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[applause]
Randy Boyagoda: Thank you. I think it's safe to say that the excitement in the room this
evening, the buzz around this event in recent days comes from an obvious source. One writer's
brilliance of storytelling, his boldness of imagination, and his awe-inspiring literary
ambitions. That said, I'm admittedly surprised that you've all seen such greatness in only
my first novel.
[laughter]
RB: And the rather brief description of my second... And I'd like to take the rest of
this evening to tell you about my second novel, no. Instead of saying more about that, I myself
would much rather hear one of the world's greatest contemporary writers, David Mitchell,
discuss his latest feat of fiction, "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet". David Mitchell
was born in Lancashire, England and currently lives in West Cork, Ireland with his family.
Between these coordinates, he's lived elsewhere, perhaps most notably in Japan, the setting
of his new book and some of its predecessors. And indeed, it's on the evidence of Mitchell's
work so far, five novels, translated into some 19 languages that fellow writers, critics,
readers and prized juries alike continue to praise him for the brilliance and boldness
of his writing.
RB: Indeed, in 2007 Time Magazine named him the lone novelist to its list of the world's
100 most influential people. Mitchell's writing is so admired and indeed important because
it's technical wizardry and aesthetic showmanship for which he receives abundant praise are
always in service of compulsively readable storytelling and, at its best moments these
are his means of revealing, in strange places and stranger still ways, nothing less than
the universals of human experience. This evening we have the pleasure of hearing from David
Mitchell directly in discussion about the universals of human experience he reveals
in turn of the 18th century Japan, when a young devout Dutch clerk named Jacob de Zoet
arrives at Dejima, a man-made island off Nagasaki that is occupied by the Dutch East Indies
Company. Soon after arriving, Jacob finds himself immersed in a world of intrigue, corruption,
power politics, ritual, religion, and forbidden love, elements that intertwine and intensify
as Jacob's story and the story of Orito Aibagawa, the Japanese midwife he falls in love with,
develop. Before we sit down and have a conversation about this wondrous novel, we are very fortunate
that David has offered to give us a reading from it. And so without further ado, ladies
and gentlemen, David Mitchell.
[applause]
David Mitchell: Thank you very much indeed and thank you for sacrificing your beautiful,
beautiful evening to come and listen to me. And thank you for those wonderful introductions
as well. I've recorded them and when I'm having bad days I'll just replay them on my i-Pod.
And whenever I hear that Time Magazine 100 most influential people thing referenced,
I can still hear the laughter of scorn from both my mother and my wife.
[laughter]
DM: My wife helpfully pointed out that I'm not even the most influential person in the
house.
[laughter]
DM: There are four of us in our immediate household and I... We worked it out and I
have to admit she's right. I came in at number five after the washing machine, so it's really
nice that Time Magazine sort of gave me that accolade but talk about a reality gap. Anyway,
I'm going to do a brief reading from here. I think I'll just jump straight in and interrupt
myself as and when.
DM: Picking slugs from the cabbages with a pair of chopsticks, Jacob notices a ladybird
on his right hand. He makes a bridge for it with his left which the insect obligingly
crosses. Jacob repeats the exercise several times. "The ladybird believes," he thinks,
"she's on a momentous journey but she's going nowhere." He pictures an endless sequence
of bridges between skin covered islands over voids and wonders if an unseen force is playing
the same trick on him. Until a woman's voice dispels his reverie. "Mr. Da Zuto."
DM: Jacob removes his bamboo hat and stands up, and Ms. Aibagawa's face eclipses the sun.
"I beg pardon to disturb". Surprise, guilt, nervousness, Jacob feels many things. She
notices the ladybird on his thumb. "Tentomushi". And in his eagerness to comprehend, he mishears,
"Obentomushi." "Obentomushi is luncheon-box bug," she smiles. "This," she indicates ladybird,
"is a tentomushi." "Tentomushi," he says, and she nods like a pleased teacher. Her deep
blue summer kimono and white head scarf lend her a nun's air. They're not alone. The inevitable
guard stands by the garden gate. Guard, garden, they clash, don't they? Guard and garden.
