{"id":2239,"date":"2014-07-15T07:29:48","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T11:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2239"},"modified":"2014-07-24T07:36:39","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T11:36:39","slug":"another-story-in-tweets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2239","title":{"rendered":"Another Story in Tweets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"clouds\"<\/a>A fan of British author David Mitchell\u2014I know, I know, lots of people didn\u2019t like Cloud Atlas<\/em>\u2014I\u2019m happy he\u2019s experimenting again. This time with a short story, \u201cThe Right Sort,\u201d in tweets (read it here<\/a>, from the bottom up). First tweet: We get off the Number 10 bus at a pub called \u2018The Fox and Hounds\u2019. \u2018If anyone asks,\u2019 Mum tells me, \u2018say we came by taxi.\u2019 <\/em>The narrator sees the world in staccato bursts\u2014\u201cbite-sized sentences\u201d\u2014because he\u2019s taking his mom\u2019s Valium. I\u2019ve read the story so far, and cannot tell yet whether this device feels like the medium calling attention to itself. Already, though, as in his excellent novel Black Swan Green,<\/em> Mitchell deftly captures the voice and preoccupations of an early adolescent British male.<\/p>\n

Mitchell has tried other innovations: a linked narrative in his first book, Ghostwritten<\/em>, which takes a while to take shape in the reader\u2019s mind (\u201cwe\u2019re all connected\u201d!); Number 9 Dream<\/em>, where you aren\u2019t exactly sure where the dreams begin and end, though it would make a terrific mixed manga\/live-action movie; and, of course, Cloud Atlas<\/em>, where you work forward in time getting the first half of five semi-linked and intergenerational stories, followed by a whole story set in the future, then step backward through the decades with the latter half of the five. (Amazon includes a reader advisory that this is NOT a misprint!) More a straight novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet<\/em>,<\/a> was one of my favorite reads of 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Right Sort\u201d walks \u201cthe tightrope between the fabulous and realism,\u201d Mitchell said in a recent interview in The Guardian,<\/a><\/em> and with his books, he\u2019s proved he\u2019s up for such highwire acts. This outing may soften up the media landscape for a new novel<\/a> coming out this fall.<\/p>\n

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