The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Mitchell, David. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. New York: Random House, 2011

Writing a contemporary novel in a setting familiar to the author may well require some research and exploration. Writing an historical novel, on the other hand, can consume an enormous amount of time digging through histories, sources, geographies and in the interviewing of persons versed in the times and places that are being recreated. At least if the writer feels bound to reflect the setting in time, places and events faithfully.

      Rudy Wiebe wrote The Mad Trapper, a novel about the reclusive Owen Albert Johnson (possibly; his identity is still shrouded in mystery) who holed up in his Arctic cabin and shot a police officer approaching to question him. In the following manhunt, pilot Wop May, renowned for his many kills in dog fights in WWII, was flying a bush plane overhead at the request of the RCMP while officers followed Johnson on foot across the frozen wilderness. In Wiebe’s novel, May photographs the event of Johnson’s killing; in the histories, he doesn’t. May’s extant relatives took serious umbrage at Wiebe’s temerity in altering May’s role in the capture of Johnson.

      When is an historical novel historical and when is it the product of an imagined world?

      I generally approach movies or novels claiming to be “true stories,” or “based on a true story” with considerable skepticism; that description attempts to give the impression that they’re something they’re not. My dubiety centres around difficulties that are obvious: 1) the internal dialogue that leads people to act is unknowable, i.e. thoughts, motives, dreams, impressions can be guessed at based on what actions are known about historical figures, but they are literally closed books; 2) private conversations among and between historical figures likewise are seldom on record and those snatches that are have been recorded by someone whose thoughts, motivations and impressions—likewise—are generally unknowable and must be guessed at. Add to this the paucity of unbiased historical record and it’s not hard to see that novels like Anne of a Thousand Days or even Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar are artful reconstructions at best, storytelling that might actually be a series of bad guesses and poorly-imagined filling of gaps in histories.

      When an historical reality presents the jumping-off point for a storyteller, regarding it as history is a literary misunderstanding; historical fiction is fiction, fiction is invention.

      Take, for instance, the conversation between Jacob de Zoet and Ogawa Uzaemon on page 157:

His neighbor clears his throat. “I am Ogawa, Mr. de Zoet,”

Jacob lurches and water spills. “Mr. Ogawa! I—I thought . . .”

“You so peaceful,” says Ogawa Uzaemon, “I do not wish to disturb.”

“I met your father earlier, but . . .” Jacob wipes his eyes, but with the steamy dark and his farsightedness, his vision is no better. “I’ve not seen you since before the typhoon.”

“I am sorry I could not come. Very many things happen.”

“Were you able to—to fulfill my request, regarding the dictionary?”

“Day after typhoon, I send servant to Aibagawa residence.”

“Then you didn’t deliver the volume yourself?”

Obviously, no scribe recorded this conversation as it occurred, and even that thought is a tautology since neither de Zoet nor Ogawa ever existed historically. Neither did the event giving rise to this conversation happen . . . historically . . . except,

      . . . except that there was an island off the coast of Japan which was the only place where foreign traders were allowed to trade with Japan. For 200 years, the Dutch East Indies Company occupied the island and Dutch traders met with Japanese officials to negotiate trades for valuable and precious metals with Japan, their purchases to be shipped to their East Indies headquarters in Batavia (Jakarta) where they would be repacked for shipment to Europe or traded again, often for silks and spices. During that time, many managers, clerks, servants and slaves came and went on Dejima, and there the interface between two very different cultures would (one supposes) generate interesting dynamics.

      Imagining these dynamics is basically what Mitchell set out, in part, to do.

"David Mitchell once stated that his intention was to 'write a bicultural novel, where Japanese perspectives are given an equal weight to Dutch/European perspectives.'" (Discussion questions in this edition)

      Central character, Jacob de Zoet is the pivot point of the tensions that arise from inside the East Indies/Japan/Batavia/Europe trading world, as well as of the clash of cultures. A pious Dutchman with an uncompromising ethic of honesty in business, he is destined for trouble in the East Indies trading world where fudged reports and under-the-table dealing are common; it’s a cutthroat world. The cross-cultural motif has Jacob becoming enamoured with an exceptional Japanese midwife while his fiance back home waits for his return. These two main motifs are given equal weight raising the possible objection that in attempting to do both justice, they interfere with each other more than they complement. Normally, a novel has one main plot with minor subplots allowable . . . if they support the centre.