Michael, we're gonna have to organize a product recall here, that says, "By the garden door,"
it's gonna have to be now. Some things like that, of course, lots you can get by reading,
but only if you read that one aloud could you ever notice it. So I would have had to
have read all 500 pages in my hut, just as God no, God, too late now.
[laughter]
DM: Jacob tries to ignore him, the guard. "It's ladybird in Dutch, gardener's friend."
"Anna would like you", he thinks, looking into her face. "Anna would like you." Anna
is his fiancee back at home in Zeeland. She's of a higher social class, so the prospective
father-in-law has said that he can only ask for her hand in marriage if he goes out east
for five years to earn his fortune, thinking that's a nice way to get rid of the young
guy. The gardener's friend, because ladybirds eat greenfly. Jacob raises his thumb to his
lips and blows. The ladybird flies all of three feet to the scarecrow's face. She adjusts
the scarecrow's hat as a wife might. "How you call him?" "It's a scarecrow in Dutch
to scare crows away, but this one's name is Robespierre.
[laughter]
DM: Warehouse is Warehouse Oak. I love this about the Dutch. They named their warehouses
the same way we name ships, and it's says something, one of the quite interesting about
the Dutch psyche, I think, a good thing about the Dutch psyche, of course. "Monkey is William
Pitt. Why scarecrow is Robespierre?" "It's because his head falls off when the wind changes."
[laughter]
DM: It's sort of a dark joke. "Joke is secret language," she frowns, "inside words." Jacob
decides against referring to the fan until she does. It would appear at least that she's
not offended or angered. The fan... This is just the third encounter they've had. The
first encounter, when they first met, he was working in a warehouse, she ran in after a
monkey that had run away with a poor sailor's amputated limb. It's a long story, it kind
of made sense at the time.
[laughter]
DM: It's really hard to get them to meet because Dejima is just sort of... This place, it's
a man-made island in Nagasaki harbour where, as you heard in the introduction, the Dutch
East Indiies Company were allowed to sort of operate a trading post. But potentially
a very rich place for a novel, I thought. But then, once I started writing, I also realized
it's an anti-plot device. The whole point was to prevent the unexpected. The Japanese
sort of isolated it at the far western end of the country. A very small island, I say
island and you might think of mountains and hills and fields. It was tiny, probably twice
the size of this hall... No, three times. Very, very small. Just one street, a few warehouses,
that was it. And certainly during the trading season when it was busy, every third or fourth
person was a spy.
DM: So how can you get them to meet? Some kind of a romantic interest, possibly budding
if not blossoming and, yeah, so that was the amputated limb plot. That was one answer.
Anyway, big digression. She left her fan there, he took the fan away and couldn't get her
face out of his head. So he disassembled the fan, he's something of an artist, and drew
her face on it and then reassembled it. And then managed to slip it to her on a later
encounter, on encounter number two, and he hasn't seen her since. So as he's talking
about the fan. If you're interested in the fan, then it appears later on in the book,
drawn by actually my own mum, which is a bit spinal tap, isn't it, to get your mum to do
the artwork but it didn't...
[laughter]
DM: It was great because it didn't cost me a bean, and it's great. "Mum, got a bit of
a favour to ask." She used to be an artist in her former life. Anyway, that's the fan.
"So, may I help you, miss?" "Yes, Dr. Marinus asks I come and ask you for rosemary. He ask...
" "The better I know Marinus", thinks Jacob, "the less I understand him." "He ask bid Dombaga
give you six sprogs of rosemary." "Over here then, in the herb garden." He leads her down
the path, unable to think of a single pleasantry that doesn't sound terminally inane. She asks,
"Why Mr. Da Zuto work today as Dejima gardener?" The truth is that he lost a gambling debt
and he has to pay it back by working for the day in the garden. "Because," the pastor's
nephew lies through his teeth, "I enjoy a garden's company and as a boy," he leavens
his lie with some truth, "I worked in a relative's orchard. We cultivated the first plum trees
ever to grow in our village." "In the village of Domburg" she says, "in province of Zeeland".
