TheFifthElement
06-12-2010, 01:49 PM
I eagerly anticipated this latest offering by Mitchell, who is one of the most promising contemporary writers I’ve encountered, and at no point does this novel disappoint. Apart from being the most visually beautiful book I own (it is truly beautiful) it is the most beautiful book I’ve read this year.
Set during the Edo period, in Japan’s period of isolation, in the Dutch outpost of Dejima in the bay of Nagasaki, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet tells the story of a pious young clerk, employee of the Dutch East India Company, who travels to Japan to make his fortune and thereby win the hand of his Dutch love, Anna. The naïve de Zoet must negotiate the strange customs of the native Japanese, the political machinations and degradations perpetrated by his own countrymen, and an unexpected love in the shape of midwife Aibagawa Orito. But, as you might expect, the course of love does not run smooth and this story takes a twist that proves the depth and breadth of Mitchell's imaginative mind which takes you, as the reader, along an amazing ride. From the outset this is a story steeped in tension, and that tension peaks and falls beautifully throughout the story.
There are so many things I could say about this book. It is clever, oh too clever perhaps, expansive, homely, rich, extraordinary, brutal, aggravating, astonishing, honest, playful, heartfelt, frightening, beautiful. It is a masterfully told story. Mitchell, I felt, has really come into his own with this book. You get the impression he’s really enjoying himself. The story is detailed, funny, his characters well formed and loveable/hateable in equal measure. One of the things that struck me most was the sheer joy that Mitchell translates onto the page; here is a writer showing us his skill, his joy, his playful mastery of the English language. It reminded me, in some ways, of Italo Calvino who is another writer who translates a sense of utter pleasure in his craft onto the page. To give you an idea, I think it best to let the writer speak for himself.
Before the evening muster, Jacob climbs the Watchtower and takes out the persimmon from his jacket pocket. Hollows from the fingers of Aibagawa Orito are indented in her ripe gift and he places his own fingers there, holds the fruit under his nostrils, inhales its gritty sweetness, and rolls its rotundity along his cracked lips. I regret my confession, he thinks, yet what choice did I have? He eclipses the sun with her persimmon: the planet glows orange like a Jack o’ Lantern. There is a dusting around its woody black cap and stem. Lacking a knife or spoon, he takes a nip of waxy skin between his incisors, and tears; juice oozes from the gash; he licks the sweet smears and such out a dribbling gobbet of threaded flesh and holds it gently, gently, against the roof of his mouth, where the pulp disintegrates into fermented jasmine, oily cinnamon, perfumed melon, melted damson…and in its heart he finds ten or fifteen flat stones, brown as Asian eyes and the same shape. The sun is gone now, cicadas fall silent, lilacs and turquoises dim and thin into greys and darker greys. A bat passes within a few feet, chased by its own furry turbulence. There is not the faintest breath of a breeze. Smoke emerges from the galley flue on the Shenandoah and sags around the brig’s bows. Her gun-ports are open and the sound of ten dozen sailors dining in her belly carries over the water; and like a struck tuning fork, Jacob reverberates with the parts and entirety of Orito, with all the her-ness of her. The promise he gave to Anna rubs is conscience like a burr, But Anna, he thinks uneasily, is so far away in miles and in years; and she gave her consent, she as good as gave her consent, and she’d never know, and Jacob’s stomach ingests Orito’s slithery gift. Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it ‘Love’.
Uzaemon recalls an uncle teaching him long ago to skim stones. He recalls the old woman he saw at sunrise. ‘There are times when I suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. It shows us pictures. Pictures of the past, and the might-one-day-be’. The mind’s mind exerts its own will too and has its own voice.’
Mitchell, I would class as a fusion writer. His work takes the expansive narrative of Western fiction and fuses it to the subtler motifs of Japanese fiction. It’s not perfect, but what writer is? The story is sprawling, the narrative clips and changes unexpectedly and the ending is too short and sudden (or perhaps I’m just saying I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t, it’s true) but despite its flaws, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a work of mastery by an artist in his prime, and I would strongly recommend those who eschew the value of contemporary writers to go and read this, or Cloud Atlas, Mitchell’s other masterpiece, and if you don’t like it, oh well there’s no accounting for taste ;)
I leave you with a thought from Magistrate Shiroyama which struck me as particularly apt in this case:
This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece and that is itself.
