Accidental inspiration — it’s something we writers all cherish and long for. An overheard phrase, a few lines in a footnote, a piece of music, a fleeting image, an old childhood tale, a chance conversation — anything and everything can be the seed of a story.
For David Mitchell, looking for lunch while he was backpacking in Japan led him to discover a small museum about the Dutch presence in Japan. Instead of eating, he spent a few hours taking notes which ultimately turned into The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a marvellous historical novel set in 18th century Japan.
Weighing in at almost 500 pages, the richly imagined novel recreating a fascinating period in Japanese history took David almost four years to write. A master of artfully conveyed historical detail and twisting plots, he’s been compared to Nabokov and Tolstoy — surely, not a bad duo to be associated with!
How does a Westerner — even one who spent almost a decade in Japan — capture the flavor of life from Japanese, Dutch, English, slave, and sailors’ perspectives? Lots of time spent sifting and digging. David divides his fact-finding into “hard” and “soft” research.
The “hard” type involved ferreting out journals kept by Dutch employees and long interviews with professors to get a big-picture sense of the times. The “soft” type has to do with getting the historical details of a sentence just right. Was a room lit by candles or oil lamps? Did the Dutch use shaving cream? Sometimes David found he couldn’t finish a sentence without spending an afternoon chasing down a choice tidbit of information. This kind of accuracy doesn’t come easily, but it’s key to creating a long-lost world.
What matters most to David isn’t literary prizes, it’s connecting with his readers. When someone tells him on a book tour that something he’s written has made a difference to them, he feels he’s won something more valuable than an ward. As he puts it, “…truly, that’s worth more than any Booker.” Write on, David!