"You are most kind to remember." Jacob breaks off a half dozen young sprigs. "And here you
are." And for a priceless coin of time, their hands are linked by few inches of fragrant
herb, witnessed by a dozen blood-orange sunflowers. "I don't want to have a purchased courtesan",
he thinks. "I wish to earn you."
DM: Yes, he's got this fiancee back in Zeeland, but it's five years away and a very long...
Far off and men are men, and don't hold it too much against him. He's basically a good
guy.
[laughter]
DM: "Thank you." She smells the herb. "Rosemary has meaning." Jacob blesses his foul-breathed
martinet of a Latin master back in Middelburg. "Its Latin name is Ros Marinus wherein Ros
is dew, dew, would you know the word 'dew'?" She frowns and shakes her head a little, and
her parasol spins slowly. "Dew is water, water found early in the morning before the sun
burns it away." Midwife understands, "Dew, we say 'asa-tsuyu'." Jacob knows he shall
never forget the word 'asa-tsuyu' so long as he lives. "Well then, Ros being dew, and
marinus meaning ocean, Ros marinas is dew of the ocean. And old people say that Rosemary
thrives, thrives, thrives, grows well only when it can hear the ocean." This story pleases
her. "Is it true tale?" "It may be... " "Let time stop", Jacob wishes. "It may be prettier
than it is true." "So meaning of Marinus is sea? So Doctor Marinus is Doctor Ocean?" "You
could say so yes."Does your name, Aibagawa have a meaning?" "Aiba is indigo," her pride
in her name is plain, "and gawa is river." "So you are an indigo river? You sound like
a poem." "And you," Jacob tells himself, "sound like a flirty lecher."
[laughter]
DM: "Rosemary is also a woman's Christian name, I mean a given name. So, my own given
name is strange to sound casual." "Jacob," she swivels her head to show puzzlement, "What
is, Jakobu?" "It's the name my parents gave me, Jacob, my full name is Jacob de Zoet."
I must apologize to Wendy, I chose a title for my book especially to confuse my infiduces,
so it's Zoet in Dutch, but it is a really good Mid-Atlantic kind of version of it or
something. She gives a cautious nod. "Jacobu da Zuto". "I wish," he thinks, "spoken words
could be captured and kept in a locket." "My pronounce," Miss Aibagawa asks, "is not very
good?" "No, no, no, you're perfect, you're perfect in every way, I mean your pronounce
is perfect." Crickets scritter and clirk in the garden's low walls of stones. I've put
occasionally these made-up onomatopoeic verbs in just to get my translators' back. They
sort of spend half a morning on the Internet, "Scritter, I can't find it anywhere" and then
they email me and I say, "I made it up, sorry."
[laughter]
DM: It's just envy 'cause they're so clever, and they're usually novelists themselves they
have brains the size of planets and speak many languages and monoglot to me is deeply
envious. "Miss Aibagawa," Jacob swallows, "what is your given name?" She makes him wait,
"My name from mother and father is Orito." The breeze twists a coil of her hair around
it's finger. She looks down, "Doctor is waiting. Thank you for rosemary." Jacob says, "You're
most welcome." And doesn't dare say more. She takes three or four paces and turns back.
"I forget a thing." She reaches into her sleeve and produces a fruit the size and hue of an
orange but smooth as hairless skin. "From my garden, I bring many to Doctor Marinus
so he asked I take one to Mister Da Zuto. It is kaki." So in Japanese a persimmon is
a kaki. Kaki, she rests it on the crook of the scarecrow's shoulder. "Kaki. Robespierre
and I shall eat it later, thank you."
