David Mitchell: Der Wolkenatlas

[Nick Halliwell]

Hi Otto,

I'm afraid my German's not quite up to this (I'm a professional linguist but
I mainly work from Romance languages, particularly French, Catalan and
Spanish), but I must say that "Cloud Atlas" is my favourite novel of the
21st century so far. And his latest, "Black Swan Green", is also terrific,
although less obviously brilliant; I particularly enjoyed the bit in the
latter novel where Neil Young's singing voice is described as sounding like
"a barn collapsing". I collapsed myself at that point, into a giggling fit
on the floor. His debut, "Ghostwritten" is also absolutely stunning. And
let's not forget "number9dream", his second. Mitchell has clearly been
hugely influenced by Pynchon and seems to share TP's love of making
connections amongst the minutiae of things, although he does it in a very
different way and his greatest forte is his knack with plot. I suppose
"Ghostwritten" is probably the one with the most obvious Pynchon influence,
although the style could hardly be more different.  

I'm sure that at least some of you on this list would love Mitchell's
novels. If nothing else they manage to be enormously readable because
they're very strong on plot, but I must admit even I've been surprised at
how well he's sold, especially "CA", which isn't your usual bestseller
fodder.  

Oh, and for those of you who expressed an interest when I joined this list a
couple of months back, I expect to finish reading "Gravity's Rainbow" for
the first time later today (around 40 pages to go). A number of people were
curious about how I'd get on given that I'm perhaps the only person here to
have read "ATD" before "GR". Watch this space. 

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Otto
Sent: 20 January 2007 04:32
To: Pynchon List
Subject: David Mitchell: Der Wolkenatlas

very positive review of the translation of David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas":

Sechs in einem
Buch der Woche: "Der Wolkenatlas"
Von Martin Ebel

Schon eine tolle Mixtur, die David Mitchell da zusammenbraut! Diese
Pastiche-Technik ist nun weder Zeichen epigonaler Ermattung eines noch
jungen Autors (Mitchell ist Jahrgang 1969) noch postmoderner
Beliebigkeit, sondern literarisch konsequent. Mitchell war schon immer
einer, der aufs Ganze geht. Auch in seinen beiden vorangehenden
Romanen hat er sich nicht mit einem Schauplatz, einer Handlung, einer
begrenzten Personengruppe begnügt. Die ganze Welt musste es sein,
mindestens. So auch hier: "Der Wolkenatlas" blättert Kontinente auf,
aber auch Jahrhunderte. Und formal legt Mitchell die Latte so hoch,
dass andere Romanciers schon vom Hinschauen schwindlig würden - und er
springt auch noch darüber!
http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/buechermarkt/582102/

direkt link to the review as mp3:
http://ondemand-mp3.dradio.de/podcast/2007/01/14/dlf_200701141610.mp3