      Mitchell has pioneered some interesting new storytelling techniques. Especially noteworthy is his ability to knit together dialogue with the streams of consciousness of the characters. The use of italics to signal thoughts accompanying conversation and events works well, except that when you use italics for this purpose, what do you do with the need to use that convention for emphasis or for the inclusion of a word as object? The proliferation of ellipses, dashes, italics in such abundance takes some adjustment on the reader’s part . . . but it works.

Jubilant, Chamberlain Tomine enters. “A ship is sighted, your Honor!”

“Ships are entering and leaving all the—the Dutch ship?”

“Yes, sir. It’s flying the Dutch flag, clear as day.”

“But . . .” A ship arriving in the ninth month is unheard of. “Are you—”

The bells of every temple in Nagasaki begin to ring out in thanks.

“Nagasaki,” observes the lord abbot, “is in no doubt at all.”

Sugar, sandalwood, worsted, thinks Shiroyama, lead, cotton . . .

The pot of commerce will bubble, and the longest ladle is his.

Taxes on the Dutch, “gifts” from the chief, “patriotic” exchange rates . . . (358)

      A typical novel writing course would include, at least, these topics: character development, plot development, setting (in time and place), diction, point of view, tone, tense and theme. Mitchell’s novel abounds with characters, so many that particularly among the Japanese personalities, I had to keep checking back to remind myself which one was presently acting. In a way, this isn’t a handicap as much as an irritation; the main characters are, after all, the Dutch East Indies Trading Company, the island of Dejima, the slave/servant-function struggling to survive the crush between incompatible Eastern/Western cultures and, probably most significantly, the Japanese culture and polity of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Seen in this way, I would give Mitchell an A for character development.

      I’ve already mentioned that the two connected but essentially independent plot-lines were problematic for me. I think Mitchell would have done well to consider that there are really two novels here; one is based on the biography of a expat Dutchman, Jacob de Zoet caught by the conventions of a culture he doesn’t comprehend, the other based on Jacob de Zoet as protagonist in the story of intrigue and greed that was the sailing-ship trading world of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries in the East Indies.

      Beginning a novel with the premise that it will teach readers a lesson is generally a bad practice, a bit like attaching a text to a work of visual art explaining what it means. Theme means more than that; the primary theme of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is bound up in the skilfully imagined interactions among human beings in the space in which they live, something central to every lasting work of literary art. Manipulating characters in a deux ex machina manner in order to demonstrate a theme falsifies written art and makes of it a sermon. Sermons have their places, but should not be confused with the product of the creative artist.

      Mitchell’s novel transports us expertly into an exotic time and place and allows us to see ourselves in it. A most satisfying, novel adventure. I became Jacob de Zoet as I read. I’m reminded of the definition of stage art in Hamlet, where the protagonist says to the players:

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. (Hamlet III,ii,17-24)

Seeing the art of the novel as “[holding] the mirror up to nature” is in and of itself thematic; Mitchell’s novel excels in that—in my opinion. Those who prefer to be entertained by the antics of the players are not likely to pass the first few chapters of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

      All art, of course, owes a great deal to the talent and skill behind the brush, the pen, the chisel. Achieving an appropriate tone, employing a diction that perfectly matches the subject of the art doesn’t happen accidentally. Mitchell is an accomplished word-smith and there were times, for me, when the progress of the plot seemed secondary to the flow and cadence of the storyteller's voice. The concise, economical sentence, a sensitive ear for the rhythm and flow of English—in this case—separates good art from the valiant attempt. Mitchell is an artist who handles his pen well.

      The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet employs the third person omniscient point of view and is written in the present tense. Good choices both.

       Four point five stars of five.

Anthony Doerr. All the Light We Cannot See

Doerr, Anthony. All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner, 2014

You might describe All the Light You Cannot See as an historical novel themed around the absurd tragedy of war. Someone else might see it as psychological realism; a story about the resiliency and tenacity of people in the throes of crushing horror. Both would be right; both assessments would be too simple.

Structurally, All the Light We Cannot See can be described as a sequence of triangles, their arms always converging at points. In fact, radio signal triangulation preoccupies the military strategy of the German Wehrmacht as it seeks to clinch its subjugation of France. Resistance movements were thorns in the side of German planning; broadcasting from remote, hidden transmitters, partisans were able to stymie the Germans again and again. New technology made it possible to triangulate the location of the transmitters, however, surprise the resisting civilians bringing the arms of resistance and of anti-insurgency to a point of reckoning.