DM: Her wooden slippers crunch the friable earth as she walks along the path. "Act" implores
the ghost of future regret. "I shan't give you another chance." Jacob hurries past the
tomatoes and catches her up near the gate. "Miss Aibagawa? Miss Aibagawa? I must ask
you to forgive me." She has turned and has one hand on the gate, "Why forgive?" "For
what I now say." The marigolds are molten. "You... You're beautiful." Her mouth opens
and closes, she takes a step back into the wicked gate. It rattles. The guard swings
it open. "Oh you damned fool", groans the demon of present regret. "What have you done?"
Crumpling, burning and freezing, Jacob retreats, but the garden has quadrupled in length and
it may take a Wandering Jew's eternity before he reaches the cucumbers where he kneels behind
the screen of dock leaves, where the snail on the pail flexes its stumpy horns, where
ants take patches of rhubarb leaf along the shaft of the hoe and he wishes the earth might
spin backward to the moment when she appeared asking for rosemary, and he would do it all
again. And he would do it all differently. I'll stop there. Thank you.
[applause]
DM: Is this stage left or...
RB: Or stage right.
DM: Is this stage right? I've forgotten. Did we say stage left?
RB: Are we okay sitting here? I was just told to sit in whatever chair he doesn't pick.
So we're good. We're good.
DM: I'm on book tour mode, and I can't think or make any kind of decision. I might not
remember which is left and right.
RB: You can call the washing machine.
[laughter]
DM: The washing machine would know.
[laughter]
RB: So David, for the next little while, I'd like to ask you some questions about The Thousand
Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. And I'd like to begin, I think, by asking you, where the origins
of this book came from. You said in your, one of your sides, that picking a man-made
island that was by design intended to barricade the people there away from the mainland, was
an anti-plot device.
DM: Yes, it was.
RB: Doesn't strike me as the most natural way to start writing a book, but maybe you
could just tell us where you came up with the idea of this novel.
DM: That's just because I only realized it was an anti-plot device about 18 months in
devising the book after I had spent the advance.
[chuckle]
DM: In 1994, I was 24, and I went backpacking in the west of Japan. And as usual I didn't
have any money, I was in Nagasaki. And The Lonely Planet had said if you don't have any
money then go to Chinatown so I did, but I couldn't read the signs very well so I got
off at the wrong streetcar stop. Do you say streetcar here or is it a tram?
RB: Street car.
DM: Is this true?
[laughter]
RB: Yes.
DM: Okay. I take nothing for granted here. Got off the wrong streetcar and Monday, Nagasaki,
like many Japanese cities, probably there is a sort of quite, assaults on the eyeball
really, it's quite chaotic and jumbly and overhead cables and advertisements. But there's
a very graceful building I spied from afar. And just beautiful and white and obviously
from a different historical period. And I went and that's where I discovered, that's
the moment I discovered Dejima. I wasn't a writer then, I just had aspirations and spent
the... I didn't get lunch that day. I got something more worthwhile than lunch. I got
a half a notebook full of notes about this place that I knew I'd want to write about
one day. It took me some time. Four books later, it was at the front of the queue and...
So it was the place that made my little novelist's onboard Geiger counter to go khi-khi-khi-khi-khi-khi.
You know 'cause you've got one too.
RB: I don't know if it goes khi-khi-khi-khi-khi-khi like that as quickly but...
DM: That's 'cause I'm an older model, yours goes... What kind of...
RB: Oh, I see. Mine's an iPhone app actually.
DM: Yeah. That's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[chuckle]
RB: What's strange and you're pointing out that this novel seems to... At least the idea
that predates the other novels that you wrote or that we've seen since. The big difference
I found in reading this book was the third-person narration. Your earlier books feature a wild
array of wonderful first-person narrators, why did you choose to go to with the third-person
narrator this time?
DM: Because I wrote it in the first person for the first 18 months and it wasn't working.
It wasn't working and when it's not working you have to sit down with a blank piece of
paper and write to yourself why it isn't working and you have to be very honest. And sometimes
it can be quite painful because it might involve throwing away quite a lot of work but on the
other hand, you wouldn't have reached that point without the work. So maybe it's necessary.
However it wasn't working in the first person and I sure as hell couldn't write a 500-page
book in the second person. So...
