The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Why I read this book

I’ve read two other David Mitchell novels, Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, and David Mitchell can craft a narrative and weave a sentence. He might be my current favorite author writing in English, and this book is regarded by some as his best. At a certain point I’ll likely have read all his novels; he is a virtuoso and is very serious contemporary fiction.

One key takeaway

I mentioned it above, but David Mitchell is a master. This novel sits between historical fiction and colonial novel, and is a fantastically fine entry. In many ways it recalls Forster, Orwell, Rhys, or Conrad as much as Graves or Mailer, Doctorow or Eco. If I had to align Mitchell with anyone, it might be Eco, if nothing else other than their meticulously researched worlds and ruthless ear for narrative pace. The beginning of Chapter 39, in particular, is absolutely wonderful.

How was the book

Of the three novels of Mitchell’s I’ve read so far, this is my second favorite, but I generally prefer the speculation of forward-glancing “some-_when_” as opposed to the historic, and Cloud Atlas is a perfect genre storm for me: science fiction as serious literature. I don’t know if I’ve read a better writer writing today; McCarthy might be the better storyteller, the mantle of Hemingway’s terseness passing to the frontier, and Zadie Smith might be the more interesting cultural observer, the quintessential American viewer, and there might be no better than Roth at coloring the purplish bruises of injured masculinity through the last half century (although I think Updike might give him a run for his money), but there might be no finer writer qua writer than Mitchell writing today. He scratches that DFW-ian itch of a sublime crafter of sentences and a fine subduer of the finer points of humanity.

Many of the stories of this novel are told not as reported speech or as narrative exposition, but rather, from the characters themselves, filled with vainglopriously boasting (we get it Fischer, you’ve made your mettle in Suriname), quiet confessions, the tumultuous and unyielding hand of fate or fortune leading all characters into the tide pool of the single European trading post in Japan. Mitchell interlaces these narratives with games of Go, sneezes, footsteps through halls, reminding the reader there is always a foreground and a background, a confided revelation surrounded by unknowing agents going about their lives. One particularly effective detail (the whole scene is a masterful showcase of Mitchell’s eye for narrative pace) is when Orito is escaping the Shiranui monastery.

Knives are being sharpened by an insomniac cook. To disguise her footfalls, Orito steps in time to the metallic scrape. (261).

There are also some great insults interspersed throughout. I’d like to think Mitchell unearthed these timeless beauties through research: the green-pepper-head of Ogawa’s wife, Chamberline Tomine’s face belonging on cathedral gutters. The “hominid” walk of Snitker. I think someone at some point was called a hat-stand.

There are a few other wonderful themes you could spend quite a while on:

the bi-culturality of this novel and the idea of “two worlds” colliding, past and future, Japan and Europe, new Japan and old Japan, old Europe and new Europe, etc
birth and death – the novel begins with a birth, Enomoto kills babies to gain immortality, Orito is a midwife. beyond that, the birth and death of nations, of ideas, of souls and identities
language, both characters speaking it and the way Mitchell writes it, “Bygonese” as Mitchell refers to it. Mitchell does subtle things to the way characters speak, often preserving the essence of their expression and the effect it has as opposed to a faithful rendition. Grote sounds cockney even though he is speaking Dutch. The Japanese, when speaking in Dutch to the Dutch use halting, pared down speech.
the Psalter (the book of Psalms written by King David) – another, unrelated David Mitchell has done scholarly work on the eschatological underpinnings of the book of psalms, so there is likely a fertile strand throughout the novel, Mitchell perhaps playing with the association
fate, literary determinism, and luck
genre interrogations – how does this novel resemble a colonial novel and a work of historical fiction

Any other reading

Anything else David Mitchell has written:

The Bone Clocks
Slade House
Utopia Avenue
Black Swan Green
Number9Dream