The reckoning point in All the Light We Cannot See is Saint-Malo, a fortified town on an island off the French coast. Two central characters—a German Hitler-youth named Werner and a blind French girl named Marie-Laure—are followed through youth into early adulthood to a convergence in Saint-Malo just before the city is leveled by the American liberation. It’s through the eyes (the other four senses in Marie-Laure’s case) that we see the unfolding and conclusion of World War II: the excessive cruelty, the indifference to life that escalates and escalates as the world becomes first appalled, then resigned and finally, inured to death and destruction.

Werner and Maurie-Laure both become trapped in the rubble of Saint-Malo, he under a hotel that was communication headquarters for the Wehrmacht and she in the attic of a great uncle’s house where a resistance radio has evaded discovery. Using their skills and learning in new radio technology, they are destined to converge through that medium.

That Doerr is a skilled narrator—probably a writer who could teach Charles Dickens and Jules Verne some useful lessons in gripping, sensory prose writing—almost goes without saying, especially to anyone who’s enjoyed About Grace or The Shell Collector. His handling of structure here, however, amazed me. Disconcerted somewhat at first to recognize that All the Light We Cannot See was going to be told in non-chronological order, I soon came to appreciate the benefits of such a structure, particularly in a case where character-development is absolutely of the essence as it is in this novel. Sections are dated, a concession to the reader I found helpful.

Werner’s primary dilemma is illustrated in his experience as a cadet in a Nazi training facility (Schulpforta). A sensitive, brilliant lad, small for his age, he is cajoled into participation in cadets’ cruelties meant to harden them, and his failure to defend his best friend, Frederick, who is selected for beatings and tortures for his physical weakness will haunt him forever. But although there is no limit to the excesses of the training program, for a youth like Werner who grew up curious and creative, the complete brainwashing cannot necessarily be achieved:

“It seems to Werner that all the boys around him are intoxicated. As if, at every meal, the cadets fill their tin cups not with the cold mineralized water of Schulpforta but with a spirit that leaves them glazed and dazzled, as if they ward off a vast and inevitable tidal wave of anguish only by staying forever drunk on rigor and exercise and gleaming boot leather. The eyes of the most bullheaded boys radiate a shining determination: every ounce of their attention has been trained to ferret out weakness. They study Werner with suspicion . . .. (Page 62, online edition)

For Marie-Laure, the struggle, beyond her survival, involves a rare, magnificent artifact from the museum in Paris, an object museum officials seek to protect from the marauding, hoarding German Reich. This object acts as a connecting link through the Paris and Saint-Malo phases of Marie-Laure’s story. Mysterious and unparalleled, she finds it her duty to protect the object from the shameless greed of Nazi officials charged with seeking out and confiscating national treasures. 

What exactly might “treasure” mean to persons who send youth to their inevitable deaths while ferreting through conquered lands, stealing art and handling it with kid gloves? Young Werner says it best:

For Werner, doubts turn up regularly. Racial purity, political purity—Bastian speaks to a horror of any sort of corruption, and yet, Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it. Each bite of food, each particle of light entering the eye—the body can never be pure. but this is what the commandant insists upon, why the Reich measures their noses, clocks their hair color. The entropy of a closed system never decreases. (Page 276, on line edition, emphasis mine.)

Werner’s sight and Marie-Laure’s blindness provide an enchanting, symbolically rich progression from the intriguing title onward: All the Light We Cannot See. One is tempted to say that it is only the blind who really see when the rest of the world is rendered sightless by madness. That would be too simple, but Marie-Laure’s blindness as summarized by the narrator must give us pause concerning light and darkness:

To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Marie-Laure can sit in an attic high above the street and hear lilies rustling in marshes two miles away. (Page 390, online edition)

There is light to be had, but it does us no good if we cannot see it, if we’re blinded by the madness of greed, our propensity to follow cruelty and avarice into battle. All the Light We Cannot See.

To learn more about Anthony Doerr’s conception of the novel, the story he envisioned, hear him speak about the novel.

The online edition (and I presume the paper edition as well) contains helpful discussion questions for book club consideration.