The Literary Show-Off

Comments (0) By Joy Press Tuesday, Feb 26 2002

The sprawling plot is overrun with postmodern fancy footwork: the WW II diary of Eiji's great-uncle, letters from Eiji's institutionalized mom, a dream sequence in which he meets Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Lennon wrote a song called "#9 Dream," and Mitchell takes great pains to map the connection between "#9 Dream" and "Norwegian Wood." The latter is a Beatles tune, but it's also the title of a book by Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer of labyrinthine fiction, to whom Mitchell is extremely indebted. What could've been an amusing tip of the hat to his heroes instead turns into a sophomoric exercise, complete with stoner humor.

Number9Dream is a muddle of missed opportunities and loose ends; it toys with a love story, a childhood trauma, and metaphysical meanderings on life and country without fully playing out any of them. But the novel is also a wild explosion of color and energy, amped up on action-packed set pieces and astute observations of contemporary Japanese society. Like a lot of flamboyant fictionalists, Mitchell's problem isn't a lack of imagination or intelligence, but an inability to curb his excesses.