I won’t say much more about your review here (I’ll visit your comments for that), but I did like the way you summed up the themes as “about ‘imprisonment’, both literal and metaphorical.” So true. Everyone in the book is somehow trapped, everyone fighting for just a bit more freedom. I like that, good job.

Yes, I think John Self did a great job. In fact, as much as I disagree with Wood’s major criticism, I think your, John’s, and Wood’s reviews provide a very good overview and analysis of the book.

Tanks for that last thought. I appreciate it and am happy my attempt to tie John’s observations and the Enlightenment aspect together was at least semi-coherent. I do think there is something there.

I could have written a tighter sentence than the one about “the duty of the individual”. I did not mean to suggest that I thought Mitchell was making a strongly solipsistic argument, in which nothing is knowable. Certainly, none of his characters feel this way. But the “good” characters (who are far too easy to identify, as Trevor points out) all do abandon any strict adherence to a belief in the unqualified goodness of religion, science, or other potentially comprehensive belief system. Instead, I think, all metaphysical or “worldview”-type beliefs should be, at best, contingent. Whether he intended it or not, the conception is along the lines of Richard Rorty’s pragmatism, thus, Dr. Marinus’s belief in the efficacy of the Jesuit’s bark; and along the lines of Rorty’s formulation of the liberal ironist, someone who recognizes the contingency of their own beliefs while maintaining a commitment to the reduction of suffering. I use Rorty as an example, only to point out that, whether this type of argument was intended, something deeper can be gleaned than a simplistic solipsism or relativism.

On the second question, I made a considered decision to put “potentially true” in the sentence. First, the novel is, at best, ambiguous regarding whether Enomoto has supernatural powers. He, apparently, kills a snake and a moth without touching them. At least, I saw nothing to confirm that these were conjurer’s tricks, though that possibility is open. A supernatural element may or may not have “actually” existed in the novel given Orito’s final appearance to Jacob, but I tend to think it was there. Mitchell has used ghost stories and apparent miracles before.

But, Enomoto did not live, so none were immortal. That does not defeat the truth of the quote. The fact that Dracula or Lestat may have been killed does not prove that vampires are either unreal or cannot be immortal. Vampires (in most vampire fiction) are immortal as long as they avoid the sun and wooden stakes. Abbot Enomoto’s dying words are to chastise Shiroyama (is that right?) for being a fool because the baby formula did work. He clearly believed the immortality potion worked. Granted, in the real world I would mark him down as insane without a thought. But, Mitchell has him achieving apparently supernatural feats earlier. An elixir that prevents aging would not, I would imagine, prevent one from dying any number of deaths, so long as the number of deaths is limited to one. Surely “immortality”, in the sense that vampires and Enomoto use it, does not require immunity to wooden stakes or Samurai swords, the sun or poison. I do believe the cult is potentially true (within the confines of the novel).

This is important to the book because it does not matter whether the cult of immortality is true or if it is not. The cult is evil because it perpetrates cruelty. This fits with Mitchell’s argument (as I see it) that one’s primary commitment should be to individuals rather than ideals, to others rather than to the self.

Thank you, very much, for the thought-provoking comment. I do no think the novel is “great”, but I do think there are aspects Wood missed and that, at least, deserve to be fleshed out a bit. And, please, do tell me if you disagree. I am not at all convinced that I have gotten right my evaluation of those aspects I have addressed.

Regards!

I am also very pleased that you have reminded me of your own review. Before writing the above post, yours was one of a number of reviews I consulted. I meant to address one of the issues you raised, but, going on 2000 words and limited time already, I forgot to do so.

The point was about the predictability of the characters. Notwithstanding that I do believe Mitchell was engaging some deeper themes than Wood acknowledges, the characters were easily classified as “good” or “bad”. I think this has a nasty consequence of undercutting the “argument” I laid out above. It is not fatal to it, but it certainly makes it a bit less elegant. If the reader can so easily classify everyone, perhaps there is a larger moral or religious system that allows such easy segregation.

You have also made a good point that Mitchell spends too much energy having his characters explicitly state the ideas he, presumably, is trying to get across rather than showing it through narrative.

Still, I do think Mitchell goes beyond Enlightenment ideas. Enlightenment thinkers, after all, tended to believe that the world is, in principle, knowable. This is an idea that Dr. Marinus to which Dr. Marinus does not subscribe.

John Self hit on a point where Mitchell makes a somewhat subtler point, and that is the fact of “how little a man’s own key life events matter to others or to posterity.” People throughout the book do not or cannot remember a face. I think this aspect, too, fits with a more nuanced view than the Enlightenment crowd generally held, that is, the subversion of the self in favor, not of the greater good of religion or science or truth, but in favor of one’s fellow man. And by fellow man, I mean a specific, identifiable human being. Like Yayoi. But, here again, the point was made explicitly by Orito when she asked herself, likely in italics, whether her freedom was worth more than Yayoi’s life.

In short, I think your criticisms are very good ones, Trevor, better than the one on which Wood chose to focus. Or, maybe, I am seeing things that aren’t there…..you know, like womb tanks.

Cheers, Kevin

I’m not sure I agree that the Enlightenment philosophies are something Mitchell is exploring or if they’re merely the most likely ingredients for his characters. When I read it, I came away feeling that the characters are rehashed from other stories where characters had similar conversations and doubts and feelings, so naturally those discussions would find there way here. Besides that, I never quite saw how they strengthened or were strengthened by what I thought to be a rather hollow plot with an elaborate texture.

However, you’ve given me cause to reconsider. My faith in Mitchell and in your good opinion is such that I strongly desire, despite my doubts, to think this book is more than just a fairy tale.