[laughter]
DM: But it was scary because it was out of my comfort zone. Didn't know how to do it.
RB: What did it give you that your first person, in terms of the opportunities as a writer
imagining the story, with a third-person narrator, what could you do that you couldn't do with
the first-person narration?
DM: I should know. I should have a sharp answer but it simply made it work.
[laughter]
DM: I spoke to AS Byatt of all people and... The problem with the third person... It's
not that I have her home phone number, it's just we were doing an event at one point.
And the conversation came around at this very useful moment. And the problem with the third
person... Well, with the first person, you know the person, you know what they do, what
they think about this, this, this and this... You know how they speak and pretty soon the
plot begins to coagulate. You know what they'll do because you know who they are. That's your
plot. So you just start off with the person. And then the plot sort of spreads out its
tendrils. Third person, where do you stop, where do you stop? You got infinity. How do
you frame it? What do you leave in and what do you leave out? What you put in and Antonia
Byatt just gave me her special Paddington stare and said, "You put in what you think
the reader wants to hear."
[laughter]
DM: As I said I was, "Oh, oh, okay!" Maybe a creative writing cause course could have
been a good idea.
[laughter]
DM: Yeah, okay. And then of course you've got the spectrum of the third-person narrative.
You've got those sort of, the 18th century ones in a way where the novel started, where
you have omniscience and those sort of... Those mad sod novels from the 18th century,
Fielding and Smollett, Smollett's great, it's really, where he's, "Hello, welcome to my
novel." This he literally writes this at the beginning of Tom Jones, not quite literally,
but always, "Step inside. We're going on a stagecoach journey together. I'm gonna tell
you about this chap called Tom Jones," and blah-blah-blah at this point Tom was thinking...
So this is omniscience. But then, that's not done very often these days, and you kind of
see why. And just learnt myself a few... You have to work out what to do with thought.
Whose thoughts are you going to be able to hear? And so I just wrote myself a simple
ground rule as, per section of writing, there was only one head upon which the third-person
narratorial helmet, the 3NH for short... It's obtainable as an app, by the way...
[chuckle]
DM: Sits, and it's kind of got a spike that goes into the brain, and only that head can
you hear the thoughts of. So that was my rule and I stuck with it.
RB: You should definitely teach creative writing. I can imagine the students hearing that and
thinking, "That makes total sense. I'll go out and do that with the spike on the head."
DM: I can imagine the students hearing that and thinking, "I want my money back." So are
you a first-person junkie, or are you a third person for...
RB: I'm a third-person control freak myself.
DM: Right, right, right. Right. I kind of yeah, yeah.
RB: I think we're all hoping that for your next book you write in the fourth person.
[laughter]
RB: You can come up with that way.
DM: As the great James Wood quote, "The house of literature has many windows, but only two
or three doors." Isn't that smooth, isn't that beautiful?
RB: Yes, very nice. I wanna ask you a couple of questions about your main characters, about
Jacob specifically. And one of the things that I found enjoyable and unexpected for
a contemporary novel was that you took his religious faith very seriously. Particularly
in the early parts of the novel. You have this devout, dutiful clerk. And one of the
loveliest implications in the book is of Jacob, with his contraband family psalter, taking
it out of his hiding place in the wood boards and then praying in a corner of his room that
his family still be alive when he returns home. The homesick traveller, I think is how
you describe him at that point. He's not knowing yet how long he's going to be there. And as
I said, it's very rare that we find thoughtful and moving representations of people who actually
believe still in something higher in contemporary literature. What did writing about someone's
faith like that allow you to do, in terms of exploring this character's world?
DM: It's not so much for what it would allow me to do, as it needed to be there for the
book to work. This is sort of the overriding question. I guess you're the same. Looking
at it backwards and de-constructing a done book, then you can sort of see the pieces.
