Deliberately difficult novels
The NY Times reviews David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. I'm staggered by the reviewer's statement that Mitchell is interested only in writing "[d]eliberately difficult novels". The more I think of it, the more I stagger. Why does Tom Bissell think a writer would spend months and years of [in this case] his life trying to be "difficult"? If we're in the business of speculating on authorial intent, then the most likely scenario is that Mitchell wanted to tell a story and the story required that it be told precisely in this way; required, as a necessity requires. Yet this is still an artistic decision and therefore, as any writer will tell you, quite a way from a deliberate decision.
It's frustrating that almost a century on from the great modernists, condescension toward anyone outside the common herd is still the resort of professional reviewers.
Still, the review keeps my own assumption alive: that Mitchell's work is brilliant rather than great.
And while we're on the NYTBR, Beatrice responds very well to the letters page and the Wieseltier/Checkpoint debate.
