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 18th
and 19th
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.
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