But before, when it's not yet a done book, when it's not nearly yet done but the advance
is spent book. At that stage... I keep talking about money, don't I? This is worrying. The
overriding question is, what can I do to make this damn thing work? And firstly, Dejima
and the Dutch East Indies Company were nests of thieves, nests of vipers, all in it for
themselves. And that was taken for granted. By making Jacob not a viper, I immediately
make him different to more-or-less everyone else in the book. Secondly, we're in the past.
It's a historical novel. It doesn't do to... It took me a long time to learn this when
I was writing the book, hence four years. But historical fiction isn't just another
genre with old fashioned costumes and scratchy wigs. It's a much more serious project to
take on.
DM: Hey, you've written something that started in 1899. You know all this. Different shapes
one time period from another? And I think the answer is, it is what is taken for granted.
A big set, a bit walloping group of things that are taken for granted in one period that
are not taken for granted in 2010. One big thing that was taken for granted in the past,
wasn't a universally devout period of course, but Christianity was a much more formative,
overriding, believed-in, mind forming phenomenon and set of beliefs than it is now. Therefore,
in order to make the book work, in order for it to be plausible, viable, airborne, historical
novel, it should be more widely taken for granted that Christianity is actually it.
This is the answer. I don't know if it's true, it's true. You die, you go to heaven and you
meet your loved ones. And if you want something, then you can pray to God, and he's an interventionist
God, and you pray hard enough and he will listen, etcetera, etcetera.
DM: Plus it gives me a pretty good propulsion for my third chapter if he's a believer. Because
he has to smuggle ashore... He's this very law-abiding, rule-obeying, young man. But
when he left Zeeland, he was given a psalter, a Book of Psalms that's been in his family
for 200 years. And when the Dutch ship arrived in Nagasaki Harbour, all Christian artifacts...
The Japanese both despised and loathed and were afraid of Christianity because of historical
reasons. It had sort of fomented the belly, and precipitated the closure of the country.
Arriving European ships were obliged to hand over Christian artifacts, crucifixes, books,
etcetera, and they would be sealed in a barrel for the duration of the owner's stay, and
then given back afterwards. For Jacob, "I can't do this, I just can't do it. It's like
spitting on Jesus. I can't. It's like saying my faith isn't real. I can't."
DM: So he smuggles it ashore at great personal risk but... Books. Books where you don't notice
the page numbers. You don't notice the page numbers because they have a means of propulsion,
and that's the book. And also scenes and individual chapters also have a means of propulsion.
And I couldn't resist it. I couldn't leave it out. So this sort of my desire to have
this day when Jacob's smuggling ashore the book, this truly important book to him, and
he doesn't know if he'd be getting away with it or not, and the reader doesn't know if
he'd be getting away with it or not, is actually sort of partly dictated who he is.
RB: Well, and it also makes it one of the most exciting sequences in the early part
of the novel, I'd say, when he actually gets it there.
DM: I aim to please Randy, thank you. I wanted to make him uncool. It's quite easy to write
someone who's kind of basically Brad Pitt. It's a bit unfair to Brad Pitt because he's
done some more interesting things recently but cool is easy. Uncool yet still identifiable
with and someone who's uncool who pretty soon wins you over to him or her and you're rooting
for him or her, that's the harder thing to do. And why write easy stuff?
RB: Let me stay with the question of the novels. Play with history, I guess you could say.
You just explained there the kind of aesthetic reason for why it makes sense that Jacob would
be a believer but more broadly this is a novel that's full of historical specificities, and
I'm wondering if you could just say something about how you sort of dealt with the burden
of history itself. This is not a documentary book by any means about 18th century Japanese
life so when you're working in such a specific place that has such a sophisticated, intricate
structure of ritual and diplomacy and specific names for this, that, and the other how does
literary license figure in? How, in other words, do you manage that kind of background
work between the cold expectations of history and then the liveliness of literary creation?
DM: This is another occasion where that creative writing course might not have been a bad idea.
It took me about 18 months to work out the answer to your question. But then once you
get the answer it's ludicrously simple that big stuff you can't change. Don't change the
dates of the Napoleonic War or the outcome. Otherwise, we would all be speaking French.
