David Mitchell

BIO

David Mitchell lives and teaches in Hiroshima, Japan. He is currently working on his second novel. He is thirty-one years old.

INTERVIEW

October 20, 2000

You may not know who David Mitchell is --- yet --- but by the time you read his interview and check out his debut novel GHOSTWRITTEN, you won't want to miss anything else he does. In this mysterious and intriguing novel, Mitchell sculpts his elaborate story around the question, What is real and what is not? Find out what is real and what is not in Mitchell's life as Bookreporter.com's Senior Writer Joe Hartlaub digs for the truth.

TBR: My initial impression of GHOSTWRITTEN is that you most likely scripted a detailed outline before writing it. Yet...there were times that I had the feeling that you started in Okinawa with a basic idea, and let your internal muse take over. Which is correct?  

DM: Both. I wrote the Okinawa and Tokyo stories as separate entities, but then by the time I was writing Hong Kong I realized I was onto a narrative chain reaction. From that point I began seeing things more as a grand plan, although in a sense all books subvert their writers' plans. Like a Republican Congress subverts the designs of a Democratic president.

TBR: There are elements of both the synchronic and chaos theories in GHOSTWRITTEN. You've obviously studied both. Which theorists, if any, have influenced you the most?

DM: I've only read the most elementary layman's texts. James Gleick's book, CHAOS. Most theory is above my head --- I am attracted by its utter beauty. The butterfly-wing stroke leading to a typhoon. I also think a Jungian phase is healthy for many teenagers, though I was more interested in his theory of archetypes than ideas on Synchronicity.

TBR: I had another impression in the middle of GHOSTWRITTEN, that just possibly, "David Mitchell" was in fact a group of authors. But since the book maintained such cohesiveness, I can't quite believe my own suspicions. So, truth will out, is there but one David Mitchell? Or does "David Mitchell" have, in fact, multiple personalities?

DM: I knew someone would rumble me. I am in fact Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Miss Piggy, Jeffrey Archer, Milan Kundera and Queen Maud of Denmark. I wonder if Random House will pay us an advance each next time? Don't we all have multiple personalities, up to a point? Isn't 'multiple personality' just another term for 'mood'?

TBR: Can you describe to us how you were able to achieve such diversity of cultures and personalities in your characters?

DM: Thank you for the compliment, but it's no big secret. You just go to a country, keep your eyes open, speak to people if you can, try to understand the fears, hopes, frustrations, horses, weather, history. Get your hair cut there.

TBR: Your biographical information is somewhat scant, limited to the statement that you're English, 31 years of age, have wandered around the world, and wrote GHOSTWRITTEN while teaching English in Hiroshima. What countries/nations have you visited in the past ten years? And which culture, if any, did you find to be the most alien to your own upbringing?

DM: Not so many, really --- all the places in GHOSTWRITTEN except the US (although I will be there in 7 days), plus Italy, Australia and New Zealand, the Chatham Islands. The most radically different places to an English upbringing were maybe Ladakh, in the north of India, and China. China!  Phew, China.

TBR: Can you give us some background with respect to your formal education? And have you had any formal education in creative writing?

DM: Middle-class provincial state school education. (I did pass through a local demographic trough, which meant the teacher-student ratio for my 'A' levels (16-18 yrs) was a Utopian average of 1:6). My BA was in English and American Lit at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and I took an MA there in Comparative Literature. No formal education in creative writing, no. But I believe creative writing itself is education in creative writing.

TBR: There were several different literary genres admirably represented in GHOSTWRITTEN --- romance, mystery, science fiction, and suspense among them. Are there any particular authors in any genre who have influenced you?

DM: Too many to list!  Let me think of ten. Italo Calvino, Haruki Murakami, John Banville, Nabokov, George Eliot, Muriel Spark, John Cheever, Isaac Asimov (I confess), and I'm going through a strong Philip Larkin phase right now. Not many 'genre writers' there, are there? I guess I might be a book cover snob --- if it's gold or embossed, I tend to move to another shelf. I forgot Ursula K. Le Guin --- I love her mature work.

TBR: Your book jacket indicates that you are working on a second novel. Is there anything that you can tell us about it? Can we expect something similar in form to GHOSTWRITTEN, or something completely different?

DM: Just emailed off the final multi-deadline-busting manuscript to my patient-as-Job editor last week. It's called 'number9dream,' and is different to GHOSTWRITTEN in that it is all set in one country (Japan). Instead of moving through geographic countries I try to move the narrative through inner countries (memory, imagination, image, fiction, nightmare, meaning) at the same time as rooting the narrative down in one main first-person present-tense character. It is a riskier book than GHOSTWRITTEN to try to pull off --- there are no getaway cars waiting at the end of the chapter to zoom off to a clean slate --- but I'm happy with how it's turned out.

TBR: Are there any books you have read recently that you would recommend to your readers?

DM: Mmm...W by Georges Perec. I thought UNDERWORLD by DeLillo was monstrously good. SILENCE by Shusaku Endo.

TBR: I'm going to close with a question you might not have an answer for, considering your wanderlust. If --- for whatever reason --- you were going to be confined to one nation-boundary for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?      

DM: Earth.

TBR: Thank you for your time!

DM: My pleasure

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