Reviews

Dancing About Architecture

Michael Hayward

David Mitchell is cursed with having written a cult-classic novel: his Cloud Atlas (24) is a multi-layered dazzler of a book constructed from six narratives nested one within another like Russian matryoshka dolls. Cloud Atlas was nominated for several prestigious awards, and was eventually made into a big-budget (but so-so) film featuring Tom Hanks. The reason that such an achievement is a writer’s curse is that every subsequent novel will almost inevitably be seen to fall short of the earlier peak. And so it (unfortunately) proves to be true with Mitchell’s latest novel, Utopia Avenue (Penguin Random House), which tells the story of a fictional 196s-era British rock band of that name (the band’s manager is Levon Frankland, described, somewhat redundantly, as “a very nice guy. A Canadian.”) The late ‘6s and early ‘7s was a rich period for rock music, and Mitchell evidently holds the era very close to his heart. Unfortunately, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (a quip that Mitchell attributes to Charles Mingus), and the activities of singer Elf Holloway, bassist Dean Moss, drummer Peter “Griff” Griffin, and “guitar virtuoso” Jasper de Zoet, quickly breeds a host of clichés. Many famous names from the world of ‘6s rock make cameo appearances in Utopia Avenue. It’s a risky move, particularly when Mitchell gives these icons speaking parts, their dialogue presumably derived from their public personas and known utterances. Here’s David Bowie commiserating with Jasper: “I’ve been the Next Big Thing since I left school, but I’m still broke.” At one point, in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, Elf Holloway shares an elevator with Leonard Cohen, who introduces himself as “Lenny” (Mitchell is being coy, since we know who Lenny is, while Elf is forced to play the naïf); later, Janis (Joplin, of course) observes world-wearily to Elf that “guys” inevitably capitalize on their encounters with her: “‘I know Janis. She gave me head on the unmade bed.’ I hate it.” This feels like gimmickry, and these “real” characters, presumably intended to lend verisimilitude to Mitchell’s tale, behave like stiff-jointed holograms of themselves; the resulting text becomes little more than a pastiche.

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