Number Nine Dream by David Mitchell
okay so I’m gonna really try from now on to blog about a book right after I finish it so that I’m not doing three all at once.
Where do I start? This is the second work of Mitchell’s I’ve read (the first being Ghostwritten) and I think I actually liked Ghostwritten better. I’d heard this was really his masterpiece, though, and he does consistently refer to John Lennon to his credit.
But…you know how you sometimes read the back of a book for the review snippets and brief description of the story and you get all giddy because you get the references and you have this sort of literary epiphany of sorts, “I love both of those authors they are referring to so this is the book for me!” Well, if you want to read a book set in Japan that refers to the Beatles/Lennon, I suggest Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami instead. But maybe that’s just me. In the very first sentence on the back, both Dickens and Salinger are referenced. I’d say Number Nine Dream reads more like Pynchon writing a novel based on a plot William Gibson has pitched to him. It’s wildly creative and intriguing but at the same time incredibly disjointed and didn’t end up really reaching me on any sort of emotional level.
Eiji Miyake is a boy who lost his twin sister early. Searching for his unknown father, he travels to Japan to get mixed up in several things-almost like an Asian mafia, pizza, video rentals, a girl who loves Debussy, cultish clubs, and a friend who reveals some secrets about the internet underground. I like experimental fiction as a rule so maybe my main fault with this book is just that I was prepared for or geared up for something completely different. You know, something with less verbiage and no dream sequence hallucinations that make you question what is reality. At times, it’s more convoluted than I can remember Phillip K. Dick ever being and that says alot.
Perhaps this is the type of book I need to read again in a different stage of my life. I’m aching to read another John Berger novel right now incidentally. There’s a couple of hardcovers at Myopic I’ve been considering or I’ll just re-read his brilliant To the Wedding. I’m in a Berger sort of mood. It’s sort of like if you have a really big craving for chocolate ice cream and vanilla just won’t do (even if it has chocolate chips in it) Poor David Mitchell, it’s really not his fault at all.
(now playing: Broken Social Scene:s/t)