David Mitchell Appreciation discussion

David Ebershoff said of David Mitchell, “he’s the most global.” A great majority his books are concerned with writing across the barriers of time, setting, culture, vernacular and many other barriers that keep people apart from one another. He has said that he wants “to write the world, underlined three times, three exclamation marks.” Do you think that the project of writing from the perspective of many different people, stemming from many different backgrounds really breaks the barriers between one another? Do you think that he succeeds in this project? Is this a new kind of humanism, in that he wishes to uncover and highlight the commonalities between us all? In what way does 'inhabiting different literary voices' help to understand the ways in which different people think and communicate?

This is a really interesting topic.

Could I add Time to Language and Culture?

The important thing for me is that he is genuinely "interested" in lots of languages, cultures and times, and he writes well about them, from within (although that probably doesn't apply to Times Passed).

You don't feel that he is a condescending imperialist.

His wife is Japanese, which adds to his interest and insight.

I think the different voices result from his interests, rather than vice versa.

He studied all over the world. I'm sure that was a major influence on his work. This is also, in my opinion the main concern of Thousand Autumns. The whole book seems obsessed with the crossing of all different kinds of boundaries.

I would also add 'time' to that list. See Cloud Atlas, obviously.

I thought I read somewhere that he lived in Japan for awhile as well.

I feel Time is a good addition, as with Ewing he tried to adopt a more 'old timey' style of writing akin to Melville. I laughed at how he must have felt very self-conscious about doing so by having R.F. say that the writing didn't feel authentic. Plus, that novel is a huge comment on the evolution of language as we see evidence of how phrases pass through time and both evolve and devolve.