Fitting words together makes time go through narrower pipes but faster.
…David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
Green
Green is made of yellow and blue, nothing else, but when you look at green, where’ve the yellow and the blue gone? Somehow this is to do with Moran’s dad. Somehow this is to do with everyone and everything.
Loan sharks and unicorns
Love’s pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices.
He was doing quite well until the last sentence, but if you bare your arse to a vengeful unicorn, the number of possible outcomes dwindles to one.
…oh, you’re clever, David Mitchell. Clever indeed. From The Bone Clocks. I can’t wait till his last novel when he reveals that “David Mitchell” is the pseudonym for Jason Taylor.
Pre-haunting with David Mitchell…
I imagine the cove in darkness. I imagine it in a storm. I imagine it in 30 years. “You’ve pre-haunted it,” I tell him.
…from this brilliant Vulture article on David Mitchell‘s new book, The Bone Clocks. The article itself is beautiful, and I’m nine tenths of the way to convincing myself to slag off reading assignments next week and jump into this novel the second it goes on sale.
Yes, I’m aware this is two posts in a row referencing DM. And why shouldn’t it be? Dude’s work has more depth than the Bible.
Human, for God’s sake…
Take most people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer. I don’t even like old cars. I mean they don’t even interest me. I’d rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.
…from the favorite novel of every teenager prior to 2004, Catcher in the Rye, by that strange old creeper Mr. Salinger, which is taught in many a high school curriculum for primarily nonsensical reasons, most criminal of which is “historical relevance,” because it’s far less important for a sixteen year-old in 2014 to love reading, or know how (a subsequently learned literary skill), than it is for her to know what the Charleston was.
Do yourself a favor and read this article about why David Mitchell‘s Black Swan Green should replace Mr. Salinger’s fine novel in the Western canon.
Belongingness…
…it’s not just the person who fills a house, it’s their I’ll be back later!s, their toothbrushes and unused hats and coats, their belongingnesses.
…from Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell, his best novel, and one of, perhaps, the best five or ten English novels published in the last half century.
Lunatics…
Lunatics are writers whose works write them.
…from Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell.
I wonder how many young writers of the early 2000s, long before Cloud Atlas ate the world alive, picked up this debut novel and said “That’s it. I give up.”
(Side note: This is still his best novel.)
Of words and rankings and Libya…
Y can’t make up its mind if it’s a vowel or a consonant, can it?
…David Mitchell, my third favorite author, who may one day vie against my second, though who will need to write something seriously sexy before upjumping my first, but who has already hurdled my fourth, yet is perhaps the only person in the world who loves a word, not any word, mind you, but “a” word, as much as said fourth, in this LA Times interview, which isn’t nearly as “good” as, though is probably more honest than, this interview in that magazine for people who, you know, love to love words more than they actually love words themselves, but who likely don’t, unlike my third and fourth favorite authors, know the sound of your tongue rounding a corner.