The Woman on the Holy Mountain

As Barnard points out, Mitchell is at pains to transcend the nationalistic sphere of the novel in writing Ghostwritten, attempting to create a global work. It is interesting to me that in reading the novel I seemed to resist this. Barnard talks about the shifting point of view and the work that it does to expand the book beyond national borders and about the hyperlinking of the sections to give a sense of "sutured omniscience" to the narration. Despite this I found the section narrated by the old Chines woman, whose insular views predominated the writing to be The most interesting. Perhaps because it seemed to be able to stand alone (although the explanations provided by the noncorpum, particularly about the talking tree, did help to make sense of several confusing points). In one sense it was the section that most resembled a traditional novel in that it followed a single character throughout the course of her life and told that story from her point of view. I think that this gives evidence to the fact that the traditional novel is actually a nationalistic art form and highlights the difficulty that we have in thinking about a globalized world.