains”. These descriptions are never longer than a sentence, the sentences never longer than a line. The basic narrative grammar is treated as a succession of boxes to be ticked, or hoops to be jumped through. Otherwise, the novel palls. Erudition is inimical to narrative flow, unless – as with Tristram and Maf – it provides the narrative flow. Mitchell is dependent on conventionalities, while lacking O’Hagan’s releasing context.

This is a perfectly lucid critique except that there’s no real proof of what Robson says. That is, there’s not nearly enough context for someone who hasn’t read the book to evaluate Robson’s claims that Mitchell’s “narrative grammar” amounts to a mere ticking of boxes. Maybe it does, or maybe this radical descriptive condensation is part of an overall strategy to subvert the way novelists typically give the effect of reality.

By contrast, Robson’s critique of Mitchell’s opening foray into the third-person is, to my ears, far more persuasive:

In his previous work, Mitchell has proved himself a virtuoso of voice, but this novel is conducted in a third-person plod. The juggling of divergent perspectives in Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, the adolescent solipsism of number9dream and Black Swan Green, have ill-equipped him for the challenges of the multi-character set-piece novel. Access to consciousness is too orderly, not only tagged (“he decides”, “he reflects”) but italicised: “The Captain thinks, I want those damned Dutchmen torn to rags.”

Given that Robson’s critique, though lacking in space, is still coherent and entirely plausible, I wanted to see what one of Mitchell’s adherents had to say about the new book. Thus I had a look at David Robinson’s rapturously positive review in The Scotsman, which devotes far more space to Mitchell’s new book but, oddly, comes off sounding far less credible than Robson.

One problem with Robinson is that he never engages the text directly until the very end. And when he finally does, this is what he writes:

Mitchell’s descriptive powers take wing yet again. A seagull flying overhead that day, he writes, would see: “weavers of mats, cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses …”

And it’s this kind of free-flowing descriptiveness, this sheer revelry in language, this fascination with what it can and can’t explain, that underpins an already fascinating story. So credible has Mitchell made this melange of love story, quest, myth, melodrama and historical fiction that you’ll probably finish it, as I did, and straight away check out what bits were true to the historical record, which facts were bent and which dates massaged. Then you’ll realise that none of this matters, because masterpieces make their own rules, and this book is definitely one of them.

I’m highly suspicious of reviewers that declare books “masterpieces” that “make their own rules,” since that’s certainly the rarest thing you will ever see as a critic of any kind. I’m also suspicious of critics that quote a fairly uninteresting list of descriptives and then rhapsodize it for me.

But what I’m really, really suspicious of are reviewers who open their review with a four-paragraph anecdote that revolves around the “first time” they met the author of the book under review, at which time they “knew” the book that they just reviewed–six years later–would be great. Frankly, I’m amazed that such an anecdote was left in the final review as the lede, and I’m further amazed that Robinson’s impartiality seems not to have been called into question.

By contrast, Robson’s lede–four meaty paragraphs that trace out a brief history of the idea of novelistic grammar that he will then employ in his critique of Mitchell–is a perfect example of how to immediately develop a certain level of credibility. Essentially both he and Robinson say “trust me, I’m the critic,” which I hate to see in literary criticism. But I’ll grant Robson much more trust because he earns it with the knowledge of literature that he demonstrates, whereas Robinson demonstrates knowledge of . . . David Mitchell.

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