But small stuff you must make up otherwise you're writing history or biography. Medium-size
stuff, one example from the book being in 1808 the British sailed into Nagasaki Harbour
a frigate called the HM Frigate Phaeton -- there's a good Wikipedia article if you're interested
-- and told the chief resident of Dejima, "I'm sorry, your country no longer exists.
It's been annexed by the French," which is true. "We're the British, we are on opposing
sides of the Napoleonic War", bearing in mind that these people on Dejima probably hadn't
heard of Napoleon at this point. "Therefore, hand over the keys. This is now ours."
DM: And the chief resident actually who is an ingenious man called Hendrik Doeff who
has more than a little genetic code in Jacob de Zoet, refused and played a brilliant game
of poker with no strong card other than Dutch guile. However, that's history, 1808. Book
has to start in 1799, last time the Dutch could get out there without sort of Napoleonic
Wars starting to interrupt the shipping. I can't have people hanging around for eight
years because otherwise it's a two-headed book and I'd have to shift the date so I brought
it forward eight years. And this is medium sized stuff. You can tweak but flag your tweaks
so instead of the HM Frigate Phaeton it's the HM Frigate Phoebus, Phoebus being the
father of Phaeton. So, that's it. Don't change the big stuff, make up the small stuff, and
tweak the medium stuff, but flag your tweaks. Flag your tweaks.
RB: Flag your tweaks. You heard it here first everyone, flag your tweaks.
[laughter]
DM: The man who flagged his tweaks.
RB: I do have one question that plays to our local audience. How does a wraith-like Quebecois,
who's one of the characters in your novel, show up in 18th century Japan?
DM: Was he on the Phoebus, I forget, or was he on the Shenandoah, the first ship?
RB: It's your book, okay?
[laughter]
DM: It's my book, but I never read it. I read it and proofread it and proofread it and polish
and polish and polish and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and in the same way, sort of,
you can't...
RB: But I have to apologize. I said backstage that I will ask you a series of historically-specific
questions about the tens of thousands of characters in your fiction. But, I meant it as a joke
and then I sort of lied.
DM: Every ship, regardless of its nationality was, as Melville notes very well in "Moby
***", a sort of floating UN. National affiliations very quickly meant very, very little...
RB: Right.
DM: Onboard a ship.
RB: Stowaways and renegades, Melville calls them.
DM: Yeah, and there'd be cases in the early 19th century, clashes between the young American
Navy and the Royal Navy where British men working on the American ships. Americans working
on... But strangely, first loyalty is to your ship, and the crew came from all over the
place. The Europeans on Dejima actually came from all over the place. The Dutch invented
the multinational corporation amongst other things, the stock exchange, the boom and the
bust, the future's fund. Ingenious people. Nature gave them nothing but a big plain of
mud, so they had to devise new ways of making money. One of the ways was the Dutch East
Indies Company. But, to go out east was dangerous. You had a 4 in 10 approximately chance of
dying of bad airs, mal airs, malaria, which was not understood at all within a few weeks
of setting foot on Java. If you had anything to lose, you wouldn't take that lottery. You
wouldn't take that gamble, and there weren't enough Dutchman with enough to lose to take
it. So, they would actually take people from any nation, preferably not the Spanish. Something
repeated in the World Cup the other day, but the Dutch won when it mattered in 1588.
[laugher]
DM: And so this is why on Dejima you've got an Irishman, you've got someone from then
the Austrian Netherlands, it became Austrian Netherlands later which is now Belgium, anyway,
and the same went for the ships. Hence, the wraith-like Quebecois.
RB: I see. Very good. One question about one of the settings on mainland in Japan itself.
I think this is a question about where you place the temple on Mount Shiranui in terms
of large, medium, and small history.
DM: Right.
RB: This is a key setting in the second part of the novel where the main female character
is taken against her will, and it's a rather dark and strange place. Where did that come
from?
