David Mitchell: Possibly a Literary Genius?

Can we all take a moment to admire the literary genius that is David Mitchell's Ghostwritten?

Ten chapters, nine characters, nine cities, six male, two female, one noncorpum entity circling minds in Mongolia, and possibly the end of the world controlled by a disembodied being called the Zookeeper, all intertwined in one glorious novel which interlinks ideas of humanity with the globalize world in which we live. (Not to mention the fact that some of his characters, Denholme and Timothy Cavendish as well as Luisa Rey, transcend the parameters of this novel to take up lives of their own in his second novel, Cloud Atlas.)

I believe the brilliance in Mitchell text come from the way he intertwines his characters stories together and apart all in connection with the globalized economic world in which they live. Quasar, the colorful terrorist in Okinawa, complains about the appearance of globalized businesses showing up in the city stripping it of all its “pure” glory and making it a city of the unclean. In this first section of the novel Mitchell introduces one man’s thoughts of the globalization of the world around him and see it in a negative light however, some of Mitchell’s other characters react differently.

Satoru in the Tokyo record shop admires the records that play music from all over the world. He does not see them as a tool or globalization, but as something he can enjoy. The globalization of trade and economic goods has introduced him to the world of Jazz music, something that might not have been available to him otherwise. Additionally, the trains that were first built, most likely as a what to get goods from one place to another, now allow backpackers like Caspar and Sherry to journey through lands that they previously may have only read about it books.

Another point worth mentioning is the sheer about of economic goods that play small, yet important roles throughout the story, Satoru’s records, Katy Forbes’ Queen Anne chair, Sherry’s copy of War and Peace (translated from its original Russian for her consumption), the painting of Eve and the Serpent at the center of Margarita’s chapter, which is then reproduced on a poster in Katy Forbes’ apartment which Marco sees when he wakes up, all the way to the Kilmagoon whiskey made and bottle on Clear Island and drunk by Bat Segundo in his late night radio station broadcast room.

Clearly Mitchell has a lot to say about the globalization of the world economy and does so through the medium of an amazing novel which is full of strong dynamic characters and an overarching plot that ties people together in a way that only the real world can.