The author as human

Last night I went to see David Mitchell read from THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET at the new-to-me bookstore Book Court. Book Court is tucked away in an unlikely storefront on a busy commercial street in downtown Brooklyn and looks much bigger in pictures, but I wasn't surprised to find every seat taken 20 minutes before the reading, even on a Friday night. Mitchell is hip right now and in the conversations around me there was a crackle of "Let's talk about how awesome our taste in books is to see what other superlative entertainments we also have in common."

Mitchell is tall and thin and stands with his feet perilously far apart, like a boxer. The bookstore clerk embarrassed him before the reading by rattling off some of his blurbs like "genius" and his position on a previous Time 100 list. The author looked sheepish but broke out into a delighted smile as a baby blatted over his thanks and welcomes. He talks very softly, almost in a mumble, and his answers to audience questions spooled out from digression to digression until he would stop and give a little shake and ask, "Now have I answered your question yet?" I couldn't have said, I was following him.

There's always a little friction when you see an author you admire in person; you fear that he will be mean or just unapproachable; you just can't picture her sitting down at her desk every day. It's irrational to say that I gleaned some insight about Mitchell just from seeing and hearing him in person; it would belie almost his entire body of work, as someone who can get so far into his characters' heads that you forget there's an author in the middle. Wouldn't be seemly to remind. But I'm doing it anyway! I was surprised at how funny he was, how unassuming. That I've been re-reading CLOUD ATLAS and it still makes my head spin is just icing.

Thanks to my blogmigo Wade Garrett for alerting me to the signing and braving the line with me.