Episode 15: David Mitchell
The author of Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten, The Bone Clocks, Utopia Avenue, and the script of the new Matrix movie represents an episode of firsts: Our first in English, our longest episode, our oldest podium book, our first favorite in French and our first member of The Future Library.
Was David Mitchell any good as an English teacher? Why did he move to Japan? How nerdy was David at fifteen? How did David’s stammer affect his teenage years? Or his writing? Was his school a dystopian hell? Was he saved by … table tennis? Would he have known what do with a girlfriend? What’s David Mitchell’s advice to stammerers? Was David’s first attempt at a novel about … otters? How do you avoid looking like a pathetic garden gnome when travelling alone? Why does David Mitchell thread stories together to make novels? Why is he a fake novelist? How do you build affinity for a character when your story is relatively short? Does David Mitchell have a master plan? Why is David Mitchell in Norway and what is the Future Library and why is it good mad? Did David just place a passenger in cryogenic sleep for almost a hundred years? What great book was the first sci-fi novel to really connect with David? Has his silver choice stood the test of (a very long) time? Was David aware of the fate of the author of his gold choice when he read the book?
The podium:
1. Alain-Fournier – Le Grand Meaulnes / Veien til det tapte land (1952, trans. Lilli Gjerløw / Den store Meaulnes (1974, trans. Lilli Gjerløw)
2. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Huckleberry Finns opplevelser (1884/no. 2013 trans. Bjørn Alex Herrman)
3. Ursula K. Le Guin – The Dispossessed (1974)
This episode was recorded in room 309 at the Comfort Hotel Grand Central in Oslo on June 12th, 2022.
Host and recording engineer: Stian Omland
Editor: Marcus Patai
Original music: Halvor Nordal Strand
Editorial team: Cecilie Lysell and Arne Olav Lunde Hageberg
Forfatteren & Favoritten (The Author and the Favorite) is a joint effort from the public libraries of Porsgrunn and Skien in Norway. Many thanks to Rune Sundby at Ælvespeilet culture house for lifesaving technical assistance!
David Mitchell (b. 1972)
Selected writings:
Ghostwritten (novel, 1999)
number9dream (novel, 2001)
Cloud Atlas (novel, 2004) (Norwegian: Skyatlas (2005, trans. Stian Omland)
Black Swan Green (novel, 2006)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (novel, 2010)
The Bone Clocks (novel, 2014)
Slade House(novel, 2015)
From Me Flows What You Call Time (unknown, 2016, to be published in 2114)
Utopia Avenue (novel, 2020)