Perhaps Mitchell has given us one more. I give it a rare 10/10.
Set during the Edo period, in Japan’s period of isolation, in the Dutch outpost of Dejima in the bay of Nagasaki, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet tells the story of a pious young clerk, employee of the Dutch East India Company, who travels to Japan to make his fortune and thereby win the hand of his Dutch love, Anna. The naïve de Zoet must negotiate the strange customs of the native Japanese, the political machinations and degradations perpetrated by his own countrymen, and an unexpected love in the shape of midwife Aibagawa Orito. But, as you might expect, the course of love does not run smooth and this story takes a twist that proves the depth and breadth of Mitchell's imaginative mind which takes you, as the reader, along an amazing ride. From the outset this is a story steeped in tension, and that tension peaks and falls beautifully throughout the story.
There are so many things I could say about this book. It is clever, oh too clever perhaps, expansive, homely, rich, extraordinary, brutal, aggravating, astonishing, honest, playful, heartfelt, frightening, beautiful. It is a masterfully told story. Mitchell, I felt, has really come into his own with this book. You get the impression he’s really enjoying himself. The story is detailed, funny, his characters well formed and loveable/hateable in equal measure. One of the things that struck me most was the sheer joy that Mitchell translates onto the page; here is a writer showing us his skill, his joy, his playful mastery of the English language. It reminded me, in some ways, of Italo Calvino who is another writer who translates a sense of utter pleasure in his craft onto the page. To give you an idea, I think it best to let the writer speak for himself.
Before the evening muster, Jacob climbs the Watchtower and takes out the persimmon from his jacket pocket. Hollows from the fingers of Aibagawa Orito are indented in her ripe gift and he places his own fingers there, holds the fruit under his nostrils, inhales its gritty sweetness, and rolls its rotundity along his cracked lips. I regret my confession, he thinks, yet what choice did I have? He eclipses the sun with her persimmon: the planet glows orange like a Jack o’ Lantern. There is a dusting around its woody black cap and stem. Lacking a knife or spoon, he takes a nip of waxy skin between his incisors, and tears; juice oozes from the gash; he licks the sweet smears and such out a dribbling gobbet of threaded flesh and holds it gently, gently, against the roof of his mouth, where the pulp disintegrates into fermented jasmine, oily cinnamon, perfumed melon, melted damson…and in its heart he finds ten or fifteen flat stones, brown as Asian eyes and the same shape. The sun is gone now, cicadas fall silent, lilacs and turquoises dim and thin into greys and darker greys. A bat passes within a few feet, chased by its own furry turbulence. There is not the faintest breath of a breeze. Smoke emerges from the galley flue on the Shenandoah and sags around the brig’s bows. Her gun-ports are open and the sound of ten dozen sailors dining in her belly carries over the water; and like a struck tuning fork, Jacob reverberates with the parts and entirety of Orito, with all the her-ness of her. The promise he gave to Anna rubs is conscience like a burr, But Anna, he thinks uneasily, is so far away in miles and in years; and she gave her consent, she as good as gave her consent, and she’d never know, and Jacob’s stomach ingests Orito’s slithery gift. Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us, at the speed of days and nights, and we like to call it ‘Love’.
Uzaemon recalls an uncle teaching him long ago to skim stones. He recalls the old woman he saw at sunrise. ‘There are times when I suspect that the mind has a mind of its own. It shows us pictures. Pictures of the past, and the might-one-day-be’. The mind’s mind exerts its own will too and has its own voice.’
Mitchell, I would class as a fusion writer. His work takes the expansive narrative of Western fiction and fuses it to the subtler motifs of Japanese fiction. It’s not perfect, but what writer is? The story is sprawling, the narrative clips and changes unexpectedly and the ending is too short and sudden (or perhaps I’m just saying I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t, it’s true) but despite its flaws, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a work of mastery by an artist in his prime, and I would strongly recommend those who eschew the value of contemporary writers to go and read this, or Cloud Atlas, Mitchell’s other masterpiece, and if you don’t like it, oh well there’s no accounting for taste ;)
I leave you with a thought from Magistrate Shiroyama which struck me as particularly apt in this case:
This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece and that is itself.
Perhaps Mitchell has given us one more. I give it a rare 10/10.