DM: My sick, fevered imagination. Yeah, I made that up mostly. No, no, no that's not
fair to Shintoism, I made it up completely. However, that part of the world, the Southwest
[name of a city] historically is a... Was sort of a terra incognita... Incognito? Incognita?
Is it incognito? I don't know, don't actually...
RB: Trams. Streetcars, trams? No? No one?
[laugher]
DM: Behave. And, so, yeah, there's really a blank space in the map. It was unexplored
until quite late in 19th century really, middle of the 19th century, and it's sort of a...
I can't answer your question too much without giving away any spoilers really. Shall we
move hastily on to the next?
RB: Sure. We can skip, and they can encounter and enjoy it for yourselves for sure. I just
had... I had one sort of final question, and it's that throughout your career, you've been
praised repeatedly for the dizzying structures and the intricacies of your novels. But, in
a recent interview with Wyatt Mason, New York Times Magazine, you spoke of your interest
in human mud, which doesn't strike me as immediately intricate or particularly complex. So, I was
wondering if you could just tell us about your sense of human mud and how that concept
figures into your writing about...
DM: I don't know too much about your own personal life, but either a past or present partner,
think about your relationship with that person. And is it a straightforward, simple thing
or is it a more multifaceted and subtle and complex and shifting and evolving, many times
more than any sort of simple, novelistic structure you could ever compose? I would politely suggest
the answer's probably that it's much more. So, one single relationship sort of infinitely
rich and puzzling and fascinating and wonderful when it works and miserable when it doesn't.
Yeah. At some point probably in my early 30s, mid 30s, became a father, still am, became
lazy with my wife. We got the kids. We're kind of stuck with each other now, at least
for a while. Need to work things through. You need to think about... Human mud becomes
more interesting when you age. And made me aware that there's probably a spectrum of
writing which goes from muddy to hygienic. The hygienic end would have someone like Haruki
Murakami, when he's good, he's very, very good.
DM: And this isn't a better or worse thing. It's just his books happen to be generally
devoid of messy, tangled relationships with your mum, and she didn't... And sort of, and
the other end would have say, Marilynne Robinson. Almost nothing but sort of the tectonic shifts,
the slow evolutions, the sudden like flashes, it's human mud. She does it brilliantly. And
it's even the books of Home, Housekeeping. It's domesticity. But she sort of finds the
infinity and the... Emily Dickinson's a great example. Never left a room. It was nothing
but washing up and washing clothes, her life must have been... But she finds the universal
in it. She's a bit of a digression. We got the spectrum.
DM: When I was in my 20s or early 30s and thinking yeah, structurally dazzling, I like
the sound of that. I'd go for that but now, I'm still moving, moving along the spectrum
towards the Marilynne Robinson end.
RB: It's wonderful mud you create on that end, let me say. The Wyatt Mason interview,
in the Times Magazine, introduced me to a new critical term, which I didn't know, which
was Mitchell geeks. Are you familiar with this term?
DM: It sounds a bit arrogant, but if you read a feature on yourself, it's sort of like a
diary gone haywire. When suddenly, stop, stop the pen. So, I didn't actually read it. I'm
really glad that the attention was there, but this is all new to me.
RB: Well, the author of the piece makes note of the intensity of admiration that you can
inspire in your readers, and he describes some of these people as being "Mitchell geeks"
insofar as they are so intensely invested in your work that they've formed a tribe in
and of themselves, which is my way of transitioning to reader questions.
[laughter]
DM: Hey, hey, smooth. Well, if you ever hit hard times with the writing Randy, which I'm
sure you won't, then a career in broadcasting is waiting.
RB: Thank you very much.
[laughter]
RB: I've got a lovely voice for television. We do have some time now for some questions
from the audience, I have many more questions I could ask but I thought it would be unfair
for me to monopolize all of David's time, and so there is a mic right there, and if
there are any Mitchell geeks or otherwise admirers of David Mitchell in the crowd that
would like to ask a question, queue up and we'll go from there.
DM: It would take a yard of guts to be the first person to walk over to the microphone.
I think we should incentivize people.